I’ve been living in Tokyo for a couple of years at this point and am around an N2 level, far from fluent so if someone wants to speak to me in English because they hear me speaking it, I’ll just speak English back.
I recently had 2 weird encounters and want to make sure I’m not doing anything wrong. First case was in a taxi the driver started saying these long English phrases. I appreciated the effort so I told him “Your English is very good!” He didn’t respond. I thought he didn’t hear me and then when I said it again he said “thank you” but it definitely looked like he was pissed/trying to not talk to me.
Another time was at a very famous sushi restaurant. The chef was speaking to me in English and after a while I told him his English was good. He then started ranting in Japanese something about that being a weird thing to say to someone and you wouldn’t say his Japanese is good.
I usually have positive encounters with folks who I compliment their English and I want to encourage them to learn, but after these experiences I’m honestly starting to regret it. I get that 日本語上手ですね is sometimes a fake compliment but it’s not like I ever get unhappy when I hear it. Any similar experiences out there?