Here's a quick communication survey of your typical long-term foreign resident of Japan, particularly one from the West.
First, can he (or she) speak Japanese?
Well -- in most cases -- of course! OK, maybe to native ears his accent sounds like Bela Lugosi yodeling. Maybe he trips through the same grammar pits so often his sentences limp like Boris Karloff, aka the Mummy. And maybe he shows the overall lexical variety of a werewolf. But -- after years of trial and error -- he can monster out what he wants to say quite fine, thank you, and generally communicates well.
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