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I'm Japanese.

Speaking English in Japan is very challenging. All my friends and family speak Japanese, and everything from social media to news is completely accessible in Japanese.

I'm an entrepreneur, and I use English when talking with international clients and overseas VCs. However, I lack confidence, and the communication tends to remain superficial, making it difficult to effectively do business internationally. In this environment, it's hard to feel a real necessity to communicate in English. Since elementary school, we've been told that being able to speak English is extremely important, and I studied hard. Yet in this environment, there are rarely opportunities to actually use English.

When foreigners tell us about the importance of English, they may not fully understand that it doesn't really matter much to most Japanese people. Japanese people might start speaking English when they truly need it.

Rather than that, I'd be happier if AI could provide real-time translation for everything.

I have been a couple of times in Japan, have some Japanese friends here in Vietnam, where I live. I am spanish.

In my humble opinion, japanese society is very kind and well-behaved, but, if you cannot speak japanese and you live in one more-or-less big city, according to all the feedback I got, then, you are basically out.

And anyway, you will never be a japanese. I mean, there is much less difference between foreigners entering Spain, in general terms, and foreigners entering in Japan.

I love Japan, but I am not sure it would be a particularly comfortable place to live since Japanese have a very traditional culture and habits, so being part of the group is not an easy task. In fact, I think you will never be a part of the group as I would understand it in spanish terms, when, for example, an argentinian or a romanian becomes in Spain over time.

The japanese culture is one one of the cultures I admire the most in many aspects: disciplined, orderly... but one thing is that and a very different thing is living there and becoming fully integrated. I think that's tough.

If your spoken English is 10% as good as your comment, you're way ahead of the average English speaker.

That said, I can't wait for AI earbud / smartglasses Babel Fish [0] to become a reality.

[0] https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Babel_Fish

As a seed-stage VC who has had the chance to interact with a number of Japanese entrepreneurs spinning businesses out of research at Harvard or MIT, I haven't found the conversations more superficial than with American entrepreneurs.

Maybe there's large sums of money at stake, polite and superficial conversation is a way of mitigating risk? I won't pretend to know the answer, but as a deep technologist I find the fundraising conversations with entrepreneurs deeply dissatisfying on average. And as a multi-time entrepreneur myself, I have definitely felt the same way sitting on the other side of the table.

I work in various Japanese offices and I can say that some really dedicated Japanese bosses/leaders that spoke English as good as you if not better were great to do business with. I think a lot of the problem in doing business is that both sides think the other is playing by the same rules because of the language being used. Experience and time in Japan has taught me the rules of Japanese business that I didn't know (can't exactly list them all).

The secret my English teaching friends have tried to share with me when I ask them how do you get your students better is for the students to "try" more. All pro athletes never did their best initially and so language learning is the same thing.

The only thing I have against translation by AI is that it'll end up replacing thought if you're not careful. I think using it to double check your understanding is fine (like a calculator for math) but understanding nuance/culture is helpful.

Being that I am in Japan I wouldn't mind conversing in English (written or spoken) with you.

Your written English is excellent. You are underestimating your skills, I think. Is there a world in which you could simply pause and plan out your words before speaking? Westerners won’t mind. Elon Musk often pauses noticeably in interviews when he’s discussing something controversial or novel, for example. I retrained myself how to speak in my 20s and went through a similar process.
I think it’s interesting that there are signs etc. entirely in English in Japan though
This is extraneous to your comment, but as someone who speaks some Japanese, if you ever want someone to practice English with, I am more than happy to lend a hand.
I only speak English, but I have found and theorized that one's ability to learn and retain a L2 is heavily affected by your society's "need" to communicate outside of the national language. This article largely reinforces that theory.

If people do not have a need to learn another language, it becomes an uphill battle. People in Finland report higher levels of English competency than people in France (despite French being much closer to English than Finnish is) because there are so many fewer Finnish speakers. Finns wanting to experience warm beaches or global cities need to communicate when traveling to those places outside of Finland. France meanwhile has mountains, beaches, a big domestic market, ample media, and international reach.

Japan is much more like France than Finland - the geographic diversity allows one to ski or sunbathe within the same country. The domestic market for goods and services is huge. Japan creates and exports so much culture that English speakers wish to learn Japanese to consume more of it. When there is little "need" to learn another language, it is not only less enticing but actually harder to do so.

This culminates in anglophones being at a disadvantage in acquiring a L2 compared to nearly anyone else. A lot of people worldwide do want to practice their English with a native speaker. Many international institutions use English as the lingua franca. Even during a layover in Montreal, my (then) girlfriend ordered a smoothie in French and was replied to in English (this could be a commentary on Canadian bilingualism, but I'll leave that for another day) - it's hard for an anglophone to practice and perfect another language when the world around them already speaks better English than their L2.

