Honestly, I find a lot of Japanese a lot easier than most western languages, mainly because most rules are absolute. Conjugations have very few exceptions, unlike English for example, which is almost nothing but exceptions. (I before E, anyone?) If I didn't grow up speaking English, I'm sure learning the language would be hell.
The biggest difficulty of Japanese is reading and writing kanji. However, at this point, kanji is so entrenched in the language that it is impossible to separate. It would actually be much harder to read without kanji, for a couple reasons. First, written Japanese has no spaces between words, unlike English. The addition of kanji creates clear separations between different words, as each word generally starts with a kanji or two followed by a few phonetic sounds usually represented by hiragana. Without a new kanji to indicate a new word, the kana all run together and it gets difficult to figure out where one word ends and another begins, justlikeifyouwroteinenglishwithoutspaces. The second reason is that Japanese as a language is riddled with homophones. So many words sound exactly the same, and seeing the kanji lets you instantly differentiate them. In addition, even if you don't know the word or the specific pronunciation, you can often guess the meaning if you know the kanji. I definitely admit that kanji are a pain to learn, but they aren't all bad.
Kanji don't really impede my translating, anyway. I'm still not amazing at kanji, but I generally have an electronic dictionary open that lets me instantly look up anything I don't know just by copying it to the clipboard.