While the authorities in Japan regularly assert the need to improve the nation’s English ability, English teachers are still heard to complain about their students’ lack of motivation, both at high school and university levels. This paper suggests some possible causes for this apparent contradiction between public support and student apathy. While it is easy to understand the need for motivation, understanding exactly what motivation is and where it comes from is far more complex. It is particularly problematic in a Foreign Language Learning (FLL) situation like Japan, where students get few opportunities to interact in English with people from other cultures. In order to address this issue, it is imperative to develop our understanding of what motivation is and how it works. This paper looks at the diverse nature of motivation and reports a study of students’ motivation at one Japanese high school. The results seem to contradict the myth that students are solely motivated by the need to get through university entrance tests. Evidently, no one teaching system, whether grammar translation or a communicative method, works for all the people all the time, so to tackle the problem of motivation it is necessary to accommodate individual differences and offer students a meaningful cultural experiences.