“It didn’t matter if the sign said ‘flesh’ or ‘fresh’ or ‘meat,’” recalls Dougill, a professor at Ryukoku University, who has researched the use of English in Japan. “It was just there to catch people ...

When Natasha Steele came to Japan from her native Australia earlier this year to teach English, she was looking forward to immersing herself in a foreign culture while earning a little money on the ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. FILE - In this Nov. 29, 2016, file photo, Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike speaks at the IOC debriefing meeting in Tokyo. Japan wants to ...

Every year EF Education First, a Switzerland-based company that provides language learning services and assistance in countries around the world, prepares its English Proficiency Index (or EF EPI) ...

“Language is not a genetic gift; it is a social gift. Learning a new language is becoming a member of the club––the community of speakers of that language.” –Frank Smith Smith’s quotation speaks to ...

Have you ever struggled to understand a presentation by a scholar with a strong Japanese accent? Last week I wrestled with the speech of a brilliant young psychology lecturer visiting from Japan. For ...

Debito reports that the new Japanese Cabinet opposes primary school English education. The new education minister Ibuki believes that Japanese language ability is going down and they should work on ...

A Tokyo Olympic meeting in November 2018 in Tokyo, Japan. Photo: Eugene Hoshiko (AP) Yesterday, Japan’s foreign minister asked the English-language media to write Japanese family names first, as done ...