The travails of learning (traditional) Chinese

I start my classes next Monday, and to prepare I've been spending the past few days reviewing my traditional characters. This was one of the daunting things about going to Taiwan. Like Hong Kong and Macau, Taiwan decided not to use the simplified characters that mainland China adopted in the 20th century (by my count about one in every four characters have been simplified).
I thought it wouldn't be a big deal because I had already learned Japanese characters, which (I mistakenly thought) were traditional.
But it isn't as simple as that. The Japanese imported kanji throughout different eras, and thus have a mish-mash of traditional and simplified characters. Plus, after studying Chinese for two years, I know about 400 more Chinese characters than Japanese. So even if the Japanese ones were all traditional, I'd still have about 100 more traditional ones to learn. (for a list of examples, check here)
Not that learning traditional characters is without value. Once I know them, it will be a lot easier to study ancient Chinese texts...