The most difficult for me was vocabulary for different social situations, stratifications, etc.
Pronunciation is not hard.. vowels are basically the same as "romance" languages.

I still know enough to get around Japan in Japanese although i haven't been there since just pre-covid.
Have fun..

but sometimes differ from vowels in other Romance languages

I tried mandarin but never could pronounce well enough for people in Taiwan or China to understand me.. the tones did me in. :&gt )

But my Japanese was almost always understood by Japanese in Japan, even on the telephone.

Most of the time, if you mispronounce a Japanse word, Japanese people can still understand you. On those very rare occasions when I can't convey the meaning of a word, I'll explain how it is written in kanji漢字。

Couldn't really easily read a newspaper if I wanted to, but certainly knew enough, and all hiragana and katakana so I could read most signs, packaging, menus, etc.
Most of my time in Japan has been in Kyoto. So I also learned some of that 'dialect.'

ども、おおきに-- Thank you

おもろいやんけ-- Well, isn't that interesting

めちゃめちゃ痛いがな！ Ow! That hurts!

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I have forgotten 95% of what I learned through lack of use....

I tried learning various languages at one time, including Chinese, but it's difficult to continue if you don't have a motivation.

My motivation for learning Japanese at the time was a Japanese girlfriend, but later, i came to respect the Japanese culture and how they have managed to come from a society that worships their emperor as a god, to one which allows me, as a foreigner, to work in the country and travel around with no problems. I love this country, and I love the fact that it is now allied with my native country, the United States.

ほんまや！
You said it!

おいでやす
Come here

おられますか？
Is the person you requested (on the phone) there?

My experience in Japan has been from 1983 to the present.

and therefore cheaper, but always at least as good and usually better.. 2 of them actually have a Michelin star but the owners are very modest about it---

Sushi, soba, okonomiyaki, gyoza, etc, a tiny kappo place just across the river from Gion.

I wonder if that okonomiyaki is 大阪風 (Osaka style), or if Kyoto has its own style.

The place I know is just north of the Niji-dori bridge on Kawabata-dori-east side of the Kamogawa. Just a little dive.

at least here in the Kanto (Tokyo) region-- Osaka style (大阪風 and Hiroshima style (広島風 .

It's been so long since I've been to Kyoto (more than 20 years) that I'll have to look up the geographical references you mentioned. I still remember how to get to the 修学院 and 東山 districts of Kyoto, as well as 山科, which is on the Kyoto side of the Kyoto-Shiga prefectural boundary (大津--Ohtsu is on the Shiga side, by 琵琶湖-- Lake Biwa)

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Another one is ほんまや HON-maya-- "Yeah, you're right"

…help whatsoever.

Learning Japanese is more like memorizing chemistry. I lived there for 2 years during my second tour of duty with the Air Force nurse corps. I took 3 evening courses in Japanese, and learned enough to ask a few basic questions but not enough to understand the answers. The local people did seem to appreciate my making an effort.

The Japanese word for bread is pan, borrowed from Spanish, and the word for job/work is arubaito from the German arbeit. Other than that, I don’t remember any similarities to any western languages.

Good luck!

The usual word for a longer term "job" is "shigoto" (仕事 ).

but they are given a Japanese pronunciation which makes it hard to recognize them as English words at first, much like French loan words are usually given an English pronunciation which makes it hard for French speakers to recognize

…I took talking about the Japanese words for beauty salon and hospital, which sound so similar to the western ear as to be essentially indistinguishable. When she said them, I could sort-of-almost-maybe hear the ever-so-subtle difference, but I could not, for the life of me, reproduce them.

My best sentence was, “Watashi wa kodomo no kangofu desu.” I couldn’t find a translation for pediatric nurse practitioner, so children’s nurse was as close as I could come. In the late 1970s, I don’t think the advanced practice nursing role existed in Japan, necessarily no translation.

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even since WWII, when it was still standard for newspapers to use katakana and old-style Japanese characters. I've had to translate some research papers that were published in the immediate post-war era, and even as late as the 1960s, and it can be exasperating, since some characters are no longer used and don't show up in modern dictionaries. There was a Kanji (Chinese character) overhaul in the early '50s, but researchers who were used to the old system continued to use the old system well into the '70s.

By the way, "pediatric nurse" is now "小児科看護師", (shou-nika kangoshi) as 看護婦 (kangofu), which was specifically for women, seems to have morphed into 看護師 (kangoshi), which is not gender-specific.

I learned Japanese kanji (Chinese characters) with P.G.O'Neil's wonderful kanji guide, Essential Kanji (肝要漢字 ).

Learned that from Styx song.
When I was working in a large antique mall, a family from japan came and I thanked them for buying an object with it. The mother told the daughter I spoke Japanese very well.

As soon as I get English down, I want to learn a new language.

"Domo arigato, Mister Robotto"?

If you were, say, ten years old, you'd pick it up in a flash naturally.

but I was really motivated to study it (Japanese girlfriend), plus I had studied other languages and it seemed like there was a future for me in the Japanese language, in the 1980s. As it turned out, there was, as I have made a career out of it in Japan, after studying Japanese translation in college. But I also had a "private tutor", as it were, and I spent much time in Japan learning the language.

I lived in Japan for 2 years and my wife is Japanese. We used mainly Japanese in Japan but when we came to the US she needed English more so we switched. Im pretty rusty now but am glad I learned it. There is so much Japanese influence here now it's nice to be able to understand some of the source.
Ganbatte ne!

... owned factories for several years, other than the basics like "thanks" and "hello".

I made some coworkers laugh a few times by speaking gibberish that "sounded" Japanese. Very choppy and harsh-sounding, with my voice deeper than usual and me raising the volume to a maximum at the end of each sentence. Like I was a Japanese manager angrily speaking to a Japanese underling.

We had some Vietnamese-Americans working at that place too, but their language was softer and almost musical in comparison.

I probably heard performers like Sid Caesar and Peter Sellers too many times as a kid.

Sid Caesar speaking gibberish in French, German, Italian and finally Japanese:

As the token American people working for a Japanese advertising agency. I guess he picked it up pretty easily despite the fact everyone in his office wanted to try out their english with him.

Started learning in her twenties, and picked right up on it. She made a career of it and retired last year.

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but I also enjoy doing the jobs I'm doing now. 退職したら良いと思うけど、同僚との付き合いは楽しい。
Tr: I'd like to retire, but it's fun to meet with my co-workers.

A great bunch of people! I am honored to work for them! 彼らと仕事をするのが名誉です。