Hi from Kimarene from Paradise, California. I'm a new quilter and have been lurking every day to read the quilting board digest, which I really enjoy.
I wanted to respond to your question, because I, too, had much difficulty learning to use the needle threader on my Janome 1860 machine. My problem was that I was holding the tail of the thread too tightly and the thread would break and not go through the needle eye. Once this was pointed out to me, I loosened my grip on the thread and voila! thread through needle!
One thing I have noticed is that not all needles work with this feature. I don't know exactly why. In these cases, I just thread by hand (which is getting harder to do every year!).