Many nations realised the benefits of teaching English from a young age. In addition to ensuring the quality of their basic education, they strive to make English accessible to their citizens, each country in its own way. The main objective of this thesis is to compare foreign language policies and practices in the context of primary education in Croatia and Japan. Both countries invest a lot of effort in teaching English, and they both have a mandatory foreign language course in their primary schools. In Croatia, students choose which foreign language they will learn when they enrol in the first grade of primary school, and English is the most popular choice, English being the most popular choice. In addition, both countries also have foreign language schools that provide language teaching services outside the regular school. However, interesting differences can be noted in between the English teaching practices in the two countries, and some indicators of their English education are remarkably different. Teaching materials and textbooks are the most obvious differences, along with insisting on having native speakers as English language teachers. However, there are some other issues when it comes to learning English in Japan, such as culture bumps and language unawareness. Moreover, Japan’s national language differs from English in numerous ways, while Croatian at least shares the same script. Nevertheless, English words are not infrequent in Japan, which makes even the children become aware of the language and leaves room to familiarise themselves better with it. That familiarisation only recently became the task of the Japanese educational system, which has recently started to implement English language courses in the curriculum of primary education.