Is Japanese hard to learn?

#1 Japanese can be very difficult to learn. My wife is from Japan and I worked for a Japanese game development company for years. I tried really hard for about a year to learn. I got pretty far, but still have a long ways to go.

The first obstacle is learning their 2 basic alphabets. Each one with over 60 different characters. There is one called Katakana and another called Hiragana. Those are just the phonetic characters. There is another set of characters to learn called Kanji. There are over 10,000 Kanji characters. The Kanji characters look the same as Chinese characters, but are often pronounced differently and have their own meaning in Japanese.

It is easier to understand how the words are formed after you learn to read Katakana and Hiragana. Next would be tackling their rules of grammer, which are totally different than English.

Anyways, there are several website dedicated to teaching you Japanese, that's a good place to start. If you are really serious you should take a class or find a tutor because you need to practice with someone that can help you learn to pronounce and say things correctly.

#2 I started to learn it in Uni this year, but after a semester im dropping it. Not because its too hard( the grammar etc is not difficult), just that i cant remember all the vocabulary :P So I dont think its too hard to learn at least the basics (i know around the level of a 6 year old ;)) Its the reading and writing it that is difficult (Kanji for example), but learning kanji gives you a clearer view of why the words are constructed like they are and such.

#3 @Mark: sure there are many kanji; but you should concentrate on the 1945 official ones (and every book, you will have these official kanji).
If you know those and the grammar, then you can almost speak to everybody and read a newspaper.

#4 I've just come back from 2 years living and working in Japan. I did no Japanese study but picked up Katakana and Hirigana quickly (they're quite easy if you put your mind to it, a mobile phone and text messaging a lot of japanese friends was how I picked them up!)
Kanji is a bit trickier, I probably know the meanings of about 150 but pronunciation and the changes that occurs when they're gouped together makes it difficult.

Speaking polite conversational Japanes without want to read it isn't difficult. I'm sure with study you could pick up the basics quickly, Japanese people give a lot of allowance for foreigners to use too casual or too formal language so the complicated part of Japanese (all that context and being polite) isn't something you need to worry about all at once.

if you only want to speak Japanese thats the way to go, Japanese can be written in the English alphabet (its called Romanji to the Japanese) so non-Japanese can speak it quikly.

In short speaking it isn't too difficult for everyday conversations, reading and particularly writing are a lot more difficult.

Good luck....

#5 I haven't used Japanese in years...I plan to get back into it when I have time.

I personally never found it hard to read/write/speak, and in some ways found it easier to pick up than some other latin-based languages. I would say I found it easier to speak than to listen/understand someone else at times..I think I just get nervous :P

#6 Is Korean easier to learn? (I've read that the Korean Hangul/Hankul alphabet can be learned in a day.)

#7 All your languages are belong to us.

#8 My wife lived in Japan for almost five years and would love to go back again. I've seen loads of jobs in Tokyo, and as much as I'd like to live there for a couple of years, I don't think my body could cope with the heat and humidity of Tokyo in summer. Which is a real shame.

As a final (on topic) note, Japanese does look reall difficult to me; I wonder how much you would need to learn to enjoy basic conversations?