AlexanderTheGrape comments

The author's point is that some Japanese see him not as a valued friend, but rather a free talking textbook whom they can use at their convenience. He picked just one experience to show a pattern he has observed in Japan, not a single misunderstanding.

Usually in life most of our real friends are people with whom we share things in common with (hobbies, humor, beliefs, experiences) and easily understand each other's thoughts and feelings. Language is a big part of this.

Japanese should understand that foreigner friends might not enjoy suffering through their English. That's why language lessons are so expensive...it's literally work. If they insist on using English they should find someone with the patience to slow the conversation down (like foreigners who can't speak Japanese).

The same goes for foreigners when dealing with Japanese who are fluent in English, but keep in mind that the author lives in Japan. It should never be considered unreasonable to use Japanese in Japan with Japanese people.

One question I have for the author is whether Yuko is also friendly toward foreigners who can't speak English (e.g. from China)?

There seems to be massive confusion over this. The only books that can be seen entirely are public domain works. Copyrighted works can be searched but only a few sentences are shown. For copyrighted books from publishers participating in the program, several pages can be previewed, and the publisher receives part of the advertising revenue.

The only thing I can figure is that some publishers are trying to get a bigger piece of the search revenue now that Google is successful because they didn't think of doing it first. But there was never an issue of hurting book sales. So the publishers are trying to create a negative image of Google by spreading confusion and throwing around the word "copyright". They have little legal or ethical argument here so they're using extortion to try to take some revenue away.