[steven]

I think you're right about that, and that is actually good advice. I've heard of many stories from Japanese people trying to talk to English speakers while in Japan or on vacation somewhere and when they couldn't communicate with speech they wrote down what they wanted to say and everything worked out. The average Japanese probably couldn't care less about writing in English... I think that most of them just want to communicate when they go on vacation somewhere or when they see a foreigner who's kinda lost.