Language Learning as a Shinkansen to Hell

It's late and I have a Japanese tutoring session tomorrow, therefore it's time to procrastinate about studying Japanese. And/or time to vent on the same subject. What is WRONG with the people who made this language up?! Any other language I've ever studied can be organized into at least semi-rational flash cards: you get a word on one side and then, on the other, maybe two or three English words that are unmistakeably conceptually related to each other. As in, "River; stream; to flow."

But Japanese flash cards look like gag items or practical jokes: you get an aesthetic sequence of brushstrokes to memorize and then it says, "This can be pronounced waka, maka, matashita, or ohoro. As a verb, it can be hueri, roto, shinsenwa, or tokeiko. Depending on context it can mean hairbrush, carburetor, to enumerate, to consider, mung bean, puberty, or harsh."

I have a theory that any Japanese word can mean "carburetor" if it's used in the appropriate context. Linguists may want to check this out.