Today I met up with my friend Rod for breakfast. I made three new acquaintances as well, all of whom were Japanese teachers. However, as I have found to be the case quite often, they didn’t want to speak in Japanese. Rod and I are accustomed to conversing in Japanese, but I felt a little rude doing so even though presumably everyone at the table could understand us. When I invited one of the teachers to join us, she said she didn’t want to embarrass herself in front of the natural-sounding Japanese that Rod and I were speaking. At one point I did speak with one of them. She has a Master’s degree in Japanese, but she was still not very motivated to practice. I wonder what the problem is?