Should all Japanese directly address foreigners in Japanese ?

[Maciamo]

I don't mind how I'm approached while overseas wether it be in the native tongue or English. I have blonde hair and blue eyes, generally Japanese think I will not understand them if they talk to me in Japanese and from the foreigners I met while in Japan I would say that was a fair assumption. Some guy I met at a Styx concert in Osaka said to me "ya I've been here 4 years now and have a pretty good handle on the language" then I heard him order a beer in Japanese and it sounded closer to English than Japanese his pronounciation was horrific and he thought himself fluent. Does it hurt my feelings a bit when I ask a question in Japanese and am answered in English well maybe a bit but hey that person spent a lot of time studying English they want to use it. Is it rude? I think rude is in the heart of the partyinvolved. If they honestly are just trying to do their best to communicate with you, I think a good round of charades now and then is entertaining. I will always bend over backwards to think higher of a person then try to assign them negative traits like; rude, ignorant, backward, prejudiced. I hope others give me the same consderation when I inadvertantly do something they don't like.

I think you haven't grasped that the main purpose of this poll/thread was that many (older) Japanese won't even address you in any language. Don't assume that the question " Should all Japanese directly address foreigners in Japanese ?" means that they can only address us in Japanese or English. As I said (if you read my posts), what I dislike the most is to be met with gestures or people writing numbers to me in shops when I address them in Japanese (and I think anybody who knows me can say that my Japanese pronuciation isn't bad - on the phone I have even been mistaken for a Japanese as long as I don't say something a bit unnatural for a native speaker).

I also dislike complete strangers who just walk to me and start practising their English on me. In fact I dislike any stranger starting talking to me for no reason (if they want to ask me the way, it's no problem though). There is no reason to start a conversation with somebody you don't know in the street. But I think Americans and Australians usually do that (from my experience). We discussed that in another thread (see posts #9 and #11).

It may be due to a cultural difference, but I find that responding to someone who talks to you in your language with gestures, like if he/she was a monkey, is very rude. Starting to talk to a stranger in the street, in this case to a Westerner in the hop to practice English is odd, annoying and somewhat rude.