That is a relief. To be honest, I'm still trying to find a place in town where I can learn Japanese. You'd think in a city this size, someone would offer it, but I haven't seen anything in the yellow pages. However, I do know a clerk who's studying it, so I just need her to give me the info.

That does lead me to a question I've been wondering about, how prevalent is the study of English over there? I listen to a lot of j-pop that friends send me, and it seems like they drop in English words of phrases more than I would expect which makes me think that there's a fair amount of familiarity with at least a few words here and there. It's not that I expect them to speak English, fluently or otherwise, I'm just curious if that's a very common second language. Do all students study a second language in Japan? And what are languages do they commonly study?