Mindless chanting... wtf?

I have no idea what the real reason is for chanting at the zen center. I just know that it has been the hardest part of this practice for me to accept.
At first, I didn't do it, because it felt disingenuous. It felt wrong to be chanting something that seemed meaningful or sacred when I didn't agree with it, or even know what it meant.
Then I didn't do it because it felt mindless. It felt weird to be following alng with everyone else, chanting this thing that I didn't understand, and doing it in this monotone voice that left no room for individuality or expression. It made me feel like the monkeys in the Wizard of Oz, blindly following the line of workers that snaked up the mountain.
Over time I got used to it. For a while I thought it was practice in not getting caught up in things, that in keeping your voice at one tempo and one pitch, you were practicing not getting carried away. During sesshin, I thought chanting was kind of like learning your ABC's. As I started to actually pay attention to the chants that we did in English, I saw that some of them were kind of helpful reminders about how to do this practice.
But I have to say that the most confusing part of the chanting for me was the chanting of syllables in Japanese. See, someone explained to me once that one of the chants was just syllables. That even when people who could read Japanese read those chants, they didn't make sense to them either- they were just syllables. This didn't make sense to me. Why would you chant just syllables?
But here's what I have found.
Well, let me back up a bit and explain a little about reading. When you read, your eyes scan ahead about 3-5 words. This is what allows you to read things with expression and understand the concept or idea of the entire sentence which allows you to figure out unfamiliar words, etc. So even though you're reading the word reading right now, your eyes and your mind are two steps ahead of you, figuring out the rest of the sentence to help you read.
But do you ever notice that when you chant the chants in Japanese (or in English if you're someone whose native tongue is Japanese), you don't really chant them with expression? You don't really chant them with yourself involved, with any interpretation or any meaning of them, you just kind of say them, exactly-as-they-are? Sound familiar? Ha ha ha- gotcha!
Here's what I think. I think that chanting chants in a foreign language, especially chanting syllables, forces you to do two things. The first one is what I just explained: it forces you to focus just on the chant as-it-is, without meaning, without interpretation, without yourself getting involved.
The second thing, and this is especially true of the syllables, is that it forces you to stay in the moment. When you are chanting syllables, your eyes and brain actually can't be two steps ahead of you. I mean, I guess they can but it doesn't help you at all. Each one of those syllables is its own thing, its own moment in time. You can't possibly connect them to each other, make a story up about them, predict into the future. All you can do is read that one syllable at that one moment.
 It's just more practice at being present and giving up yourself. At least that's been my experience with it but, like I said, I have no idea what the real reason is for chanting.