So considering Japan's strong domestic market, culture, and the stark differences between the languages, it was never a shock to me that their English proficiency isn't where one would immediately expect it. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and the deep experience behind them.

Suomi mainittu. As an English speaker who moved to Finland and has been steadily learning Finnish over the last few years, I definitely have to agree: My progress would probably be faster (and more painful) if I actually had any immediate need to speak Finnish.

Don't twist my words here, I am still extremely grateful that Finns speak such excellent English. It's the only reason I felt like I could make it finding a job here after moving right after completing college. And it's definitely a cornerstone of Finnish success in international markets. I would very, very gladly take this tradeoff again. But, yes, trial by fire usually sets learning alight.

I have a somewhat related theory about English in Europe: The smaller countries are better at English partly because they subtitle rather than dubbing. That means that when they see English-language movies or watch English-language television, they're hearing English rather than their native language. I think this helps people maintain some level of English proficiency years after they leave school.

(I'm American, living in Stockholm, by the way.)

That's probably most of it, but the way Japan typically teaches English is sort of notoriously bad. That probably doesn't help either.

> If people do not have a need to learn another language, it becomes an uphill battle.

You do see some Japanese companies talking up the need for English competency; I suppose if more and more companies there use English competency as one thing they're looking for in job applicants, that might cause a shift elsewhere, as suddenly there's a 'need' (and thus a motivation).

That is my experience with Brazil as well, it is very uncommon to find people who speak good english there in part because nobody ever travels outside the country.
French is widely spoken throughout the world. If you speak French you can travel to Canada, the Caribbean, Africa and parts of South America without needing to speak another language. Also French is an official language in Belgium, Switzerland and Luxembourg as well as being widely spoken and taught as a second language in contentental Europe. Japan is spoken mostly in Japan and expat communities.
That's an interesting observation, and entirely correct from my experience in the Netherlands and other countries. Thank you for making me think!

In a more general case: it is hard to do hard things without a true need, and people consistently underestimate this. Learning a language is a great example; virtually everyone that moves to the Netherlands does not learn Dutch, because there is no need, but the Dutch speak English, because as a society we must. Many people that get rich, particularly in sales or banking or business, do it because they "have to" - socially or even financially. Plenty of people in relationships have problems and promise change to their partners - but don't really change until they must, when the divorce or breakup looms - and by then it's too late. Or, people wait until right before a deadline to do things; for more mundane daily things like work or cleaning, until it's late at night.

If you really want to do something, you need to be conscious about the doing. Routine and desire are important, but the best is to structure your life such that you must have the thing. You want to start a business? Schedule meetings, sign deals, find a cofounder that will get on your ass. You want to learn French, move to rural France and you simply will learn because you must. You want to get in shape? Join the military or the fire department. Extreme, yes - or not extreme enough? Shackleton, Grant's memoirs, Apollo 13 - Time and time again we as a species see that man rises to the challenge. One must only put the challenge in front of the man.

I've lived in Japan for over a decade and I think this article summarizes some aspects of English education well. I'd like to share a few of my thoughts and experiences too.

English is often put on a very high pedestal. Speaking fluent English is associated with being "elite". A tech company in my city is slowly moving to doing all development work in English. I went to a casual tech talk event they held. Every talk was given in Japanese and most of them started with a joke along the lines of "[In English] Hello everyone, good evening! [In Japanese] Hahah, of course I'm not going to give the whole talk in English" It makes sense to give all the talks in Japanese to a Japanese speaking audience, but the whole vibe was that English was so impossible that the idea of giving a talk in English was absurd.

Some of my friends have kids with mixed-roots. They have grown up speaking English and Japanese. They sometimes modify their English pronunciation to sound "more Japanese" when they start English classes in school. They don't want to stand out amongst their peers.

I remember one kid, who was tri-lingual. He told a story about being called upon in English class to translate the Japanese word for "great-grandfather". He translated it correctly but his teacher said "No, it's grand-grandfather". They teacher and the class laughed at him. Of course, there are bad teachers everywhere but one wonders if the teacher would have tried to take him down a peg so much if he fit in a bit better. He ended up moving to Germany with his family. It makes me feel quite sad that a kid born and raised here can end up feeling more at home in a place he has no connection to.

