English in Tokyo’s Public Space: Explorations from Ameyoko and Ueno Keisei Station

English has no official status in Japan. Linguistic minorities like the Ainu or Ryukyuans are expected to use Japanese in public. The same applies to Japan’s three million immigrant residents, but tourists are exempt from this expectation. We can gain insights into the use and function of English in Tokyo’s public space by focusing on places where tourists and Tokyo residents interact. This chapter provides an eth¬nographic study of two such places in northeastern Tokyo, the Ameya Yokochō street market and the adjacent Ueno Keisei Station. The principal research question is whether one can get by in Tokyo by communicating in English in these public spaces. More concretely, the study seeks to contribute to discussions on world Englishes, English as emergency lingua franca, and grassroots English by investigating ‘Who speaks what lan¬guage to whom and when?’