It took me a year to learn German well enough to do my development job in it.
Having done a year of Japanese at uni (30 years ago!), I think it would not be massively harder to get to the same stage - but if there was a lot of written stuff... Hmmm
My current job in Germany does documentation in English, anything verbal or casual messaging in German (unless both parties not native). This is pretty common, was the same in prev job. Lots of places are English for both by default though. First job was 100% German. That's tough. I can see why the Japanese might well find it advantageous to have office language English.
Re: Japanese VS English
Having done a year of Japanese at uni (30 years ago!), I think it would not be massively harder to get to the same stage - but if there was a lot of written stuff... Hmmm
My current job in Germany does documentation in English, anything verbal or casual messaging in German (unless both parties not native). This is pretty common, was the same in prev job. Lots of places are English for both by default though. First job was 100% German. That's tough. I can see why the Japanese might well find it advantageous to have office language English.