That sounds like a universal experience to be honest; a lot of English teachers (that aren't native English themselves) often over-estimate their own abilities.
At least having English as an elite-signalling language is still quasi useful. Over here kids slave over ancient Latin or Greek to prove that their parents are elite.
> He told a story about being called upon in English class to translate the Japanese word for "great-grandfather"

Very similar/relevant shimura ken skit. https://youtu.be/67KlmXYDom4

> They sometimes modify their English pronunciation to sound "more Japanese" when they start English classes in school

I saw a video where an American was trying to order a McFlurry at McDonalds in Japan and the worker couldn't understand "McFlurry" pronounced in English so they had to pronounce it in what (without context) would sound quite racist.

> It makes sense to give all the talks in Japanese to a Japanese speaking audience, but the whole vibe was that English was so impossible that the idea of giving a talk in English was absurd.

When I was a student I took some classes in English, and some in my native language. Having someone speak your native language makes things infinitely easier to understand and more engaging. Even if you're a fluent speaker it's still a foreign language, so it's a mental hurdle. I can compare it to talking to a friend in a casual setting vs having a work meeting.

> He translated it correctly but his teacher said "No, it's grand-grandfather".

It's a trait of hierarchical societies. Questioning your superior is a bigger threat to the society than saying things that are objectively wrong.

While it's a fair argument that English became the lingua franca and if you don't speak it, you will be left behind, I feel like most Americans are completely oblivious to the idea that other cultures might exist. I work for an American company in Europe, and most of Americans don't do any effort to learn the local language, and those who do, simply use local words to express their American thoughts.

> doing all development work in English.

You need to do some development work in English. Programing language keywords are all English?

Like there isn't really a python in Japanese?

I am the author of this article and will be interested to read HNers’ thoughts and discussion about the topic.

I will also be happy to respond to questions.

Bilingual in Japan, also studying Mandarin.

Proficient English is just a “plus-alpha”, as they say.

You don’t need it, but it might open up a few more doors.

Then there’s certain topics, like science/medicine where English to some extent is absolutely necessary to keep up with research. Even then, I find some of these people still struggle with speaking and listening, but reading and writing can be pretty solid.

Ah, I thought your name sounded familiar! In 2008, I bought "Reading Japanese with a Smile" on a trip to Japan and loved it. It was very well done and perfect for me. I ended up buying two copies and for years I kept checking on Kinokuniya visits hoping it would become a series. No such luck, but my guess is it was just too much work for too little reward. But you should know that a HN reader still remembers your work fondly after 16 years.
Lovely article.

I recently moved back to the US from Japan after living there for a year. My poor Japanese made life very difficult. Easy things like calling a restaurant for a reservation or visiting the ward office was always a major challenge. I second your point that Japanese is always useful regardless of official policies. What do you think Japan should do to encourage Japanese language learning among immigrants?

Thank you for the article! I’m an American who’s lived on and off in Japan for around 10 years, currently in Tokyo working in game development. I related to many parts of your article, especially the later part about foreign devs working with Japanese executives.

My work environment aims to be multilingual (Japanese/English) but creative conversations are inevitably stymied by pauses for translation. Machine translation and AI is helpful but fails to capture nuance, and compounds normal, everyday communication woes. Japanese only speakers on our team feel lonely and left out despite best efforts. Japanese applicants are quite rare because of the stress of being in such an environment. It’s exhausting when people around you don’t share common cultural touchstones and every conversation is an unpredictable exchange.

On the other side, although many of my non-Japanese colleagues speak varying levels of Japanese, some have tried but are unable to (or don’t care to) improve further. Working proficiency is a high bar, and our “real work” is busy. You can get by in Tokyo with cursory Japanese, translation apps and online reservations. There is a large expat community, so you can ignore the “Japan for Japanese people” if you so choose.

I wonder how things will change as the native population continues to shrink over the years. Even in Tokyo, many businesses have responded to the tourist explosion by insulating themselves in various ways. There are recent incidents related to concentrated immigrant populations as well. I hope that we avoid the xenophobic trend that is sweeping the rest of the world but I do worry.

> The notion of “fairness” dominates English education policy in Japan. Because of the importance of educational credentials in Japanese life, any policy that seems to favor one group or another—the rich, the urban, children with highly-educated parents, or children who happen to have acquired English fluency on their own—will attract popular opposition.

I teach ESL in Vietnam. The above quote boggles my mind. I've taught disadvantaged rural students and urban students with educated parents. Of course I tried my absolute best for the rural students, I worked a lot harder for them than for the privileged students. However, it would be madness to hamstring the students who happen to be privileged. Holding the whole country to the lowest common denominator doesn't benefit the country at all.

I thought Vietnam was very Confucian and uniform but Japan seems even more extreme. Maybe Vietnam also applies Marx's doctrine of "From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs" to offset it.

Thanks for your great write up on this topic. This was a very interesting read for me.

