If you are interested in manga, which is part of Japanese culture in order to understand it you must learn how to read and write Japanese. In order to do this go to www.njstar.com , and donwload the Japanese Word processor and the NJWIN CJK, so as you can understand Japanese writings in your PC without installing Win 95 or 98 japanese version on your pc. ^_^
And be careful in Internet and in IRC, cause the standart form of Japanese character coding/encoding form is Shift-JIS. Later, on this page, I will include sites where you can easily learn Japanese.