cc wrote:

> >I've heard that there are less than 20 foreigners that are truly fluent in
> Japanese.
>
> Who are they ?

My first guess would be a few hundred thousand resident alien Asians, likely
born and raised here, visibly and linguistically indistinguishable from native
born Japanese, even by the Japanese themselves. I have seen even Korean and
Chinese teens and college students who came to the country just a few years
earlier mistaken for Japanese (even after speaking Japanese), and seen the
Japanese around them react in surprise and sometimes unpleasantly (as in
shrinking back) when they reveal they are foreign. Even I who am not fluent
get this treatment. I deliberately use my alien registration or home driver's
license for my ID (or "proof"), just to see people react.

And a handful of years back, there was Miss Tokyo University, a Chinese woman
who seemed Japanese in every visible way including language, as well as
entering Tokyo University, despite having come to Japan just *one and a half*
years earlier to study the language. She used to make the rounds of TV shows
and magazine shoots as part of the group of exclusive university beauty
contest winners.

I love it when Japanese people talk about "looking" Japanese or foreign,
particularly when talking about "Chinese" "Southeast Asian" or "foreign
(looking)" criminals; how hard it is to learn language, particularly Japanese;
or how hard it is to understand Japan or Japanese culture, when it is so
simple to disprove.