> I even wondered if it was a front for some other kind of business.

Just curious what your suspicions were at the English conversation lounge and why it made you uncomfortable?

How do you think it compares to various European countries?

Say, Germany, Spain, Italy (or any that you're familiar with).

Northern Europeans seem to be fantastic at learning languages. It's surprising the rest of the world doesn't copy what they do.

I just visited Japan and found the language situation around tourists was frankly perplexing.

With some tourists, English was a lingua franca. I ran across some Chinese tourists asking some non-English speaking white tourists (French maybe?) a question in English and not being able to communicate.

With others, Japanese was the interchange language of choice, such as with some Taiwanese tourists.

For native Japanese people speaking English, it was invariably a huge relief for them to fall back to speaking in Japanese with me. Even those with excellent English pronunciation were like this too.

Only once did I feel weird speaking Japanese, with a hotel receptionist who turned out to be Korean.

Until Japanese have an economic reason to learn English, they will continue to participate in the educational equivalent of get-rich-quick schemes instead of actually getting good. It's a great example of the "Galapagos syndrome".

There is English education at school, but it is based entirely on rote repetition and exercises instead of y'know, understanding the language. There are "English Conversation Schools", but they are mostly scams whose goal is your continued participation, rather than having an end goal of comprehending English.

I was a teacher at an English Conversation School, more than 30 years ago, and I think that there is more to them -- or at least there was.

Where I lived, this was one of the few places to interact with a foreigner and practice English (often before going on an overseas holiday or work contract). Even better, it was a safe and controlled environment.

One of the crucial hurdles for Japanese people learning English has always been a lack of confidence and fear of looking foolish in public.

It didn't do much for English ability, because how could it when the class is only one hour a week?

Many of the schools were get-rich-quick schemes, as you say, but that doesn't mean they didn't provide a valuable function, even if they didn't contribute directly to English ability.

There is a very strong economic incentive to do well on university entrance exams - they pretty much determine the course of a Japanese person's life - and thus both schools and outside tutoring focus on teaching students to score well on the English section of those exams, to the exclusion of learning to understand or speak English.

Similarly, it can be beneficial to one's someone's career to get a high score on TOEIC, so adult classes prioritise teaching people to get high scores on TOEIC. The "education" system is extremely well aligned with the economic incentives.

Very interesting observations. My sister lives outside Tokyo and is an assistant English teacher under the JET Programme which is a government initiative to bring language teachers to schools. Her Japanese is very good - as part of being selected she was interviewed in Japanese by the local embassy so it had to be - and she reports a strong willingness in her students to learn at least some English for pragmatic reasons.
I’m struck by the uniformity described. I've known people with a knack for languages, and in the US system they can opt to take more courses or go further. What do exceptional English-learning students do?
I just went on vacation to Japan and it was fascinating how much relief even the competent English-speakers there seemed to show when I would speak with them in my semi-fluent (vocab-deficient though) Japanese.

There are translations everywhere, on signs and in museums (those are fascinating because the translations omit 80% of the detail since foreigners will lack historical contextual knowledge) but I got the feeling that with the exception of accommodating tourists, there's never any use for most natives to ever speak English.

"Year of living Danishly" [0] is this but for English -> Denmark.

Neighbours who knock on your door to explain you are putting the rubbish bin out wrongly in the street and it concerns them.

My sense of Denmark changed after reading this book, to one which included 'very high expectations of social conformity' which in some ways, matches Japan.

(ok. not this exactly because not primarily language focussed but there is topic drift in this thread)

[0] The Year of Living Danishly: Uncovering the Secrets of the World's Happiest Country - Helen Russell

> A few days after I arrived, the landlord introduced me to an English conversation lounge in Takadanobaba. I would go there, chat with the customers in English for a few hours, and get paid 5000 yen. I quit after a couple of sessions, as the place made me uncomfortable; I even wondered if it was a front for some other kind of business.

I wonder what kind of front it could be?

Language is a technology to communicate thoughts. Over time it has become an important cultural aspect, but it should be treated firstly as a technology. Over time as technologies evolve and people adapt to it, with globalization there is no escape from the requirement of a common language (_lingua franca_). Though English serves a default common language due to the colonization era, I don't see any serious attempts by big nations (I mean population wise) to develop a common language that all can claim their own. Without this, in another 100 years, despite united by globalization and web technologies, knowledge barriers will continue to remain due to different languages.
What is there to integrate into? Adult life is mostly just going to work to pay the bills. I don't know anyone with a particularly interesting life outside of their job.

