English worshiper

Toshihide Masukawa is now got more famous for his remark, "I'll decline the Nobel Award, if they ask me to give my acceptance speech in English." It has become one of the most favored phrases among student who are not willing to study English. One of his legendary episode which is believed to be true is that he once made a presentation in English but by someone who hid under the podium. He just moved his lips in synchronization with the voice from under as if he was speaking.
Of course he can "read" scientific literatures written in English but it is said that writing already has been his weak point, let alone speaking.
Learning English takes a huge amount of time. I sometimes think what I would have done if I could have used the time I spent on English study for other things. I might have studied physics more or bioscience.... I would have studied other field of science to understand more about the world deeper. What pleasure it would have given me?
At any rate, It is good to hear there are such people in Japan who used their time meaningfully for other than studying English. English is only a means to an end. In the field of science most of the literatures are written in English. Therefore you have to at least learn English to a level at which you can read. In that sense we Japanese are already handicapped. If you learn physics, for instance, you must learn a same thing in two languages. Physics is just physics for an American but it should be 物理 and physics for a Japanese. The theory of relativity and 相対性理論, the law of gravity and 重力の法則...No wonder it takes time. 相対性理論 is already hard to remember but we need to memorize its counterpart in English! However hassle it may be it is something we have to accept if we study science. But it is still just a tool.
Recently many young Japanese people go abroad to study English just for English sake paying a lot of money, which itself is an envious situation to our generation who had no money to do that. It is true that those people come back with some confidence in speaking English, a knock on effect of which gives them confidence in doing other things as well. I cannot deny this advantage. He / she might well have got a sense of superiority since most of the Japanese cannot speak English. But the problem is most of those people tend to think that acquiring the speaking ability will solve all the problems. Unfortunately it won't. What you can do with your English is what really matters.
If we consider these English worshipers as one extreme, Masukawa sensei may be the other extreme. I would prefer this extreme.