That list can apply to most countires.
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- their favourite topic of conversation is food
True for many places. If it's not what you want to eat it is what you are currently eating or what you previously ate.
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- when travelling abroad, they care little about the local culture except food
When us Brits go on holiday it is for sun, decent beaches, booze and food (be it local or British). Very rarely do we care about culture other than seeing 'must see' sights while our sun burn is healing.
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- when they do not talk about food, they talk about money or sex
True for everywhere. It's either "I wish I was eating that", "I wish I could afford that" or "I'd do that".
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- The proverbs "money doesn't buy happiness/love" or "don't judge a book by its cover" have no significance in Japan
If a guy can't get a girlfriend he pays a hooker (money buys fake love), if a girl is feeling down, she will go shopping to cheer herself up (money buys happiness). And what about these young girls marrying wealthy men with a life expectancy lower than their new wife's IQ? Their money bought them some love. And everyone is judged by their appearance, everywhere.
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- clothes do make the man in Japan (which explain the success of brand clothes, black suits and even that of cosplay, bunny girls or the importance that Japanese women attach to their wedding dress)
Chavs flaunt their sportswear brand names, celebrities advertise which designer's dress they are wearing, businessmen wear expensive suits, etc. And a wedding dress is probably the most important dress a woman will ever buy, in ANY culture.
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- people indeed do not get treated the same way (be it in a shop, by government officials, by the police or whatever) depending on how well they dress and look.
My step-sister was ill once and her boyfriend tried to buy her some codeine but they refused to serve him because he had a red mohawk and wore a band t-shirt and they assumed he would pop them as soon as he got outside the pharmacy. If someone walks into a shop with chains on their trousers the shopkeeper will keep an eye on them. If a beautiful woman walks into a shop she will get more help/be treated with more respect than an unattractive woman would be. It's human psychology, everyone does it whether they realise or not.
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- they think an opuent and expensive wedding is necessary for appearances' sake (even if that is way above their means)
Everyone tries to outdo each other with weddings. Especially celebrities. And ordinary folk. Your friend got married in a church? You will get married in a cathedral. Your friend wore an Elie Saab dress? You will wear a Vera Wang dress. A lot of people get in debt because of ther wedding.
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- they judge people from their appearance and tend to be easily prejudiced (e.g. toward foreigner-looking persons)
This happens EVERYWHERE. Foreigners are often ignored, even natives of that country who have darker skin or different features will be treated differently because they deviate from the 'norm'.
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- they use gestures and speak strange Japanese to foreigners who address them in fluent Japanese (or before they have a chance to speak), as if they had convinced themselves that somebody who didn't look Japanese could not possibly understand their language
This happens in every country, just as we assume young children are ignorant and old people are deaf and senile so we speak more slowly to them.
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- however Japanese language is so deficient in vocabulary and acurate expressions that it has to borrow thousands of new words from other languages every year
Every language has words that are interchangeable with another. But yes, Japanese uses a lot of foreign words, but so does English (especially American English) and French, Italian, Spanish, etc.
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- the structure of Japanese language is so inflexible and clumsy (no relative sentences, few tenses, few nuances) that Japanese people end up speaking with isolated words (often adjectives, see below) rather than making full sentences.
Heh, come to NE England and you will witness the same phenomenon. People drift off in the middle of sentences and replace words with clumsy hand gestures. Some people (everywhere) grunt and glare as a form of communication, lol. If we can find a way about getting a point across using as few words as possible, we will. We are very lazy.
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- they tend of lack sexual morals and don't mind cheating "as long as their partner doesn't know"
This happens all the time in other countries. As long as people can get away with it, it is 'alright'. They are cheating on their partner? It's alright, they don't know so it won't hurt them (the person cheating). Often people want to cheat but don't because of fear of losing the security they have (ie. a partner's status or income). If they can find a way of getting away with it, they will do it.
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- they have casual sex with several partners without protection and don't worry about STD's
[sarcasm]That's why STDs and unwanted pregnancies are unheard of in other countries.[/sarcasm]
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- they have a computer but don't know much how to use even quite simple functions, due to a lack of interest for technology
Most people own PCs or moble phones or whatever because 'they are useful' but don't have a clue hwo to use them. It is true everywhere.
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- they throw away a dysfunctuning electronic equipment (e.g. computer) or machine, rather than try to repair it
I do that because more often than not it is cheaper to buy a new one than to have the old one repaired. And if you buy a new one there isn't the chance of the problem coming back.
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- they call an plumber, electrician or carpenter to repair things in their house, because they are not interested in DIY (Japan is a service country par excellence, due to people's lack of knowledge or interest in a wide array of things)
Nobody likes DIY. We often attempt it ourself, make things worse and then have to call in an electrician/plumber/carpenter to fix the mess that we made worse. So it's usually more time and cost-effective to call a service straight away than attempt anything ourselves.
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- they go to juku after school because they sleep or are too slow to learn at school (slowing down the teacher's rythm) and can't assimilate the necessary knowledge to pass the exams. They still end up learning much less than European children in foreign languages, history, geography and critical thinking.
