[Olog-hai]

I even taught myself to read cursive Cyrillic.

And much of the Japanese language is written and printed in hiragana, a cursive syllabary.

Must be “wasted learning,” though . . .

[RayChuang88]

Try to read fast, hand-written Japanese, especially written pre-1900--good luck trying to read it! (It sometimes even baffles scholars in Japan.)

Indeed, the old style of Japanese--known as Kobun--is not a popular subject in schools there, and it's not hard to figure out why: it would be like trying to teach Americans the equivalent of Old English. In fact, when the Hirohito (Emperor Showa) read the rescript that accepted the terms of the Potsdam Declaration for the surrender of Japan in that famous speech, the majority of Japanese had serious difficulties understanding it because it was essentially a speech in the same language as a Noh dramatic play, which uses Kobun as the spoken language.