I would say that for Europeans, it is hard in the sense that it is not related to European languages. However, although the grammar is quite exotic it is not actually that hard. There is no verb subject agreement, no future tense and you can even leave the subject out of the sentence all together. In fact, I would say that basic level fluency is not that hard to achieve. Of course reading and writing are definitely challenging. Thanks for the comment!
RE: How to speak fluent Japanese