[KyleGoetz]

This is a very interesting point of Japanese-as-a-second-language you've hit upon. When starting out, you know very little of the grammar, so you rely on things like kanji to help determine where one word ends and another begins.

Ten years ago, when I started studying Japanese on my own, I could read Ranma 1/2 manga more easily than Doraemon manga, even though Ranma has kanji and Doraemon does not.

However, once I learned the simple grammar points and some vocabulary, reading Japanese without kanji became easier. Of course, once I learned kanji, I found reading with kanji more easily scannable and also more easily interpretable (seeing an unfamiliar word in kanji is much easier to understand than seeing one written in hiragana).

And Tenchu, I'd watch out calling one language retarded. I can read Japanese if the kana are written out of order like in your English example. Example: この文、読るめか？

Besides, if you don't need spaces (which you don't in Japanese as made obvious by their high literacy rate and lack of spaces), why use them? That seems to be the stupid alternative (using spaces when they're not needed).

On the other hand, I think spaces in English make English more readable than non-spaced English. One reason is that we only use one script. Now, if English were non-spaced but alternated between regular and bold fonts, I don't think we'd need spaces. But that's a whole other bucket of fish.