“but they just asked some question in broken english, they bowed, i bowed and that was it, phew.”
My bud has been teaching English at this gakuen’ (high school) as a part-timer. Same thing when the coppers mistake him. They teach English at the high school level but they forget it after graduation. So the cops are truly shocked when this blonde, white dude tells them in Japanese “Sorry but your English sucks. I speak Japanese fluently”.
Lol, from what I saw the Japanese always assume the Gaijin do not speak their language and are shocked if you are fluent in Japanese, or even know a little, gets you major respect as well though.