Started learning Japanese...

[woolfman]

...because of PC エンジン

Not really,       I had some time to spare in autumn, thought it was a good idea and enrolled at the local University to learn it. Still getting used to the language and its system, but its still quite interesting, though tough to learn.

[Arkhan]

The grammar is backwards compared to ours, so you have to force your brain to stop piecing together sentences like we do, or it makes it harder.

[_joshuaTurbo]

I would love it if my local universities offered beginners courses on it.  All I do is play around with the memrise app on my phone and listen to Pimsleurs 8 tracks.

[Punch]

The grammar is backwards compared to ours, so you have to force your brain to stop piecing together sentences like we do, or it makes it harder.

God damn that's hard! I finally understood my japanese friends frustration with any european languages when I finally started learning japanese.

Not that I have progressed too much, only thing I got from it was being able to read english stuff in katakana and some really basic grammar points. I have Remembering the Kanji, Japanese for Everyone (Nagara/Gakken), A Dict. of Basic Japanese Grammar (the yellow book) plus Reading Real Japanese (a book that I bought to motivate me to study until I could read the stories written). I'm living proof that buying books does not equal learning them lol.

[seieienbu]

I studied in college for years and got to where I could read/write decently.  I had more problems understanding it being spoken and always felt like I was terrible at actually speaking to others.

Japanese is a hard language but if you study for years you can definitely find enjoyment in being able to play Japanese video games with some understanding on what's happening, reading manga, or pointing out to your friends where the translations are bad in whatever movie/anime you're watching.  Good times.

[Arkhan]

It's like any other language, though.

It's best learned through immersion.

Unfortunately, playing games and watching TV isn't exactly immersive.   It's only one part of the puzzle.

Just remember, even in Japan, there are idiots that know Japanese by virtue of being native.  If those dingalings can do it, you can eventually figure it out too.

Same for any language, really.