I know some Japanese! ...this is embarrassing. I was born in Japan, but my family and I moved to England before I was five years old, which means what Japanese I knew almost immediately disappeared. With Davecat's help, I've been trying to relearn my native tongue, but he's almost as lazy as I am. IT'S A SORDID STORY OF FAILURE WITH US :-(
We can read and write katakana, and can read hiragana, and we can read maaaybe twenty kanji. Davecat learnt the kana by buying one of those chirashi (pencil boards) with the kana on them, like these: http://is.gd/fmUr0d. He had them printed and stuck up on his cubicle wall at work, so they were always there to look at. As far as kanji, though... egad, there's just under 1900 of them! He didn't have enough available wallspace for that ;-) But we're learning — granted, at a tectonic speed, but still — and if we can do it, you can do it as well!

I need to read more manga, to be honest, but I can definitely recommend 'DOLL' by Mitsukazu Mihara. Apart from the beautiful art style she has, the stories are quite well done. They're loosely-interwoven tales about a near-future where Androids and Gynoids are the norm, and the stories centre round various Synthetik and Organik characters interactions with each other. Lovely stuff! Also, I'm quite keen on Mamoru Nagano's 'The Five Star Stories', but that'll never be finished in anyone's lifetime :-P

And my lad has a deviantART account, but he just uses it to collect illustrations. Whenever we do photoshoots, he posts them here: http://is.gd/kcnhON. Ophelia-Overdose is far more stylish than I'll ever be!