Language contact is traditionally associated with language communities having a long and close association with a second language--through an existing official language, or extensive use of the language spoken by past colonial rulers, or both. Japan neither falls directly into these categories, nor is it considered a country with a strong bilingual tradition. Despite its image as monolingual, it has several foreign language radio stations. This paper puts language contact in Japan in context, describes its historical background and illustrates its peculiar features. Then it isolates the rationale for the existence of a multilingual radio station, RADIO-i, and examines why its listeners prefer it to a monolingual alternative. (Contains 3 tables.)