I have been learning japanese for a while. I think the hardest part about the speaking is grammar. There does not seem to be too much focus on grammar in American schools anymore, so it hard to learn the grammar of another language when I can not talk about grammar in my own language! Particles take time to get used to. Verbs are very strange to me in any language. After learning some french and spanish I see how different Japanese verbs are. The harderst part about the writing is of course Kanji. But I like the symbolism, such as for "Thumb," "親指". I like that is means "parent finger." I wish English were more symbolic. Katakana is easy to read, but hard to write. I never seem to write foreign words right.
Easy points:
speaking. Everytime a letter comes up, it is ALWAYS said the same. 「あ」will always sound like "ah." Where as in English, it may sound like "Ah, Eh, A..." Romaji and hiragana is very easy! in French spelling is crazy.

日本語は「大変」難しいです。
小学校、中学校、高等学校と12年学校に通い、日本語を習得します。
世界のなかで、12年間、「国語」を勉強している国は「ない」と思います。

あと、地名や人名の読み方は「自由」に読んでいいのです。

Thank you for answering my question! There is a test for japanese language ability. It is "Nihongo nouryoku shiken" Maybe you already know? If you look for the excise books for it, you will find a systematic way of learning japanese. It includes "Vokabolary, Reading comprehenshion, Grammer, Hearing" and level 1 till 5. This test is done also abroad. 頑張って！

Iｌｉｋｅ　Ｊａｐａｎｅｓｅ．It sounds very beautiful when one speak. But I ｆｏｕｎｄ　ｔｈｅ　ｇｒａｍｍａｒ　ｉｓ　ｖｅｒｙ　ｄｉｆｆｉｃｕｌｔ　ｔｏ　ｍｅ．　ａｎｄ　ｓｏ　ｄｏｅｓ　ｔｈｅ　敬语。The sentence grammar is similiar like ancient Chinese,.... 者,,,,,也。Which is quite different from morden Chinese.
I learn Japanese as second foreign languge at university, which studied for about one year. I　think if Iｌｅａｒｎ　ｌｏｎｇｅｒ　，　ｉｔ　ｗｏｕｌｄ　ｂｅ　ｂｅｔｔｅｒ．Ｉ　ｈｏｐｅ　ｔｏcontinue study and improve it. Do you have any good method to recommond about how to study  it?　
Thank you~