You MUST Speak English!!! 英語を話さなければなりませんよ！

I'm pretty interested in living in Japan, so you can imagine I seek out other information on other Westerners living there so I can live vicariously through them. And I've noticed, from the way a lot of them speak, that they think every Japanese person needs to be able to speak English. These people will talk about how their (Japan's) learning methods aren't fulfilling their potential, or "Oh, Japanese is so low on the ranking of countries with lots of people using English as a second language." Don't get me wrong; English is totally a useful language, blah blah world economy, etc. But aren't they a thriving country as it is? One of the things I love about Japan is that it forces us, as Westerners, to be out of our element for once (which, let's face it, does not happen terribly often). So maybe I'm just being selfish in trying to preserve that. I just wonder why we care. Thoughts?