I thought inner classes could access the outer class variables/methods?

Question

I did read a number of topics discussing inner classes, and i was under the impression that an inner class has access to the variables and methods of the enclosing class. In

Answer 1

inner is an instance of OuterClass.InnerClass which doesn't defines a so it wont be able to access it anyways.

To understand it in the simplest manner... look at the block in which a is created and the block in which OuterClass.InnerClass is defined.

public class OuterClass { // a is defined in this block

    String a = "A";

    class InnerClass{ // InnerClass starts here and an instance will access what is defined now
        int x;
    }
}