Japan is a strange case. On one hand, if you ask an average person a simple question in English, something like "What did you do yesterday?" they won't be able to parse the question let alone produce a response. On the other hand, if you ask them to translate a bunch of tricky words from English to Japanese or Japanese to English they will happily churn through them. "Politician", "weapon", "credit", no problem.

It's all an artifact of their teaching methods and tests.