[cbhl]

Japanese has fewer phonemes than Canto or Mando, which always gave me the impression that it was easier to learn.

Maybe the added difficulty comes from needing to understand the grammar (particles) and the different forms of speech for different levels of politeness (after a few years, it now weirds me out when a white dude calls himself 'watashi').

Edit: Actually, if the methodology is "average time spent to learn" another possibility is that the average is slower because the barrier to learning the language is just low enough to attract a bunch of slow learners that wouldn't be interested in Chinese or Korean. (Reminds me of a study where decreasing page weight in KBs increased average page load time because users on the slowest connections were now able to load the page and skewed the average upward.)

[fiblye]

Many, many learners wish Japanese had more available phonemes. One of the biggest problems with Japanese is it imported batches of tens of thousands of Chinese words and forced them into a language with only a fraction of the sound complexity. The result is loads of words with the same pronunciation but completely different meaning. "Shoushin" can mean a work promotion or cowardice. "Shinkou" can mean attack, (military) invasion, progress, encouragement, pickles, or religious faith. None of these usages are rare.

If English had half the available consonants and vowels it had now, it'd be far more difficult to learn rather than easy. Japanese has the same problem.

[mikesickler]

What's weird about a white dude referring to himself as 'watashi'? I'm a white dude and I have done that plenty of times.

[kirerukaze]

"watashi" is the more feminine form of "I/me". "boku" or "ore" is more masculine. More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_pronouns

[mikesickler]

yeah I get that. But it's not unusual for a man to use it in a formal setting.