Japanese grammar is much more like Spanish (and Latin, I guess) than like English. When I took Japanese in college, I took all my class notes in Spanish.
LOL! Now that's interesting! I do know that I impressed my friend, who we visited in Japan, when I was able to pronounce all the signs that were written in Romaji, the 'anglicized' version of Japanese. All the train stations had signs in Romaji, and I surprised her when I began pronouncing them.
My daughter had told me the vowel sounds, which were exactly the same five sounds as Spanish, and that all the vowels were pronounced with no blends, so I just read the words as though they were Spanish, and it worked!