Japan has changed in important and visible ways

1. N3 isn’t that easy. You need to learn 600 kanji, plus reading and grammar. It takes over 1000 hours of focused study [1]. It’s a stretch to call it “basic” or “very easy”.

2. There’s no double taxation for US citizens living in Japan, thanks to the foreign tax credit [2].

[1] https://cotoacademy.com/study-hours-needed-pass-jlpt-compari...

[2] https://brighttax.com/blog/the-american-foreign-tax-credit-e...

Not a hypothetical question for me. I've lived in Germany for fourteen years. And while I can mumble my way through some basic conversations, I'm far from fluent in German. I'm sorry but I'm not interested in sacrificing an enormous portion of my time to such a project either. Seems to be quite common here with foreigners. It's very rare that I get angry/annoyed reactions from Germans on this. The opposite actually, there are quite a few Germans here that are attracted to the notion of living in Berlin partially because it is more international focused.

In the time that I've lived here, automated translations have gotten much better. Which helps with the inevitable bureaucratic stuff or interacting with people who only speak German. There is very little practical need for me to speak German beyond that. And otherwise, the business language in the companies I deal with is mostly English. I of course live in a bit of a bubble with lots of foreigners that have invaded Berlin. I've also lived in places like Finland. Finnish is much harder than most other languages to pick up. So, I never even pretended that learning was going to be a thing. This might not even be my last country.

Most countries smaller than Germany or the US tend to be a lot more pragmatic about people speaking their language. People appreciate it if you do and generally don't really feel threatened by non native speakers.

With some exceptions of course. This is a popular topic with populists/xenophobes worried about people stealing their jobs, women, and real estate, becoming marginalized in their own country. You get that in a lot of places. I tend to not have a lot of sympathy for such people though. The opposite actually. Those aren't their jobs. You need the right skills and typically for skilled labor there isn't a whole lot of unemployment. We foreigners show up because we are wanted and needed to do a job. Women aren't property and are perfectly capable of deciding for themselves whom they form relationships with. Fun fact in Finland, a dis-proportionally large part of the local women end up marrying foreigners. And the real estate value indeed goes up if smart people move in and start creating economical value. Economic growth is generally a good thing but indeed annoying for the locals.

I think there's going to be more migration due to technical progress with translations between languages and the removal of language barriers. And I think that is a good thing. While I like English (the only language other than Dutch that I mastered well enough to use it professionally), there are large parts of the worlds where people just don't speak English very well. We literally refer to some parts of the world as third world countries, which is very condescending. It means that they are poor. But the implication of course is also that they are somehow inferior and a bit retarded. And that there are second world countries as well that are slightly less inferior. Language has created this elite bubble that keeps it like that for some of these countries. Being able to go to such places and live there without first having to learn a language is very liberating and is probably also going to be great for e.g. trade relationships. I think that should be welcomed. English optional. Also in the US, which of course has plenty of migrant groups that don't speak that very well.

And its fucking sad, because I used to see myself as part of "them". However, this inability to reflect about ones own failings has totally alienated me.

On one hand it's just part of a continuum of language transitions in a city that never was monolingual or even Finnish-dominated for most of its history. 110 years ago many neighborhoods in Helsinki were majority Swedish-speaking and the official language mandated for the government was Russian. A lot of people spoke all three languages. (I'm 42, was born in Helsinki, and I remember from my childhood shops in fancier neighborhoods where the service was in Swedish.)

On the other hand it's a real shame that it risks sending Finnish into a vicious circle of decreasing usage: the elites start speaking English and working in English, and Finnish once again becomes the insignificant language of country bumpkins.

Between 1860 and 1940, the nation collectively worked very hard to "uplift" Finnish into a real written language that is actively used in literature, science, audiovisual culture, and so on. People translated their family names and started speaking Finnish to their children. I can see that work being undone over the next century. (My own two children probably would have lost the language if we hadn't returned to Finland now; we were living abroad for years and they'd already started talking English between themselves.)

I will agree that I didn't go to a full immersion language school. But we did arrange for multiple tutors, some on our own dime and some paid for by her employer or mine. And we interacted with the people in our neighborhood on a daily basis.

I found that those who were Flemish speakers would actively prefer to practice their English with me, while Francophones would usually switch to English grudgingly, once they discovered how bad my French was. There were a few Francophones who couldn't speak English at all, or who refused to switch, and interactions with them were very limited and not very productive.

I honestly tried to learn French, but none of it stuck.

In contrast, during those same years, my wife and I took three different vacations to Italy. Twice to Rome and once to Ischia and the Amalfi coast. And I swear to $DEITY that I learned and used more Italian in those four total weeks, than all the French I ever spoke over nearly eight years in Belgium. Something about Italian and Spanish is just far easier for me to pick up.