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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

I spent 4 years in Istanbul and paid for Turkish classes at a popular English school chain. Their English was bad, and all the classes were full all day.

I believe that reason is increasing at a higher pace in the last few years and will only keep increasing. Japan continues to bring in more foreigners both for work and as tourists, and their usual tactics of dealing with foreigners and other "problems" by cutting off the nose to spite the face (Gion, Mt Fuji Lawson, Shibuya Halloween etc.) won't work forever.

Do you think English language conversational AI tutors could have a positive impact on a nation like Japan (which tends to be a little more introverted)?

They'll look for external options whether they're paid lessons somewhere, English-related events, or online chances to talk to native speakers. Many will also go on to look for jobs in companies that involve English.

It's also worth noting that most public schools have (short) study abroad programs that will allow excellent students to apply for a few weeks in Australia or New Zealand as well.

One other interesting part of the uniformity is that perhaps because of the English focus, there's no real exposure to other foreign languages in public schools before the high school level (and sometimes not even then). Whereas in the US, I think most people have the option to study something from middle school or junior high.

I'm excluding Mandarin from this discussion, which is sometimes touched on superficially in Classical Japanese.

I had access to the Internet. The whole thing was in English! Can you believe it? I had no choice but to learn English.

In hindsight, I'd say the most important for learning English was that I was an ignorant teenager. I just... typed completely broken sentences into forums that today I wouldn't even be able to fathom how could I get the grammar so wrong. I got banned several times from Freenode channels, for pestering people with unintelligible questions and then not being able to understand the answers.

I was unaware and shameless and that shamelessness allowed me to make progress. Were I to learn English today, I'd probably be too self-aware to embarrass myself trying to use a language I can't use, and that would make it far more difficult to learn anything.

I suppose that's a good life lesson in general. You can't get good at something without being embarrassingly bad at it at first. If there was a pill to make you unaware of your own embarrassing self, that would be a learning pill. In fact, I guess we should really be learning new things while drunk!

In my experience, exceptional English-learners almost exclusively learn independently, from consuming English media or interacting with native speakers, not from courses.

It probably wasn’t a front after all; I just didn’t understand the situation. I wrote more in another thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42073152

If you want to be respected (but not 'integrate') as a foreigner by traditional society in Japan it's good to work at a prestigious place where there are few Japanese people such as an embassy. Failing that a gaishikei company that sounds foreign to people who don't know better but isn't (likely >90% Japanese). Or just be rich (this may also involve being very picky or completely averse to working with the native population).

> Is anime & JAV to blame here?

Yes, people are going to be interested in a culture based on its cultural exports and Japan punches way above its weight in terms of cultural exports. And it's not just anime and JAV, it's also literature and music. Having content that you want to consume will make it easier to get motivated and to stay motivated. On top of that intermediate and advanced language learning is, to a large extent, driven by media consumption so the availability of a large amount of interesting content simply makes Japanese easier to learn than many other languages.

This is also how nearly everyone learns English.

When China will start exporting interesting content more people will want to learn Chinese and succeed in learning it.

> therefore making it a more valuable language to acquire for business, diplomacy and travel

Learning a Chinese language for the business, diplomacy or travel opportunities is a stupid, stupid idea. In the English-speaking West, bwtween 1.6% and 5.0% of the population are native speakers of both some Chinese language and English. The business and diplomacy opportunities that require a Chinese-speaker all go to these people*.

Nobody's going to hire some rando to speak Mandarin when it's equally easy to hire a person who's as good as the natives, and got to spend the 3 years of effort one needs to learn Mandarin on picking up some other useful business skill.

Travel opportunities are not great, either: normally, you can visit the PRC for 15 days, you're railroaded throughout your whole trip, and you're required by law to stay in a select few hotels where the staff speak English anyway. If you're looking to learn a language for the tourism opportunities, you're much better served by learning Spanish, Russian, or for that matter Japanese, which allow you to visit a lot more otherwise hard-to-access destinations.

