This photo was taken in Mangalore, India on February 12th, 2012.
Printed characters are Simplified Chinese, not Japanese.
In fact, Japanese language is not so international one. Coverage area is Japan only, any other areas and territories do not take it as their first common language. Even if you can use Japanese fluently though, availability is extremely less than Chinese language. A part of Japanese people settle down in another countries, but they do not have strong connections each other across the globe. On the other hand, Chinese people have very strong international connections each other with a long long history. Not only that, Chinese people have stronger connections with each countries’ government or publish people by good friendships and relationships in most of cases.
However, in case of most of Japanese, they can have just company2company relationships, so they are not good at build up the regular good relationships with each countries’ government and public people. (Please check the case which Govt of Japan had made Govt of Congo soooo angry. They misunderstood how to make relationships with another countries’ government.)
In addition, Chinese people have good business sense among East Asian countries. So, if you can get a trustable Chinese business partner, it would be very helpful for you.
If you want to work with Japanese people, you would better to ask them to do middle level management, quality control and facilitate duties, because they are suitable duties for Japanese people.
A plenty number of Middle East rich Arabic people have strong interest to study in Japan though, most of them have given up to do it, because the cost-effectiveness of Japanese language and study in Japan are incredible too bad.
For example, even if you will graduate from the top university of Japan though, your salary will become much much much lower than the graduations from IIT(Indian Institute of Technology) and IIM(Indian Institute of Management) of India. If you want to earn more in your life, you would better to graduate from other countries’ good universities.
Anyway, many foreign countries have been removing Japanese language from their official curriculum for these years, so I’m not sure whether learning Japanese language is the best choice for you. If you want to do worthy international business, I strongly recommend you to learn Chinese language. If you want to know full of Japan issues, I surely recommend you to learn Japanese language.
Haruka's Chronicle 
hi, the image is upside down right? A lot of people have discovered japanese through anime and there are few chinese anime..yet. Also Japanese kanji are easier than chinese ideogrammes. Chinese is beautiful to listen to and if you speak it well you can use it but there are regional variations too.
I knew and understand the situations what you are telling. I’m a Japanese, use Japanese, Mandarin Chinese and English, learn Cantonese also. My opinion comes from all of these learning and visit a part of Asian countries, exchange friendship with a plenty number of countries across the globe.
Yes, there are many people who love Japanese anime and they learn Japanese language, but they have lack of power against each of their government. I have many Chinese friends in various countries, but number of Japanese residents are totally less in there compared with Japanese residents in each countries.
Chinese language have regional variations also, but most of outside Chinese people can use Mandarin Chinese or Cantonese, I feel so from my real experiences to visit many Asian countries. Most of Japanese cuisine restaurant in many countries are managed by Chinese & Korean people, the number of Chinese residents in most of countries are much more there than Japanese residents, I’ve seen it in reality.
I’ve heard that Vietnam took Japanese as second language recently, but the presence of Japanese language is becoming lower in reality, a few European countries official level people have lost their interest with Japanese language recently. Japan PM is collecting bad assessment only from many countries PMs day by day, US and EU have started to feel disgusted with Japan govt in reality……
That’s why I recommend you to study Chinese language, if you want to get the benefit from international business. Of course I recommend you to learn Japanese, if you have strong interest with Japanese culture.
My main point on Chinese language is ‘benefit on international business’, so I do not recommend Japanese language to the people who want to get actual benefit from international business issues.
I agree with that, China is a very strong power so I guess that many students want to learn chinese for future business transactions. Japanese is still learnt a lot in Europe though, we do a lot of business with Japan still and Japan is easier to visit than China. I’ve tried both and in Japan you are never cheated on or disappointed ^^
Actually, a number of Mainland Chinese people who learn English has been increasing already, they have passion to learn requirement issues for their better future. However, most of domestic Japanese people believe that Japan is still the best country. In fact, everything is getting worse only in Japan, poverty ratio has been increasing also, plus they are so hesitate to study any foreign languages even just English. Meanwhile, many countries people learn many things, then things are not easy to catch up for Japanese people.
Chinese people are there not only in Mainland China, a plenty number of outside Chinese people are there across the globe. But about outside Japanese community, the community which has strong relationships and stakeholders is only in Brazil, next is in USA, that’s all. Japan clubs are there in most of each countries though, they are not useful for their business activities so much, so almost all outside Japanese people should be independent by just own, these existence is very weak. Chinese community have stronger ties and cooperation activities, outside Chinese communities have strong relationships with Government level, almost outside Japanese companies can not facilitate by the same way, because they do not know what & how to do.
Nowadays, Japan has been making a huge troubles about corruption for Tokyo Olympics 2020, honestly speaking Govt of Japan did the same kind of thing against Govt of Congo about Land Digital TV network system, Govt of Congo got mad with it because this corruption itself had become disgrace for them. At the present, China has been changing to prohibit any corruption in China though, Govt of Japan and huge Japanese companies can not change like China still now.
I can understand these Japanese stakeholders can not understand what is the bad thing, they can not understand that they did extremely bad things. So, Japan must lose the qualification to conduct any kinds of international sports games in Japan for a while…
For these 4 years, I do not stay in Japan, because Japan has no better future anymore. It has full of problems & troubles which have NO ANY SOLUTIONS. In order to reborn good Japan, Japan has to break down completely from the top to the bottom…..otherwise, anything would become worse more and more, more number of people must die by many reasons:financial problems, radioactive exposure, etc, etc, etc….