Writing Japanese

Japanese children spend years learning what I can practice with small effect.

This effort at writing Japanese carries red corrections by the professor who teaches cadets from other countries at the Defense Academy.

I thought when I learned the syllabalary -- corresponding to a phonetic alphabet-- I would be able to read.  But all the interesting words --and word parts--are written in Chinese characters.  These pictograms are  called Kanji (CHinese letters, literally).