Absolutely true. But take it from someone who lives in Japan: Japanese schools' English teaching is shockingly bad for the most part, geared towards passing a basic exam (and promptly forgetting almost everything...). Especially away from "attractors" (places where the tourist industry draws English speakers) like Kyoto or the more central parts of Tokyo, the large majority of Japanese people have only a smattering of English phrases in their vocabulary.
Moreover, English is _hard_ for Japanese speakers (and vice-versa: I'm working hard for very modest progress in Japanese language school, and that's only partly down to me being "chotto baka"...a bit of an idiot). The very different grammatical structure, English's notorious inconsistencies, a new character set (albeit a simple one compared to Japanese's more-complex three), and pronunciation challenges make it difficult. The only advantage is that of Japanese's tons of "borrow words" imported from other languages, the large majority are from English; this kind of "preloads" their vocabulary of English words.
Okay, lots of rambling to just point out that while Hina has certainly learned some English, she may not necessarily be all that fluent.
I took a couple community college "adult learning" classes in Japanese several years ago. Yep. It is way different than English. Then it occurred to me that I never learn to read or write...so I switched to French.
I lived in Yokohama for 3 years in the mid 60тАЩs (Navy brat) and had a fair amount of contact with Japanese nationals and I picked up only a handful of common phrases. Tough language to learn for sure.
And I believe that in Japan students are required to take at least a few years of English.
Absolutely true. But take it from someone who lives in Japan: Japanese schools' English teaching is shockingly bad for the most part, geared towards passing a basic exam (and promptly forgetting almost everything...). Especially away from "attractors" (places where the tourist industry draws English speakers) like Kyoto or the more central parts of Tokyo, the large majority of Japanese people have only a smattering of English phrases in their vocabulary.
Moreover, English is _hard_ for Japanese speakers (and vice-versa: I'm working hard for very modest progress in Japanese language school, and that's only partly down to me being "chotto baka"...a bit of an idiot). The very different grammatical structure, English's notorious inconsistencies, a new character set (albeit a simple one compared to Japanese's more-complex three), and pronunciation challenges make it difficult. The only advantage is that of Japanese's tons of "borrow words" imported from other languages, the large majority are from English; this kind of "preloads" their vocabulary of English words.
Okay, lots of rambling to just point out that while Hina has certainly learned some English, she may not necessarily be all that fluent.
I took a couple community college "adult learning" classes in Japanese several years ago. Yep. It is way different than English. Then it occurred to me that I never learn to read or write...so I switched to French.
I lived in Yokohama for 3 years in the mid 60тАЩs (Navy brat) and had a fair amount of contact with Japanese nationals and I picked up only a handful of common phrases. Tough language to learn for sure.