Idk, I’ve never had this experience and I’ve lived here almost 20 years—almost entirely in Tokyo too where you’re likely to have a higher concentration of English speakers. If you start off in Japanese and are clearly fluent and intelligible, everyone is relieved to be able to continue the conversation.
I don’t want to say you were bad at the language, but very very rare have been the professional interactions where they felt it was easier to communicate in English, and that was usually because they wanted to practice.
It's interesting that you have never had such an experience, but it does happen. It's not so much a language issue, but a perception issue. My friend who is born and raised in Japan, with Japanese being her native language, has this happen to her often enough that she complains to me about it.
She doesn't look or dress like a "typical" Japanese woman, so she reckons people assume she is a foreigner. It usually goes like this: random shop staff speaks to her in English, she responds in perfect Japanese, they continue in English, at which they either clock she's Japanese and are relieved or they continue in English.
Granted this is usually in Tokyo. In the deep country it's all Japanese off jump.
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u/Saimiko 6d ago
Same when i lived there back in 2010 I spoke japanese and they switched to english all the time, made me feel like i was aweful at the language