Most Japanese people aren't going to be any less apathetic about a foreigner than others of their own group. Naturally there will be more traction with those looking for free English teachers and gaijin hunters. What a larger proportion of people likes is money and entertainment. Not so much foreigners trying to be Japanese. A foreigner giving such vibes will always be lower down in social status than the natives.

I posit that Japan is able to keep its "exoticness" (to much of the world) as a culture because the cultural osmosis that comes from having a populace with good English skills promotes homogenization. I imagine a Japan that's highly fluent in English will look a lot more similar to S. Korea.

I might go to extend this theory and say the quality of English literacy in Japan is intentionally kneecapped at some level in an attempt to retain their cultural identity, even if unconsciously.

In my opinion, in general:

- You must learn the language of the country hosting you (if you live there for any extended period).

- Learning a language is really hard, so I don’t expect everyone to reach fluency. But you must put significant, persistent effort into it.

- Countries should protect their languages, and should resist the urge to Anglicize everything.

I will get downvoted and hated for what I'm going to say.

What's with the west's pathalogical obsession with Japan and Japanese?

Is anime & JAV to blame here?

Look, you have Chinese spoken by 1.35 billion people. Foreigners who speak Chinese are way more rare than those who speak Japanese, therefore making it a more valuable language to acquire for business, diplomacy and travel. China is the new emerging superpower.

Yet people will obsessively focus on Japan? At this point it starts to seem like NPC behavior.

A few random thoughts from a Japanese programmer: (warning: not gonna be fun read)

* As far as I can tell, most Japanese programmers can read at least some portion of English software documentations

* English in Japan is always about the U.S. Not the U.K, not South Africa, not Singapore. I still remember my English teacher in the university, who was from South Africa, complained about that he was always assumed to be American.

* I find it interesting that, your article doesn't mention on the Japan's political dependence and subordination to the United States. The people who study at Tokyo Univ. are not commoners at all. They're the political and economic ruling class elites, and don't give a shit to the median Japanes people. They don't have to learn English because...why do they have to?

* English is basically for the elites. As Tatsuru Uchida pointed out, most of LDP elites have learned in American universities. [0] They're literally colonial elites.

> 逆に、植民地的言語教育では、原住民の子どもたちにはテクストを読む力はできるだけ付けさせないようにする。うっかり読む力が身に着くと、植民地の賢い子どもたちは、宗主国の植民地官僚が読まないような古典を読み、彼らが理解できないような知識や教養を身に付ける「リスク」があるからです。植民地の子どもが無教養な宗主国の大人に向かってすらすらとシェークスピアを引用したりして、宗主国民の知的優越性を脅かすということは何があっても避けなければならない。だから、読む力はつねに話す力よりも劣位に置かれる。「難しい英語の本なんか読めても仕方がない。それより日常会話だ」というようなことを平然と言い放つ人がいますけれど、これは骨の髄まで「植民地人根性」がしみこんだ人間の言い草です。[1]

So, that's the reason why they focus on the conversational English instead of reading/writing. Seriously, "you can teach tourists how to get to the station" as a motivation to learn the language is insane. And that's the elites want us Japanese commoners to learn in English education.

* My university English teacher (not the guy I mentioned earlier), who was a former bureaucrat who worked for the Ministry of Economy IIRC, told us that the Japan is a unique nation state, unlike the Western countries, that have kept single people and single language through the history. This is the Japanese ruling class. It was the most disgusting time I ever had in the univ, and that may be the reason I still feel very uncomfortable with English education.

* Although I'm very against the current English education, I genuinely believe learning English have improved my life. I can watch 3Blue1Brown on YouTube, I can read the books from Slavoj Zizek not translated in Japanese, and of course, I can post on HN!

* It's important that, the means to fight against colonialism is not blindly praising the native culture (see how Japanese have internalized "Japan is unique! Japan is cool!" bullshit), but to understand the relativism of the history and cultural development, and take universal values like democracy and human rights seriously - more seriously than their inventors. While American politics is becoming a kind of tragic farce, I hope Japan will present itself as a true representative of those values. It's unlikely to happen, but I hope so.

[0]: http://blog.tatsuru.com/2024/10/11_1037.html [1]: http://blog.tatsuru.com/2018/10/31_1510.html

The finance industry in Japan is such a wasteland.
I don't think there is much to gain from intelligent Japanese people from becoming fluent in English, other than maybe leaving the country. They can already make a good living by climbing the ladder in a large firm.

It is unrealistic for the average person in the country to become fluent in English reading/writing - lots of people are barely literate in their original language. Even if everyone became more skilled and wealthier, what would that achieve? Import more junk from overseas? Increased wealth will just be funneled into land or spent on smartphone games and prostitutes.