Phases in the study of Japanese

I found a really funny post over in Daniel Marín's blog Eureka about the phases you go through when you study Japanese. It's in Spanish, though, so I think the humor would be lost to a few(ok, after reading it, you may see how sardonic my humor is if I think this is funny). So, with his permission, I'm translating it here. Enjoy!

1. IS THIS A LANGUAGE OR A JOKE?: Because of the kanji, because of the syllabaries, because of its really strange grammar- with the particles and the reverse order of its sentences...at the start, more than a language, Japanese seems an unsolvable puzzle or a joke made in bad taste.

2. NOW I UNDERSTAND!: After fighting with it for some months or years, according to the patience of the student, things start to fit into place. One is able to write simple sentences and understand easy conversations. About the kanji, well, having taken in the terrible work that you have to learn more than two thousand of them, the thing seems promising and one studies the first  few hundred with much patience and illusion.

3. WHAAT?: Well no, what you were thinking you knew was in reality a bait to attract you to the dark side, the tip of the iceberg of a language designed for a perverted mind. For every rule, there are a hundred exceptions. The pronunciation is relatively simple, but the reading is undeniably complicated, every kanji can be read in a bazillion ways, some of them irregular. The kanji come together in your mind like mosquitos around a lamp and there is no god that can distinguish them. As soon as you learn a hundred, you come back to forgetting them. If that was a little, the regional dialects and the many levels of courtesy conspire to make you abandon the study of nihongo.

4. THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL: It can be supposed that you enter this level when things start to come together again, after many doses of patience. It's the same as in a martial arts film- the student suffers his first defeat by the language to make him flustered and pressured, while the sensei repeats: patience, patience...After many years and efforts maybe you will achieve speaking somewhat decently and be heard by a son of the Nation of the Rising Sun without him spitting in your face.