@Ouendanation: Thanks for the tip. I don't mean it sucks a language but it does suck when you can't understand them. On the plus side you can make up what they are saying.
Duster: Quick! Whip out your snakes so we can get across this gap.
If you feel at all learning it would be helpful, it's really not *that* hard to learn, and I have a game that teaches you how to read it, which is designed like an old console RPG. After you learn some (Kata)Kana, maybe some Hirigana, it's easy. Just memorize some words. Kana is very easy to translate, as it much more often than not sounds very similar to the english counterpart, but with slight pronunciaton differences. They can't make "l" sounds, so they use r instead.
Examples (say these out loud and it'll make more sense) Riyuka - Luca(added s)
Kurausu - Claus
You don't have to memorize all symbols, because a ton of them just change the first letter and add a tiny mark to the symbol.
Examples:
ハ=Ha
バ=Ba
パ=Pa
A lot of them are easy, too.
ア-a (looks like a "P")
ヘ-he (upside down check mark)
フ-fu (just a simple shape)
If I'm 13 and I learned it, I'm sure you can learn it, probably easier than I can.