[Umihito]

Originally Posted by RobinMask

To Umihito, thank you for the reply It was really interesting to read your experiences about Tokyo, and deffinately gave me something to think about. Did you have any reactions/perceptions that changed for the better, though? I am shocked at the amount of written English avaliable too, especially as one of my main reasons to go is to become fluent, it's a reief to hear though that English isn't as widely spoken - although are your experiences of these just confined to Tokyo, or are they widespread perceptions?

No problem
Hmm, well my expectations were pretty high to start with but there were a few things that were better than I thought.

- The arcades. Trust me, Tokyo arcades are just unbeatable. I never expected them to be THAT great! They have about 8 floors of pure epicness. I spent a good few hours in just one arcade once, they're that massive. They put every British arcade to shame.

- Shopkeepers Almost all shopkeepers shouting 'Irasshaimase!' when someone enters a shop was awesome. :L
But sometimes there'd be someone who kept saying it and would put on REALLY funny voices when he said it, and I always had to hide my laughter. :L

Other smaller things like the trains, back streets and peacefulness of out-of-Tokyo places were also a lot better than I could have imagined :P

About the English: Outside of Tokyo, English is even less spoken, if you can imagine that even possible! In Tokyo you may find a few people capable of speaking English, but outside the city you'd be lucky to find one in a day, which was extremely helpful by forcing me to use my Japanese to the limits. One problem was understanding others though. Outside of Tokyo, even if you look like you're struggling, they don't hold back. They throw their most complicated words and sentence structures at you, and at their regular faster pace. That meant that while they understood everything I said, I understood only one or two sentences. So be prepared for a listening challenge straight in at the deep end!
The best thing though, as I mentioned, is that no matter whether you're in Tokyo or not, almost all people will initially try to converse with you in Japanese. And a lot will even continue to do so even if you make it known that you don't know Japanese. This may be an annoyance for some, but to others like me and you it's a great way to practice and is a little relieving to know that the Japanese still hold onto their language well.

Originally Posted by GoNative

The weirdest thing I found with the use of english words was when they'd have english words in katakana even though there's perfectly good Japanese words. Like around where I lived there were heaps of road signs saying 'speed down' in katakana. Of course there's Japanese words for this so why use english words? It's supposed to have more impact? I found this occurred for many other things as well. Not really sure why they do it.

Having signage in english though I think is a very good thing for tourism. There is only an minutely small portion of international travellers who could read some Japanese. There'd only be a small portion of foreigners who live in Japan who could read anywhere near fluently. If you want to have people come to Japan you have to provide signage they can understand without years and years of study.

About your second paragraph:
I see what you mean by saying it's good for tourism, but I still think it's unfair. I am a little biased because I do find English signage annoying, and to me it's nothing but slow culture loss on show. I've been to countless other countries that have an even bigger booming tourism industry and they have signs in nothing but their native tongue, and some even don't have announcements or station guides on their trains, not even for the locals! Yet I've never seen any problems, nor have I had any.

Anyway, as to why I said it's unfair. What about French tourists who can't speak Japanese or English? Germans? Dutch? Italians? What if they can't speak English or Japanese? But surely they manage fine or we'd have Germans, Italians, French, Dutch etc roaming the streets of Tokyo in a lost daze. Maybe more speak English than I think, but I don't know.