* You have a slight edge if you also speak some obscure language in a country with few English-speakers who nonetheless want to trade with China. There are very few such countries. All of Africa is out (English and French have very high penetration), as is South East Asia (Chinese itself has a high penetration), as is the Arab world: a few Eastern European countries such as Hungary might qualify, but guess what, Hungary also has a sufficient number of native Chinese speakers to saturate the demand in that niche market.*

You are also missing that American soft culture is even stronger than what Japan exports. It's just been around longer and normalized for so long it is just normal to consume American media outside the US. I've ran into people that know more about US laws than the laws of their home country just from watching US television

As for Japan, it's not just the western nations. Taiwan also has a huge fascination with Japan. Many Asian nations have like Japan for their strong soft culture, but detest the Japanese government for historical treatment of these nations. Japanese and American governments are heavily invested in soft power. Here is a long but interesting video discussing Japanese soft power https://youtu.be/IM2VIKfaY0Y?si=H0gRcyKtu4kMUaCj

South Korea has also had a lot of success with soft power. It's just had a later start than Japan and the US.

I have lived in Japan for many years. There is a certain phenomena where foreigners when they meet each other in the supermarket experience a moment of awkwardness like we entered each others TikTok feed. You don't know if one should smile or not, nod, or ignore. One of the main reasons here is that foreigners in most non-tourist parts of Japan stick out like a sore thumb. Therefore, you are quickly falling into a main-character type of mindset. Then, for decades Japan has been the embodiment of the future. Most of William Gibsons cyberpunk work is build around Japan. That Tokyo in particular is a huge concrete Moloch that constantly bridges centuries old history and neon lights and tech underlines this. Anime/Manga have established Japan as a new cultural leader as the west has falling behind telling engaging stories. The recent Netflix success of OnePiece and the Korean Squid Games are just two data points on this. Japan is mysterious.

With all that said, it may be the last true adventure into a unique culture that is challenging yet safe and accessible.

> Is anime & JAV to blame here?

Why "blame"? Isn't it perfectly reasonable for people to take more interest in a country that's supplied them with interesting cultural exports than one that hasn't?

> 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.

Only to the extent that you want to do business, diplomacy, or travel with China. More people are interested in Japan.

If I were to guess, Japan has a huge cultural presence in the west via comics, cartoons, and video-games. It is also "good weird." And historically it had a legendary reputation for electronics. That is a lot of western mindshare, especially amongst nerds. Chinas historic reputation is cheap crap and oppression. It has almost zero cultural presence in the west. I suspect between kpop and Korean dramas, westerners consume more Korean than Chinese media.

Japan has been exporting its culture for decades with games(Mario/Zelda/Final Fantasy..the list goes on). And nowadays anime is also very popular.

China has nothing really, can't think of a single interesting Chinese game/movie/TV show. If you include Hong Kong a few appear, but that isn't really China, and output has died since China forcefully took over.

Maybe it is just me but I also find Chinese really annoying in the way that it sounds, very harsh and unpleasant, something about the tones gives me a mild headache.

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

The first thing to point out is that this goes both ways which goes a long way to explain why Japan is more accessible. As someone who is German, the amount of anime that features vaguely German settings and names (sometimes extremely grammatically broken) for no good reason has always been funny to me. Influential popular media figures like Kojima are obsessed with Western pop culture in their own right, etc.

Even the more literary or nationalistic Japanese cultural figures are often steeped in European culture, see Yukio Mishima. You can recognize Kafka in Kobo Abe's books, so as a Western reader it's both different and familiar. Chinese culture is harder to get into and in particular traditional Chinese culture is more impenetrable yet.

Japan was occupied by America and the society forcibly reconstructed and aligned with the west whereas china is culturally independent and harder to access? Just a thought.

Japan is also a convenient 'bridge' of what is commonly categorized as Western culture and Eastern culture. This is somewhat by their own design, and has a long history given both their own Westernization efforts from their infamous imperial days and post occupation. That gives them a unique niche of exotic and yet somewhat comfortably familiar so that it more often feels 'weird' but not necessarily 'alienating'.

China is the new kid on the block in comparison, even if China was a robust democracy they would be at a disadvantage in cultural propagation from this. They try to promote some of their own cultural products but a dictatorship self-sabotages anything too good or popular having a deliberate chilling effect.

Korea as a third culture makes a decent comparative reference. They are 'newer' culturally than Japan (in terms of widespread western cultural exposure) but South Korean music, film, and TV are growing and more evident among younger generations. There are some western Manhwa fans but it is still more niche.

