I think Japanese grammar is fairly easy and it follows a much more logical pattern than English or any of the European languages. However, putting it into practice and wrapping your brain around the fact that the verb comes at the end of a sentence is another story. There are a few things that are quite different than English:
1. Japanese uses a little collection of sound units that we westerners call “particles”. Particles sound like “wa”, “de”, “ni”, “no” or “wo”. A particle always follows a word and it tells you the function of the word that immediately precedes it – if it’s the topic of the sentence, a posessive, the place of action, or the indirect or direct object.
2. Verbs come at the end of the sentence and the ending on the verb indicates if it is future, present, or past tense. Most Japanese verbs, in dictionary form end in “ru”, but conjugating them is sometimes a test of one’s memory skills. Future tense verbs end in “masu”, past tense ends in “mashita” and continuing action, like the English “-ing” ends with “-tte imasu”. Most times the root of the verb is a kanji character and the tense ending is in hiragana.
3. Adjectives also take past, present and future endings. So if the weather was not good yesterday, you need to indicate the past tense in the adjective with an appropriate suffix.
4. Word order is not important as long as the verb comes at the end of the sentence. The particles do that work for the speaker. If each word in the sentence has an indicator as to its function, what difference does it make where that word comes in the sentence? 
5. This is the tough one; there are different levels of politeness used when speaking to different people. If you’re talking to your kids or your best friend, you use casual. If you are talking to a peer that you just met or someone at work(the form that I learned, just to be on the safe side), you step it up a bit and use a little more polite form. If you are addressing your boss or your new boyfriend/girlfriend’s parents, then the polite form is required. And, finally, if you are talking to the Prime Minister or the samurai who is head of your village who will lop your head off if you don’t talk to him the right way, you use the super-duper polite form…which most people don’t even know and avoid having to use at all costs. But foreigners are off the hook in this regard because most people are happy with the simple fact that you’ve made an attempt to learn their language.
Those are some basic differences as I see it. There’s a lot more to it, but most if it uses yet more particles and it’s not that tough. So, part of the sentence I used last time:
the first two symbols are pronounced “watashiwa”. The “watashi” part means “I”. The “wa” part (if you check that on the hiragana chart, it’s sound is “ha”, which is true always except in this case) is the particle. Wa tells you that the word directly in front of it is the topic of the sentence. The closest English approximation is “As for me”.
the second set of symbols reads “ippiki inu ga” in romaji. “Ippiki” is a counter which means one dog. “Inu” means dog, and the “ga” part indicates that the word in front of it is the indirect object.
this is pronounced “arimasu” and it means “have”. The root verb of “to have” is “aru” and the appropriate suffix to indicate tense is “-imasu”.
That’s a Japanese sentence demystified. Of course it gets a lot more complicated, and teenagers speak another language altogether like they do everywhere else. Like English, there are a multitude of ways to express something and regional differences only compound matters.
Another big difference between English and Japanese is brevity. Japanese speakers really shortcut on a lot of things and rarely do they use the words “I”. They’ll just say the sentence without indicating “I”. Every sentence in the English language with regard to oneself starts with “I”. That also holds true for you, he, she, etc. Also, instead of saying something like “It’s cold outside”, they will just say “samui!” which means “cold”. That conveys everything the speaker 
needs to know without a lot of extra needless information. If you ask a question, the “you” is almost always omitted from a sentence. If you’re looking at a person and asking a question, there’s not much doubt about to whom the question is directed, is there? So a lot of things must be inferred in Japanese language and I think this is why they get the reputation for being evasive and unclear. It’s like everything here – understated, pared down and spartan. Think about Japanese art, or a tatami room. There isn’t anything extraneous.
So when they’re learning English it’s tough for them to keep saying “I” or “you” over and over again and not feel like they’re being self-important or too wordy. Conversely, it’s tough for foreigners to not use it for fear of the listener not being clear on what you’re saying.
A lot of people here speak English. And anyone that says they can’t is usually just looking for an excuse to not say anything because they can’t do it perfectly. English is compulsory in every junior high and high school so most people have a decent grasp of the basic concepts. It’s often said that the only way to learn about a culture is to learn to speak the language. The best thing I ever did for myself in my attempt to learn about Japanese culture is to learn the language. Even the miniscule amount that I know opened up a whole new world to me, like I had this new and secret eye in which to see what was going on.
