Hakanz comments

Plastic bags? What about all the one use plastics that is produce by purchasing coffee ant the conbini? Plastic stirrer, lid, cream container, straw plus wrapper.

Lawsons actually make the coffee for you and rather than use a reusable stirrer they use a plastic one once and throw it out, mind boggling, I questioned a staff member at my local conbini but she was just indifferent about the issue.

I always say I don't need a lid and I'll put the cream in as the coffee pours so I don't need to stir it, this is just one simple process in consumption that produces such unnecessary plastic waste. Don't get me started on bentos and package.

there needs to be a clean up Japan day so that they can actually fathom the serious one use plastic pollution problem in Japan, they are good at cleaning stadium after soccer in a host country but not their own.

Japanese dont learn English, they study it like science. Disecting the grammar to a point that it just becomes like a gutted toad.

start at 1st grade elementary, using English in every subject taught, maths= numbers & symbols, Geograpahy = countries, languages ,nationaliies and geograpahical vocabulary, mountains volcano etc. Im not saying the whole lesson, 1st grade may perhaps be 5 minutes at the most. This may help to nomalise English rather than the build up that happens so often, "The ALT is coming today yey yey" hands clapping and ends up being a bore fest because the students cant really produce anything that isn`t a controlled,teacher focused unnatural learning of English.

@wtfjapan you hit it on the nose here, Japanese struggle with languages because they find it difficult to adopt a secondary personality. If I spoke Japanese directly as I speak my Kiwi/ OZ English I would come across as gruff and arrogant but I have learned to become somewhat Japanese in my mindset when speaking Japanese. Cultural barriers to acquiring any proficiency in English is something that very few Japanese manage to do. TOEIC is a passive way of learning and testing a level , which seems to be the way of learning that is preferred here. How many teachers feel that students would rather sit back and just passively listen to the teacher rant on about English, then come back next week for some more.

A change of mindset and motivation is needed for Japan to improve their English speaking skills. Throwing money at it doesn't work, if it did then a lot of Japanese who spent millions of yen at eikaiwa during the bubble economy would be in control of the English work environment today.