This is a really weird new way for me to read.. And obviously, not being very good at reading Japanese, it's going really slow.. But it strikes me how incredibly easily this format could've been used for people around my own level of Japanese (stuttering-through-sentences-level) by having every word/sentence translatable through a quick penning of the word.
I know lots of people are trying to learn Japanese, I wonder if the market for software that helps with that isn't quite big?