Upon my arrival to Japan I didn’t experience much culture shock, I had mentally prepared myself for simple things as: all of the signs being in Japanese character and everyone speaking a language I can’t understand, but I found plenty of English on signs and Japanese people that I spoke with knew enough English to carry on a conversation. This would not be the case in America where Spanish is a strong second to English, but does not appear nearly as often on signs. The majority of American’s are monolingual, making it difficult for people from other countries to get help while traveling. Seeing English in many places or having access to English versions of documents made travel much easier and made Japan feel more inviting. While it was fairly easy to get around asking people if they spoke English in most cases, although I tried to speak as much Japanese as possible out of respect.
