The Japanese Language

The Japanese language, I feel, is surprisingly difficult for me. I expected it to be much easier given that Chinese was not very hard to learn. Of course, I can't compare the spoken languages since I've been speaking what most people consider the hardest dialect of Chinese at home ever since I can remember. However, many say that written Chinese is the hardest language since it is pictorial, and there is no way of knowing how to pronounce a word, let alone know its meaning, if you don't have the characters memorized beforehand. Yet, it didn't take very long for me to memorize how to write a set of characters and learn their meanings, even though I hadn't had background in reading or writing. I assumed Japanese would thus be all the simpler, given that there is an alphabet of sorts and all I had to do was memorize the meaning. To my dismay, this was not so. I often confuse the hiragana. Moreover, what I hadn't counted on were exceptions to spelling rules! Who knew long vowels took on a different spelling? And that there are exceptions to this exception?! I asked my Japanese-speaking friend how to tell when there's an exception, and she said, "You just know." Well, I don't know. I guess it might have been a bit foolish to think this would be easy.