Japan, a land of English-phobia

Japan is full of English-phobia people. If you come to Japan, you will be surprised at their
allergy against foreign languages, especially English. Even with simple words to communicate, they will frown and escape from you by saying "No....No English...". If you come to Japan, you should overcome this obstacle simply by learning some simple Japanese or looking for tourist information.

As our compulsory education, at least we have three-year English classes in junior high schools. If they go to high schools and then university later on, cumulatively they study English for six years, but they have not been practical in English unfortunately.

Some say it is because of our English education. Firstly, the education focuses too much on reading/writing skills. In education, textbook is a god to students, so they get asked to learn contents in the textbook by heart. Referring to my experiences at schools, teachers taught us how to spell words, and asked us to read textbooks, and the entire classes were in Japanese. No interactive or practical. Even the teachers were not equipped with fluency.

Second aspect from the education is that English as a school subject is not designed for interactive communication but for entrance examination to high schools or universities. Not like in USA or other western educations, the entrance examination has a major part of school education, meaning the higher score in those exams students earn, the better educational opportunities they will have. Therefore, students don't reckon English as foreign language for communication, but as one of the important subjects for them to get through the exams, they keep learning words and words by heart without practicing conversational skills, It is all in search of, as they believe, their brighter futures.

Others support a conspiracy theory. After the World War II, Japan was occupied by USA under the control of GHQ, General Headquarters.(1) Firstly, GHQ tried to convert Japanese letters such as Chinese characters, Hiragana and Katakana into Roman letters, because they thought those Japanese letters, which looked weird to them, inhibited Japanese from being democratized. However, after they conducted some literacy tests to Japanese, the thoughts turned into a threat since the literacy rate of Japanese people were much higher than that of American. Upon this fact, it is said that GHQ decided not to let Japanese understand English in order to keep Japanese way from their confidentiality (2).

You've just come to see their English allergy. Then, your next step is how to overcome the problems.

To be continued

(1) An formal organization to implement democratization of Japan in tandem with the Potsdam Declaration after Japan's surrender and acceptance of the Declaration. Retrieved on 2010/7/12 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Commander_of_the_Allied_Powers

(2) Retrieved on 2010/7/12 from http://www.tv-asahi.co.jp/ss/97/katori/top.html