Addendum to the previous entry.

Also, what can be very limiting and feel "empty" sometimes is the lack of sounds in Japanese. Even Wikipedia stated that Japanese "has a relatively small phonetic lexicon." 



There are 48 sounds in Japanese. That's right. You can count them. 


There are over 300 in English. 



There are apparently other languages that have even less sounds but going from 300 or so to 48 is quite a jump and while most of the sounds are fairly easy to say and basic pronunciation is fairly simple to get...the mere lack of more sounds makes Japanese feel very stripped down.