When I'm curious about a language, I usually first build some implementation of a perceptron or basic neural network, as well as a (usually very bad) text editor.
I feel like once I have those behind me, I've got some fundamentals and can dive deeper into what makes the specific language actually special :)
Out of curiosity, forgetting that the US is also pursuing something similar, what motive would Google have to comply with a Japanese ruling? Could Japan just... Ban Google if they don't comply?