>>1042735I'll compare the average Japanese person to myself because I think I'm a good representation of an ESL that can speak English well.
I learned English when I was very young through exposure to cartoons in English, video games in English and the internet.
I think that's what all good ESL speakers have in common, early exposure and content that can't be accessible to me unless I know English.
Compared to the average Japanese person, all the games they could ever want are in Japanese, all the cartoons (both anime and western animation) they could possibly want are in Japanese, all the internet communities they could want are available in Japanese and really there's no drive to learn English.
Being a strong second language speaker comes from "necessity", if something can't be participated in without a specific language than a kid that wants to participate in it will pick up the language.
That's especially true when a LOT of things need the same language to participate in.
The vast internet (particularly the pre facebook one) can't be enjoyed fully without the English language, MapleStory which was my whole life at some point in my childhood couldn't be fully enjoyed without English and as soon as I discovered anime the fact that the most available translations are in English made me depends on it even more.
One thing that reinforces my theory is when I was in Japan I met exactly two Japanese people who were completely fluent, one is a hostel owner in Osaka in his twenties that had dreadlocks and was into western music and the other is what I presume is the owner (or at least employee) of a warhammer store in Tokyo (or was it Osaka too?).
The latter couldn't participate in warhammer 40k without having a good grasp of English.
Bottom line is, Japanese people are shit at English because their culture is rich enough that they don't get excluded from anything by not knowing it.
