Sure, it's a thing, but the average adult learner of Japanese, especially if monolingual English speaking, will have far greater trouble with vowels (short vs long), the "r" sound, glottal stops (especially ん), etc. By the time you've mastered all this, you'll also pick up the basics of pitch just from exposure.

Japanese also abounds in perfect homonyms and context is almost always enough to distinguish "captain" from "enema".