Quite a few people in my year got few or no GCSE's. GCSE's are the exams you sit in England at age 16 and without them it is very difficult to get a decent job or to get anyone to take you seriously at all unless you go to college and do more courses. Most people I know (and most people my age) know no foreign languages (other than how to count), couldn't point out Peru on a map or name all the English monarchs. In UK schools we are taught no European history apart from the World Wars (and even then we only learn about the German side of things). And most children just aren't interested in school at all.
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- manga, porn and fashion magazines account for over 90% of convenience stores' literature.
In newsagents here you will find shelves full of porn, a fair amount of fashion magazines, one or two movie/music magazines and a couple of kid's magazines. We have specialist stores for manga and comics and even then they are still sold by major book stores.
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- shops staff repeat "irasshaimasse", then "domo arigato gozaimashita" like robots to anybody that enters or exit, even if the same person comes in and out three times in 5 minutes
I am reminded of a time my friend and I kept walking in and out of Gap just so the security guard would say 'hello' and 'goodbye'. In some shops (particularly shoe shops) staff will say 'goodbye' and 'thank you' if they see you leaving.
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- they can't think by themselves, and believe the media, commercials or what people tell them much too easily
I believe you just summed up America and a vast portion of the UK right there. The amount of times I've got or heard someone being got with the "Do you know they are removing the word 'gullible' from the dictionary?" line is insane.
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- they buy on impulse rather than after careful comparison and analysis
A hell of a lot of women do this. It's called impulse buying and sometimes we return the items, sometimes we don't. I VERY rarely go out looking for something and when I do I usually end up buying something else on impulse. Though now that I'm trying to save money for university I make myself think about whether or not I will use it and if I really need it. It has been hard, lol.
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- they are a nation of followers that suffer from the "sheep syndrome" => if every jumps in the river, let's jump in the river too ! (i.e. lack of critical and independent thinking)
And Western cuontries aren't like this? There's the fashion bandwagon which everyone jumps on. If one of the Beckhams does something, everyone does it, if Madonna says something is cool we all think it's cool.
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- as a result, when something becomes fashionable, everybody must have it (e.g. Louis Vuitton handbags), even if that means it looses its uniqueness or originality.
There is no such word as originality where I live. If someone shows up for work/school/whatever with a new, original, funky piece of clothing everyone will turn up the next day wearing a replica. Louis Vuitton is as common as anything else in the UK now. Granted, most are knock-offs but they still look the same.
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- when a restaurant is "introduced" on TV, one can be sure that it will be full to the brim for the week to come, then people will forget about it as quickly as they had rushed on it (just to show how influenceable the Japanese are).
When new things open over here they will have queues stretching around the block for the first week or so then after that they will be virtually empty. It's called a fad, they come from time to time.
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- they think that most women are just good to serve tea, smile, be beautiful and make children (I mean, the cultural influence is so strong that many Japanese women also think so, not just men)
True to a certain extent here. There are a lot of housewives, women tend to do most of the housework, cook, take kids to school, run errands and be there when their husband gets horny. Love comes into the picture sometimes. But a lot of cultures still have the misogynistic attitude that men are better than women, etc. etc. If they WERE better than women then why give them such obvious weaknesses (ie. one swift kick to a certain area would easily shut them up).
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- politicians are corrupted and inefficient beyond redemption, because they only care about themselves, and not the nation's welfare.
Are you describing Japan or the US here? Also the UK to a certain extent.
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- men don't mind paying huge sums of money just to chat with bar hostesses, because they can't get a girlfriend (sad) or feel that it give them some form of status (shallow)
Men don't mind paying huge sums of money to get a woman to sleep with him. And in a lot of bars in western countries, barmaids flirt with punters for free. Heck, in some places they will pour your drink down your throat for you.
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- not being married after the age of 35 or 40 can hurt some people's credibility or status, as people think that there is 'something wrong' with them
There is the stigma of the 30/40-something spinster/bachelor in most countries. Some companies prefer their executives to be family men to set a good example so being unmarried can hurt some people's careers.
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- they care a lot about marriage, but little about the eventuality of divorce, so that prenuptial agreements are almost unheard of, because people 'don't like to think that bad things could happen' - while Westerners cannot not think about this eventuality and be prepared for it. Similarily, very few Japanese write their testament. Japanese seem to worry a lot, but rarely about things that matter most.
We may have pre-nups (but not everyone does) and nobody ever thinks they will get divorced when they marry. If they did then what would be the point in getting married in the first place?
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- many Japanese fathers do not think that they have a role in their children's education. This is so culturally ingrained that in case of divorce, the mother almost always get the exclusive custody of the child(ren), and the father often 'never' see them again - and often doesn't care much anyway.
My mother originally got custody of me when she split from my father (they weren't even married), my friends with divorced parents all live with their mothers (apart from one who lives with her step-father). Most mothers get custody of their children. Otherwise there would be no 'Fathers 4 Justice'. And when you ask most dads for help with your homework it's either "I'm busy" or "ask your mother". (Yet when your grades come in they have no problem with letting you know their disappointment, even if you got good grades). Most of my friends with separated parents either don't see their biological father or see him very rarely.
