Why is Japanese considered to be one of the hardest languages for Westerners to learn?

Spoken Japanese is a relatively simple language to learn. Verbs are not conjugated in the Germanic form. Tense, gender and emphasis are consistent. Written Japanese is a different story altogether. It uses a combination of three "alphabets". Kanji is the main form. It had tens of thousands of characters that are learned from birth. Kanji is a "symbolic" language, where meaning is derived from symbols rather than syntax. Kanji is borrowed from Chinese, looks similar but very different in translation. To elucidate the Kanji characters, Japanese uses two additional "alphabets". They are Hiragana and Katagana. These are phonetic characters unique to Japanese language. Hiragana and Katagana are easily learned and understood. Kanji is much more complex and learned by rote and in youth. The average "articulate" adult will make use of 50,000 kanji symbols give or take

no i heard that compared to other asian languages, the spoken part is comparatively easy for westerners
chinese and i think korean are hard because they have what i think is called tones- some kind of inflection in the words getting higher pitched or something
my roommate is chinese i should ask her
but other than the writing its not the hardest

It really isn't people just say that, but its only the writing part.

Mostly, the difficulty mistique is based on the large number of Kanji you have to learn to read even basic prose. (You need to know about 2000 to read a newspaper). However, the actual spoken language isn't very difficult at all. For the most part, compared to English, there are very few exceptions to grammar rules, and Japanese also uses a relatively high number of English borrowings as well.

Even with the kanji, once you learn the first basic 300 or so, all the rest are made up of bits and pieces of the ones you already know. In short I would say that even though there might be a pretty steep learning curve to getting started in Japanese, once you get the basics down, it really isn't as difficult as people go on.

many grammatical particles way too different than English or other European languages, which doesn't seem to fit in like other Asian languages, etc...
difficult concepts
two kana syllabaries
Kanjis
onyomi & kunyomi
furigana & manyogana
romaji, where most Westerners call "romanji", linking the name with the Romans which is dead wrong like Latin. "roma" of "romaji" in Japanese already means "roman"!
etc...

People who said "Japanese isn't difficult" is because they only learned those words of European origin that has been "Japanicizied".

I find Japanese a little harder than chinese because you have to memorise things eg.the alphabet (Hiragana and Katakana). That's one point. Another is that the pronounciation. I think Westerners pronounce japanese words more english-like (if you know what I mean)

What level are you at? It's rather easy in the beginning but it gets harder, trust me. Japanese and English grammar are very different, you have to learn three writing systems, and many people struggle with the many kinds of conjugations in Japanese.

Obviously not everybody is going to have the same level of difficulty with a language, but your situation is probably not the norm.

check this out for learning a new language

http://www.hardwaremod.com

idk

I don't think it really is.
I speak FLUENTLY spanish, german, italian, [i'm a born american, so english].

I understand porcheguesse, latin, and french.

I have taken courses on korean and japanesse and neither seemed particulary difficult to learn if you pay attention, have a good teacher and are persisitent in learning.