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

If you do, it's not because of the question, but the condescending way you're framing it ("Pathological"/"NPC behavior"/etc.) If you're curious you could simply express your curiosity and people will be happy to share their thoughts.

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

Certainly cultural exports play a role just like they do with any country. Lots of folks are obsessed with the USA and New York City because of USA cultural exports.

Anime plays a big role in this, but it's not the only major export. Cars, video game consoles, video games, cameras, movies, music, art, food. Food! Japan's reputation across all of these things is very high, or at least has been at some point. There's a lot that's come out of Japan that has captured a lot of peoples interest and imagination as a result.

>China is the new emerging superpower.

Japan is the regional cultural superpower - that doesn't require they have the largest economy or military.

The fact that anime & JAV can be blamed is an outlier behavior, China had been investing a lot in anime-game directions but so far don't seem like they're on track to be as dominant as Japan is; there hasn't been significant CAV/TwAV/KAV/PhAV/VAV movement yet(partly because "blurred porn is not porn" defense isn't valid in most Asian countries?)

I'd note that some of Chinese(including Taiwanese) fringe content do seem to resemble that of Japanese ones from couples of decades ago, so there is possibility that this apparent anomaly is just phase errors. Or not, we'll see...

You’re thinking about power and money, but also should consider culture exports. I’d say it’s a combination of being a friendly nation to the west, being different, actively promoting culture internationally through media and, you know, still 3rd/4th largest economy. An extreme amount of recent travel in Japan also shows people some unique perspectives that people haven’t seen in their home countries (cleanliness, public infrastructure and etc.). I understand you can experience some of it in China as well, but there’s a massive difference between visiting Tokyo and Shanghai/Hong Kong.

Also add millions of people who grew up with anime in 1990s/2000s who are professional adults now. That helps as well.

People don't find authoritarian communism aspirational.

> Foreigners who speak Chinese are way more rare than those who speak Japanese

Obligatory 'Chinese ain't a language, you probably mean Mandarin' comment aside, part of the issue may be that Chinese languages are (mostly?) tonal, which for many Westerners is quite a blocker. N=1, but when I see a down-and-then-up tone, my brain just goes 'nope'.

Thank you for your thoughts. They were indeed fun—and interesting—to read.

A couple of comments:

> English in Japan is always about the U.S. Not the U.K, not South Africa, not Singapore.

That is not quite as true as it used to be. The government-approved textbooks (kentei kyōkasho) for elementary and junior-high schools include characters and situations from outside the Inner Circle English-speaking countries more often than they used to, though they still have a slant toward the U.S. and toward white people:

https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jacetkanto/11/0/11_46/_...

I used to subscribe to two Japanese magazines for English educators, Eigo Kyōiku published by a commercial publisher and Shin Eigo Kyōiku published by an organization with a mission focused on democracy and justice in education. The former magazine often had articles with an American focus and photographs of white kids with blond hair, while almost every issue of the latter had a cover photograph of nonwhite children in a developing country and articles emphasizing the diversity of English.

I have been involved with the writing and editing of English textbooks, and there is often a tug-of-war between the Japanese writers and editors who want to emphasize the diversity of English and English speakers and those who prefer to stick to a focus on either the U.S. or U.K.

> I find it interesting that, your article doesn't mention on the Japan's political dependence and subordination to the United States.

That is an important topic, and I should have mentioned it as a major reason for the exclusive focus on English. Maybe I can discuss the issue in more detail in another article.

     Seriously, "you can teach tourists how to get to the station" as a motivation to learn the language is insane.

    I genuinely believe learning English have improved my life.

フィンランド人のプログラマーです。日本で２年ぐらい住みまして、英語のことや、日本のエリートのことは「植民地」って言われるのが初耳ですが…そう言われみれば、その通ですね。日本も確かに、言われた通、ユニークと特別なものではないです。もちろん、特別なところあるが、各国がそれぞれで様々な魅力や個性があります。

大変興味深いな書き込みでした。ありがとうございました。

What do you feel about the LDP loosing? Step in the right direction?

Heh, Slavoj Zizek. Why should the Japanese learn English? To understand a Slovenian, naturally!

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