It seems like a tough language, but I'm willing to put the time in if it's not an entirely futile effort.

I'm not that interested in speaking it, unless that's absolutely required to understand subtleties in the writing. I mainly want to read things by amazing people like Shigesato Itoi, and browse 2ch and other stuff like that I guess.

By your estimation, if I take maybe an hour or two every day out of my schedule to study Japanese, how long do you think it will take before I'll be able to read pretty much anything I want?

I'm just looking for an average here, so I know it's not a hopeless attempt.