[Yuukigami]

Kanji is a difficult aspect of Japanese at first, yes, but after a while I think that learning new characters becomes really simple. To be frank the hardest part of Japanese is the aspect that most people say is the easiest part, grammar. Textbook grammar IS very simple and easy to comprehend but when you really get into REAL Japanese it can be extremely overwhelming. But you just have to get used to patterns and the way that Japanese people think. And if you analyze a sentence or phrase too much you just confuse yourself more, this happened to me.

Another thing that Japanese learners tend to do is translate everything into English. In my opinion, this is one of the worst things to do (except in the very beginning with sentences like 私は～です）. The reason being that it becomes even more frustrating and confusing. If you are to translate into English at all, you should ALWAYS translate literally in order to get the feel of the Japanese way of thought. For example, こんな所にいた事があるような気がした。would translate literally as "The feeling that is the appearance that the event in which (I) existed in this kind of place did". Now to a beginner this would make absolutely no sense but to more advanced learners this makes perfect sense, right?

That is just some of the reasons why Japanese is hard for people, I think. But after a while in the "real" Japanese world it really isn't that hard and it becomes second nature.