I think pitch accents are one of those things that you’re either raised from childhood with or you just “get” them. Now, I don’t want to give the impression that I’m an amazing at Japanese, speaking or otherwise, but I can generally recognize pitch accents and use them decently if I know the word well enough. However, when I was in Japanese it became evident that this isn’t necessarily a universal thing. There were two words (bugger that I can’t recall which one) that we came across either were exactly the same or else exactly the same in some form (passive, I believe) but used in similar contexts with very different meanings that we were curious how to distinguish in speech. The instructor said them in different inflections and I understood pretty quickly, but my partner was kind of confused. Then the instructor did what I considered grossly over-exaggerating them and he still heard no difference whatsoever.
Again, I’m not going to say I’m amazing at it, but I think it’s something that you need extensive training in or some unusual talent. I just hope some of the people that lack both stay away from Chinese, that’d be a nightmare for them.