[hennaz]

In Mandarin, there are stative verbs (verbs that describe the state the subject is in), meaning that the word for "to be" 是 (shì) is not used.
Eg. The weather is cold = 天气冷 (Tiānqi lĕng) (lit. "weather cold").

With Japanese, just translating what someone is saying is insufficient, because while the translation may be correct, you have to know what the speaker is implying ie. if a Japanese taxi driver tells you "It's difficult to get there in 10 minutes", he actually means it's impossible. And if you invite a Japanese to a party and they say, "I'll think about it later", they are really saying "no", albeit euphemistically. Japanese is not just another way of speaking; it's another way if thinking. Japanese people do not think the same way as other nationalities; it is crucial you learn about Japanese culture, social customs and etiquette when learning their language, and that's a problem even machine translations (eg. Google) can't get round; such artificial methods would need artificial intelligence to tell you what people are actually implying. I think this is the main difficulty for foreigners learning Japanese.