<p>Ive taken a couple Japanese classes because I am also very interested in Japanese culture. It is no where near as difficult as many of the above posters make it seem. The only thing is you have to do a lot of memorization and when it comes to kanji, which is similar to Chinese characters, it can get a bit tricky. But hiragana and katakana are like alphabets and pretty easy. Grammar isn’t that hard to pickup either. I used to also make it a habit to carry around 10 new Japanese vocab flash cards every day and memorize the new vocab. Over time you can learn a lot of new vocab without much effort besides the vocab that you have to learn for class.</p>
<p>Although, unless you really want to learn Japanese the language isn’t going to be all that useful in engineering. It is not unreasonable to pursue a degree in engineering and learn Japanese.</p>