[SHAD0W]

@KyleGoetz:
1 - Who needs a full time class? My class is once a week for 2 hours, and it’s a year 1 class so I’m way beyond the lesson content, I just go for the speaking practice and to hang out with my friends who are just begginers.
2 - can you prove it isn't possible? - how much do you study each day? who says someone cant study more than you and become fluent in 1 - 2 years? (AJATT anyone?)
3 - How do you define fluent?
4 - If you were at ChisaChi's current level after year then you dont deserve to be bragging about having a natural gift with languages, especially when your example of “I have eaten > 食べます” was WRONG. Your link doesn’t back you up much, either.
5 - I found German and French much more difficult than Japanese
6 - It's only a different writing system, just becasue it takes longer to master it doesn't make it any more difficult. Get over it.
7 - What about verb conjugation is so hard?
8 - What difference does it make that "US government organizations who have studied language acquisition" say it's more difficult?
9 - You say Chinese is harder because of the writing system, again, refer back to point 6.

In short everything you have posted is down to personal definition and preference.

@Jesselt:
After 3 years of constant study you would have to be pretty bad to only be able to hold up conversations in which you ask plenty of "what does XXX mean?" questions.
And how can you say someone has no life if they choose to spend their time mastering a language? (Small minded much?)

If you say that by fluent you "mean that you should be able to understand a multitude of words that aren't used in every day speech" then 3 years is plenty of time,
here i'll give you some random words now 宇宙人、政治、機械翻訳、睡眠誘発ガス、俳句、オブジ ェクト指向　ah the wonders of learning some random words in only a couple of days, with the excpeption of オブジェクト指向 i can assure you they are not daily words for me.
Dialects and kanji are hard?!?! news to me, as for dialects they are still set in general rules and usages, whats so hard about learning a dialect if you've learned an entire langauge already?
As for kanji, well, refer to point 6 above.

"鼻が高い = tall nose?" ← Anyone who knows japanese would also know that 高い can be translated into English as "high", and that 鼻が高い is just an idiom for "Proud"
(Makes sense when in English you can "hold your head high" doesn't it? oh but wait, thats too complicated for english speakers to understand, sorry)
That basically like me throwing out the phrase 朝飯前 and saying "OMG!! morning meal before?!?! what does that mean?!?!?" when it's the equivalent of the English phrase "Piece of cake"
It really isn't difficult stuff, and you could come up with any example like that for any language so i really don't see your point.

Again, your multitude of languages that are "easier to learn" are only based off of personal opinion and definition.