When I visited Japan in 2018 with my family, it seemed like people spoke better english, and there was more english on food displays/shop signs etc. as opposed to what I’ve experienced since moving here a month ago (Both times in central Tokyo). Has Covid and the lack of foreigners reduced the English proficiency and the number of English signs/labels?(Especially in menus and department store food displays and such, all the trains had english)
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I’m not criticizing the lack of English, I know that this is Japan and they have no obligation to speak English. I’m just asking if anyone else has noticed this as well/
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> Has Covid and the lack of foreigners reduced the English proficiency
Doubtful.
> and the number of English signs/labels?
Likely. Has been zero demand for them for years so it makes sense there would be fewer about.
English ability has probably not gotten worse, but signage might have decreased because there was simply less need for it.
That said, whenever I visit Germany and return to Japan I am amazed by how much English signage there is everywhere in Tokyo compared to Berlin.
I’m not conscious of it happening, but it wouldn’t surprise me if people have gotten rusty compared to 2018, especially in tourist areas.
In 2018, people were gearing up for the 2020 Olympics so likely there was more English signage. With the games over, the need has gone down, especially with reduced tourism. But I highly doubt bilingual signs were replaced with Japanese-only ones.
My office is in Tokyo and I live in Yokohama, and doing WFH for about two years. I haven’t personally noticed a change in level but that just might be my situation.
There’s plenty of signage. There’s very low communicative proficiency. Par for the course.
More related to hosting the Olympics than covid. Government pushed for better signage and announcements in English and Chinese for tourists. And Korean as well iirc. Except for local trains, all services had to have several languages.
I’m pretty sure things fell off after the Olympics as far as official policy. to clarify, this all started in 2015 or so all the way up to the olympics.
Anecdotally I have English speaking Japanese friends who don’t regularly use English at work whose English has, by their own admission, “got rusty” over the last 2 years due to lack of practice with foreigners. (both work in F&B)
The Olympics are over now.
English proficiency is improving according to this:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1201191/japan-ratio-students-public-senior-high-schools-a2-english-level/
Japanese people have a stronger desire to learn English nowadays due to the prevalence of English in virtually all realms of technology even inside Japan, but conversely this has also meant that Indians are often approached for teaching English and IT at the same time. Apart from IT and medical, teaching has become a major job type among the Indian diaspora recently.
I also think that a lot of Japanese are only motivated by the financial side of foreign tourism to Japan, and assume that the foreginers left inside Japan have a more accommodating view of Engrish. I usually costs a bit of money to get a good translation from Japanese to English because automated translators are awful. Also a lot of the touristy areas in Japan were staffed by foreigners or Japanese people who lived overseas.
The rightists/elites in Japan work assiduously to regulate the amount of English, terrified of the potentially disastrous effect any snowballing of English adoption would have on their home language in the longer term.
After three years of no international visitors, no international trips, and fewer foreign students, I find my Japanese colleagues have become disinterested in English.
It’s striking to me how everything has regressed, not just individually but institutionally as well.