As others have rightly pointed out, it's not really taught in the schools here (in Japan). All three of my kids went (and are still going through) public schooling. I think they took a soroban to school for just a couple days and that was about it. They still can't use one.

However, many parents want to send their kids to soroban classes after school, especially when they're around ages 7-11 or so. There's a feeling that it makes you much faster with arithmetic. My wife (Japanese) is very quick at doing sums in her head.