Hmm. we listened to some examples of Japanese pitch accent and... it sounds identical to the English accent? Is there something we're missing? Or is this a case of two features that go together, except one of them is contrastive in language A and the *other* one is in language B (like voicing vs aspiration with English and Mandarin)
Follow
(the English distinction is between [tʰ] and [d] where the Mandarin one is between [tʰ] and [t], which is why the word Tao is sometimes (and probably more accurately, in terms of how English-speakers read it being understood by Mandarin-speakers) spelled Dao, among other differences)
(this holds for the other plosives too)
(correct me if I am wrong, I'm reasonably certain [d] doesn't exist in mandarin except maybe as an allophone of [t] but we do not speak mandarin)