Catch 21? Catch 23? C'mon, work with me here...

I'm going to a Japanese class tonight for the first time in almost two years. There were a number of reasons I hadn't been studying much lately, but in trying to get into this class I was reminded of one of the most frustrating ones. Japan is a monolingual nation. Regardless of efforts to nurture foreign language skills, there's really just one acceptable way to communicate here, regardless of how satisfying the obscenities in sign language may be.
"Duh," you might say, "they only speak French in France, German in Germany, uh, , Hollandaise in the Netherlands and Australian in Australia." Well, sure. But in almost all of those countries there is a relatively large concern about immigrants. Japan, on the other hand, has no such issues.

Business is done here in Japanese. Laws are written and (occasionally) made available for public examination primarily in Japanese. Emergency instructions in case of disaster are broadcast in Japanese. Police instructions in case of crisis, civil emergency, or situations of martial law are only made in Japanese. Instructions for preparing prepackaged food are only in Japanese. And most frustrating of all, the procedures to be followed to undertake the study of the Japanese language are in Japanese.

Seriously. I called the city department of foreign affairs, which handles stuff to do with foreigners, to ask about classes in Japanese. They gave out a flier announcing Japanese language classes with a headline in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Arabic, Korean and Russian with phone numbers, class times and locations. But no one answering the phones could speak English or Spanish.
To give them the benefit of the doubt, it is probable that they have someone there competent in Chinese or Korean. And I didn't even try to speak Russian, Arabic or Portuguese.

Before I could try and get into a class to learn Japanese, I had to try and speak Japanese. Frustrating. And not just because my vocabulary is mostly limited to words concerning food, insults, alcohol and robots. Also because most phone conversations are conducted in the extra-polite Japanese that most textbooks don't cover until right towards the end. Would you ask somone with the language skills of a 7 year old if they "would kindly forgive the imposition of relating their complete apellation in addition to the location of their domicile?" Yeah, well, that's what they asked me.
And at no point did they try to transfer me to someone who could speak English. Or Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Arabic, Korean or Russian. There was never even a question of it. Which reminds me of the textbook I bought to prepare for the Japanese Language test I took. For the lowest level you supposed to have mastered the syllabaries, around 150 words, the present and past tenses, and basic sentences of location; about the equivalent of one semester's worth of study at college level. Why do you suppose the book for the lowest level test-takers had it's explanations all in Japanese?

As if that wasn't enough, NHK's educational line-up for Japanese study has gotten rid of the old program with the bilingually fluent and easily understandable Katsuya Kobayashi and introduced a new show with a Q&A format to explain Japanese grammar and usage in (wait for it...) Japanese. After an hour's searching on the web, this was about the best I could do to find information about the show in English: an electronic translation of the NHK educational program schedule. You'll notice that the program for learning Japanese is at the bottom of the page, and airs at the delightful times of 11:10 PM on Friday nights with a repeat at 12:10 AM on the following Thursday.

I'm aware of the arguments in favor of immersion for language learning. I'm aware of the value of practice in improving skills. And I understand what a teeny-tiny minority of the population here needs language instruction. But all this reminds me why it's so easy to fall back on the image of Japanese culture as being closed to outsiders. Maybe there is a genuine interest in sharing Japan with the rest of the world, but there's precious few avenues available to learn how to understand the culture on your own.