paseoDifficulty, honestly
Is Japanese hard to learn?
For English speakers, Japanese is one of the harder languages. The writing system and the distance from English are real. A polite sentence is still available this week.
Farther away than it looks
A few loanwords will look familiar: コーヒー is coffee. Most of the language will not. Word order is different, particles do work that English does with word order, and the writing system is three systems at once.
Is Japanese easy to learn? A memorized greeting can be. Building a new sentence while someone waits is the harder part. How hard is Japanese to learn depends on whether you are speaking, reading, or trying to finish both before you talk.
How long it takes
The U.S. Foreign Service Institute groups Japanese with the languages that take English speakers the longest to reach a professional working level: on the order of 2200 classroom hours, in a full-time course. That figure is for a high professional standard, including reading. It is not a promise about fluency, and it is not how long a simple conversation takes.
A greeting can happen this week. Ordering coffee can happen this month. Comfort in a wandering chat takes much longer, and it arrives sooner if you talk a little every day.
こんにちは。お元気ですか。
Hello. How are you?
コーヒーをください。
Coffee, please.
What actually feels hard
Keigo, the formal language, later. Counters, when you have to count objects. Kanji, when you are also trying to speak. Understanding someone who is not slowing down.
How hard is it to learn Japanese is partly a choice of method. A kanji deck makes it feel academic. A daily conversation makes it feel like a skill. Stay with polite forms, repeat phrases you will say again, and ask for a slower turn when you need it.
もう一度お願いします。
Once more, please.