Maybe you don't understand. If you have been following JerseyBoy's posts, he has returned to Japan some time ago and is now going through a kind of culture shock for which he is throwing out this and other questions to gage others' opinions in order to enable himself to become more acclimated to Japan. He does intend on staying in Japan though.
Thanks for the summary. I tend NOT to follow people's personal lives on forums, and I had assumed he was not yet here. My mistake.
However, my points are still valid. If his Japanese skills have deteriorated that much, I still wouldn't worry about any of his future kids learning Japanese, especially if he is married to a fellow Japanese. It would be a step up from an English-speaking foreigner like me who is married to a Japanese. My kid gets both languages at home, one from each parent, and at 4 he is essentially bilingual. Not bragging here, just fact.
JersyBoy, if you want to raise your family in an English speaking environment in Japan, then by all means do it as that is probably the ONLY way they are going to become fluent in the English language in Japan.
If you mean just raise him at home with English exposure only at home, then perhaps yes. It has been the case for the last 4 years inmy kid's sake, and we are not alone. Others have done what we do. There, of course, is more to do to supplement home language exposure (like international schools if you can afford them, or send them to native English speaking countries for study, etc.).
Your children will learn Japanese easily enough in school and through their friends and become fluent in English at home with the help of you and your wife. I have known a few western families whose primary language was English at home and the children learned Japanese fluently at school and such. In the long run they were at near native language level by the time they were teenagers.
Me, too, but there are also those families who DON'T use both languages at home. As an example, I taught one kid whose father was American, and he spoke English as badly as any other of his classmates in high school, simply because his home life did not include English.
But, I thought we were talking about Japanese here. I was under the impression that Jersey Boy wanted his kids NOT to learn Japanese, only English.
quote Jersey Boy:
I am not listening to the argument a Japanese has to stick with Japanese.
If (big if, that is) I am going to have a kid in the future, I want to make sure the kid will speak the language(s) which is widely used in the business. Also, he/she is not be tethered to Japan and will be able to take on an international opportunity.
"Tethered to Japan" seems like manacles, when being bilingual is more of a freedom. I really can't understand how Jersey Boy thinks that his future kid should avoid learning Japanese while being raised in Japan! Please help me here, JB.