The English Paradox: Four Decades of Life and Language in Japan
31 points by pwim 2 hours ago | 13 comments
  • tkgally an hour ago |
    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.

    • rjrdi38dbbdb an hour ago |
      > 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?

      • tkgally an hour ago |
        Partly it was the location: An upper floor of a building in a neighborhood full of bars and pachinko parlors, which seemed much sleazier to me then than it would now.

        But more it was, I think, that I didn’t understand yet why Japanese college students and office workers would pay money to practice English with me and a few other recent foreign arrivals. The fact that most of the conversation consisted of the customers asking personal questions—“Where are you from?” “Why did you come to Japan?” “Do you like Japanese women?”—made me suspicious, too.

        In retrospect, the place was almost certainly not a front for anything sinister but just a way for the owner to try to make some money from the shortage of opportunities to speak English in Japan. And the focus on personal questions was just a sign of the customers’ limited repertoire of conversational English. But it took me a while to grasp all that.

      • lmm 25 minutes ago |
        A lot of english conversation in Japan functions as de-facto paid compansionship. It's not exactly a front for escorting, but it's not completely not that either. In the west there tends to be a clear sharp line between customer service and sex work, whereas in Japan there is much more of a sliding scale from paying by the hour to hang out in a bar with friendly bar staff, to having more flirty conversations with them, through clothed touching to what's essentially a strip club experience.
    • ch33zer an hour ago |
      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?

      • tkgally an hour ago |
        Thanks!

        The government has been making efforts, such as trying to improve the training and certification of Japanese language teachers, making Japanese language ability a condition (or at least an advantage) for getting certain types of visas, and offering language support to immigrant children in public schools. They are also trying to promote the use of simplified Japanese—avoiding difficult vocabulary and indicating the readings of all kanji—in documents and services aimed at the general public, something that would help not only immigrants but also Japanese with lower literacy skills. I’m sure much more could be done, though.

    • wdutch an hour ago |
      > 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.

    • einichi 9 minutes ago |
      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.

  • skhr0680 an hour ago |
    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.

    • lmm 16 minutes ago |
      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.

  • shermantanktop an hour ago |
    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?
    • rjrdi38dbbdb an hour ago |
      In my experience, exceptional English-learners almost exclusively learn independently, from consuming English media or interacting with native speakers, not from courses.
    • sdrothrock an hour ago |
      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.