Having spent last week in Tokyo, arriving back to HKG on Monday, I have to say that the level of English is quite good these days, be it the staff at Lawson/Family Mart, to the station masters, or just random people in the street when asking for directions.
On 3 separate occasions where we asked for directions, we got help in a very genuine/helpful manner, even the young man that was sweeping the floor at Shirokane-Takanawa metro station spoke English, well enough to help us choose the right exit that would lead us to Burger Mania lol as we were on a mission to pay that eatery a visit.
Our very basic map downloaded off the Burger mania website wasn't to scale, so, once we were on foot we asked a nice man in a suit who was walking toward us, if we were heading in the right direction ? He pulled out his phone and accessed his GPS and then said that we only about 500 metres away from where we wanted to go, we exchanged smiles and went our separate ways while commenting to my wife on how this sort of thing just doesn't happen enough in HKG ! lol
When you experience a simple but positive exchange like that, it can really make or break your view of a place and have to say, it made the burger (below), taste just that much better lol... Love Tokyo and yet to have a negative experience that upset me enough to comment about it, it's yet to happen.