Americans are more asian friendly,

People have told me that the French refuse to speak to you in English even if they can, apparently they're proud of their own language to the extent of alienating people. :\

And I thought they were on good terms with the Japanese, has that changed lately?

Dunno about the Japanese-French relationship, however my old French teacher told me the same thing about speaking English in France. They don't. Most of the populace can speak it, it's part of schooling like many other countries, but they don't speak it in public. If you ever go to France, you better hope you know French, or it's going to be a HORRIBLE experience. According to my old teacher, even if you CAN speak French, if you initiate a conversation with English, they won't respond to you even if you start speaking French afterwards. Apparently they find it insulting. And you wonder why people don't like French people anymore, outside of the various other things that France has done to annoy people...