Wako Tawa's Talk

When I was little, I started my violin lessons with the Susuki Methods. I found those drills extremely boring, and cursed at my violin teacher for making me practise them over and over again every day. It is surprising even to myself that I never realised how useful the Susuki Method is until recent years when I look back to the areas in which the method itself has prepared us. Concentrating in one area of training at a time is indeed the most effective way of learning musical instruments and languages from my experience.

Just curious, does anyone know why Tawa san says it takes an average native English speaker longer to learn Japanese than to learn Chinese or Korean? I would think Chinese has more characters and different ways of using the language for different situations, so it would be harder and more complicated to learn. Anyway, I would never know the difference since my native language is Chinese, but I am always interested in what native English speakers think about when they pick up more than one Asian language.