I took a Japanese language class the first summer I came to Japan. We were asked to write essays in Japanese. It took me hours. I struggled to look up the kanji, put the verb endings in place, find the right sentence connectors AND still say something of interest. I could always remember how to write about half of a kanji, but half a kanji does not express half-meaning--it expresses nothing at all. My essays sounded like a child, a child with bad grammar.
Japan has the least confident students in the entire world. Anytime and anyplace, students will tell you directly, "I can't speak well!" And they mean it! But it's not only students. I meet serious, suited 50-year-old businessmen who blush and shyly wave their hands like schoolgirls who say the same: "My English is bad." Hipsters dressed all in black in a nightclub will suddenly lose their cool, start escaping towards the bar, and say, "English? Heta. Heta heta!" I hear this chorus of self-pity all the time!