There are plenty of people who live in Tokyo who speak ~no Japanese, despite being here for 20+ years. Not recommended from a social sanity perspective, but the

There are plenty of people who live in Tokyo who speak ~no Japanese, despite being here for 20+ years. Not recommended from a social sanity perspective, but there are enough foreigners to where you can just exist in the non-JP bubble for ~ever. Especially in the fancier parts of town. And even absent that you can just figure out and manage. It's not the Netherlands but you can be functionally illiterate and exist here There are plenty of Japanese classes in Japan. There are formal language schools, things offered by the city, and you can also just pay for private lessons. But if you're coming for work you're probably busy with work Having said all that... loads of companies do the whole "English is the official language" thing here but are still properly segmented into "can speak Japanese" and "cannot speak Japanese" cliques. It's not the end of the world but I would say the workplace is where the questions are the biggest for me