The US State Department says Japanese is the hardest language to learn. I could go on for hours why the difficulty of Japanese is bottomless, linguistically, metalinguistically, and paralinguistically. The whole role of words and language is different, less important than for Westerners. Furthermore, the context and connotations of words make dictionary definitions inadequate. Unspoken structures underlie what should be said or not said, who has the floor or who has to be heard. What is appropriate to say is no less nor more than the minimum necessary for the time, place, occasion, and the relationships among everyone involved. There are all the things in books like the Intercultural Communication textbooks I use at the university, but I'm thinking of the many other dimensions I've never read about. Did I mention that the Japanese language can serve as a fortress impenetrable to nearly all foreigners when your interlocutors want to clam up? Welcome to Japan.
Nippon dotcom just reported that a "survey found that Japan currently ranks eighty-seventh out of 113 non-English-speaking countries and regions for English language abilities. This is a fall of seven places from last year and relatively low among Asian countries." In a discussion I saw, one Japanese noted that IT competitiveness is also declining. Another stated that the problem was actually that Japanese do not need English.
Some Japanese professors have agreed with me that Japanese do actually need English. Poor IT is also connected to this, because English is essential in IT. Our son is a key person in one of Japan’s top global companies because of his combination of systems engineering and ease with foreign languages.
Japan's economic future depends on tourism and increasing foreign residents. In my bilingualism and intercultural communication classes with English majors now, students understand the need.
"Dual Nationality in Japan: Learning to Love Ambiguity" - new upload to Humanities Commons, which has a Mastodon instance.
Dual nationality is in the news again in Japan, where parents of happy-go-lucky haafu kids don't want the light to shine (haafu has a mostly positive meaning). Deeply in Japanese culture, custom is stronger than law, and so is unspoken consensus. Nearly everyone benefits from dual nationality. Though it is against the law, no country wants to lose productive young citizens by forcing them to choose. The issue has been smoked out by cases of famous people. In the 2020 Olympics, haafu Sky Brown - raised in Japan - competed for the UK. Naomi Osaka renounced her American citizenship to compete for Japan. She illustrates the strain of having to choose between national allegiances or parts of one's multicultural identity.
Rafi Saleh reviews two books related to translanguaging for the journal Applied Linguistics. In my view, his analysis displays a kind of disciplinarity whereby generalities about plurilingualism are vulnerable to criticism from various quarters, but by specifying the perspective, such as policy or ontology, differing stances can both be true.
Too many decades in Japan, but surprised to find that "kawaii" ([Japanese-style] cute, adorable, etc.) has become a loanword in English. Many technical or other English terms that I use are not in the Scrabble Dictionary, but kawaii is. Cuteness is ubiquitous in contemporary Japan, and apparently getting exported. The attached screenshot is from our family LINE group.
I have always advised college students to use Romanized Japanese terms in sentences if there is no English equivalent. This lengthy "List of English words of Japanese origin" would have been handy when I was teaching classes of mixed international and Japanese students. You might also find it of reference or interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Japanese_origin