I don't find english easy by default to learn. For me every language can be hard to learn depending of your native language or your motivation and method. But english is easiest to learn than a lot of language.
As a french guy, I had choose at primary school between english and german. Then it was a forced language since middle school.
I sucked at it. A lot. And I was always angry that a lot of game I wanted was only in english because of the lack of full localisation (and I'm still bothered by that tbh, even if it doesn't affect me directly). Or stopped me of playing some game I wanted.
Then, during my last year on middle school, my family gifted me PSP and Tales of Eternia for my birthday. The game was english only and I planned to hack my psp to make a patched iso in french. Unfortunately I never succed to install the patch. My only choice was to play on english, with a dictionary.
My english improved drastically :3
I had many trouble at first, like missunderstanding some word for a long time (like the word "both" that I understand "bof", wich is the equivalent of..."meh" on french ^^ change the meaning of some cutscene in some game xD). But I continue to play game and watch anime and today I have a pretty good level I think. At least at reading it.
I still have trouble with writing it (I make some grammar and spelling error, but I have the same issue with my native language), and I don't have the best accent. Also I have some trouble with oral english (especially fast one) and I don't like it when there isn't subtitle.
I still love my native language (and use it primaly when it's available, except for anime because it's easier to find it in english) but I have no problem using english as much and I like it almost as much as French. I still have trouble with the fact that a lot of japanese game are still english only in France (and other country), though I can understand for little compagny because it can be really expensive to translate. But I don't have any trouble playing it (except for western rpg strangely where it's bothering me a lot, or when it's old english). I can understand when poeple are having an hard time learning it.
Btw, I tried to learn japanese and economical english at university. Failled a lot at first one and and had also trouble at th second hehe