Yes, absolutely! Give it all you've got! It doesn't take
terribly long to learn Japanese. It may be one if not the hardest
language to learn but it should only be used as a reason to
motivate!
French for example takes about 700 hours to be fluent in. Oui!
C'est vrai! I'm fluent in French so I should know. Japanese? Oh
boy, that's hard! I was interested in learning it around 2004-2005
or so. There were few resources to learn Japanese and even less for
free. It was hard! But now it doesn't have to be.
They say it takes about 2500-3500 hours to be fluent in
Japanese but this statistic is not necessarily a lie but more of a
misleading number. It's the amount of time it takes to reach N1
level Japanese which is essentially unrealistic for most people
including native Japanese speakers. Unless you are planning to
become a doctor in Japan (or other N1 required profession) you
won't need such a high level of a vocabulary.
Additionally, you don't necessarily need to be literate in
Japanese to speak it. You SHOULD learn Hiragana, Katakana and some
basic everyday kanji. With that being said, you can shave your time
studying to less than a thousand hours of study. The rest is simply
just practicing with other people including natives whom want to
learn English. Pen-pal!
I hope this helps you get excited to learn the language again.
Japanese is spoken by a loooot of people and is pretty enjoyable.
Don't focus too hard on Kanji if it's not that important for your
career path. Remember, even natives don't remember every kanji and
meaning behind them. Good luck!
