Kanji is an exception in Japanese because it was forcibly shoe-horned into the language. (Granted, Kanji came before kana, but as far as 'purely Japanese' scripts I think that kana takes precedence). Thus it really doesn't fit well with the Japanese pronunciations because sometimes it was brought in for meaning (火山 vs 火) without any care for how it was pronounced -- either forcing the pronunciation to conform to the original Japanese word, or creating a new word from the Chinese.

Also the fact that Kanji entered japan at different points in history means that there were different interpretations of how the kanji should be used. (I see something similar with katakana -- you can generally tell the timeframe in which the word entered the Japanese language depending on whether the word is based on the English spelling, or the English pronunciation. Or is even from another language such a Portuguese or German)

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Not that I think that Japanese is a great example of a "logical language." But one of the things I always liked about Japanese is the fact that (with a few exceptions) the kana can only be pronounced one way.

Btw, as I'm sure you know the pronunciations for 二 is に. But when you combine it as part of a word can also be pronounced ふた、ふ、ふう　or じ

Much like how the English alphabet ultimately originates from Egyptian hieroglyphs, and was forcibly shoe-horned into the language by the Romans as they spread Christianity across Europe.

But one of the things I always liked about Japanese is the fact that (with a few exceptions) the kana can only be pronounced one way.

Well, it does omit pitch accent. Reminds me of how my Japanese professor mentioned that she went almost a decade without realizing that in the こ-, そ-, あ-, ど- series, ど- involves a decrease in pitch, whereas the others involve an increase. Something that would be very useful to include in the orthography ;/

Btw, as I'm sure you know the pronunciations for 二 is に. But when you combine it as part of a word can also be pronounced ふた、ふ、ふう　or じ

Which is somewhat analogous to how 'p' and 'h' have one pronunciation (that I can think of off the top of my head), but when they're combined, you get an 'f' sound.

The problem with the pitch accent is that it varies so much by region that if you included them in the kana (like the universal phonetic alphabet) you would end up with something that was completely unreadable by people from a different prefecture. (Ok, I'm taking that to an extreme, but still. The Japanese have enough problems with various dialects without putting pitches in the written language. I think I would cry.)

Another interesting thing is that even within the kana there are slight variations in pronunciation. in 三年、三万、三月 all the んs are pronounced differently.

I think we should agree that all language is fubared. Except for Esperonto. And no one uses that (no matter what the wikipedia page says).

Yeah, that's definitely true. You would have to use it just for 標準語, sort of like how pinyin with tonal diacritics is primarily used for Standard Mandarin, since something like 関西弁 would look completely different.

By the way, I remember reading (on HN, I believe) that a lot of the problems with English spelling are a result of the original typesetters (i.e., for Gutenberg-style printing presses) being Dutch, so they failed to accurately spell a lot of English words.

And Esperanto is for noobs ;) If you want to see a real conlang built from the ground up, check out Ilaksh: http://www.ithkuil.net/ilaksh/Ilaksh_Intro.html