Quote Originally Posted by GaijinPunch
I'd completely disagree here. When my wife and I go anywhere, even a city where we have friends live, she will spend almost no time with them, and about 90% of her time doing touristy crap... almost none of it food. Also after living in Hawaii, I see hundreds of Japanese monthly getting their pictures taken in front of the statue of the old King, which is miles from Waikiki mind you.
I think we just have very different ideas of what the word "culture" means. What I meant is that they don't learn about the country's history, mentality, society, arts, religion, customs, or any other interesting you'd find on a site like JREF about Japan or a Lonely PLanet guidebook or even better a 'Blue Guide'. I know they don't because I checked all the popular guidebooks my wife bought when we were travelling (chikyu no arukikata, etc.), and double-checked my local Maruzen and BookFirst bookshops and Japanese guidebooks have like 30 pages about food in introduction (+ pictures of food in the actual travel section) and almost nothing about the 'culture' I mentioned above. That is why I wrote to Lonely Planet to explain the situation and urge them to translate their books into Japanese. About one year later, the first LP in Japanese was published. Don't know if I influenced that or not, but anyway there was a lack on the market.

About the sex thing... if you're talking about men... well.. .what do you think American men talk about?
To tell you frankly, I don't know. But I never talk sex with any other men. What's the point ? And what can you actually want to say about it ?

I hate to admit it, but I think the money one is kind of misleading. It doesn't buy happiness, but it definitely makes many aspects of life a lot easier.
Yes, but that is not the point. Many Japanese think that money is happiness. It's a purpose in itself for them, not a means. When I ask them about their dream, it's always about being rich. When I asked dozens of them what happiness meant for them, the answer was always "having a lot of money" (or things that could be bought with money). No a single one mentioned love, raise one's children, self-improvement, learning, artistic accomplishment, being able to do something very well (eg playing an instrument or speaking a foreign language). With all the Japanese I have met, it was always limited to money and material possessions.

How do you think English came about? Japanese are just late to the game.
Good point actually. But the grammar and pronuciation of English also improved considerably with time.

Believe me, they can -- they just don't... at least not when you're around. I used to share these thoughts, but eventually learned I was wrong. Their langauge is FULLY capable of conveying such meanings... most foreigners learning it, however, are not.
I think they are not good at it because they don't like disagreeing. Avoiding conflicts (and therefore arguments) is deeply rooted in the culture. I didn't say they were better at debating in English, even those with very advanced English skills.

Again... is this unique to Japan? No way! In fact, America is 1000x worse! When I left the states for Japan, the X-Files & Seinfeld were at the top of the ratings. Both fiction, but you still at least had to think to some extent. Now it's American Idol and reality shows about fat people.
Sorry, I failed to mention that superficiality is partly shared by a sizeable portion of the American population. But again my point is not that such programmes exist (as they do everywhere), but that they make up a much bigger percentage of the total broadcasting time than on European channels. What is more, the US has hundreds of TV channels, so it's always possible to find some more intellectual stuff on History Channel, Discovery Channel, etc. In Japan, such channels do exist, but only because they are those American channels (and nothing else that I know of, without satelite).

I think it is easier to compare Japan with some European countries, because the number of channels available is more similar, and because of tax-financed channels like NHK, BBC, or their equivalent in other countries. The worst TV programmes in Europe, at the same level as Japanese TV, are the Italian ones. At the extreme opposite, once again, is the UK, with more documentaries, political debate, social analysis, etc. than one could wish for.

Same on this side of the pond. How do you think IT get such good jobs all around the world?
That's unusual where I come from. What I meant is that there are people who can't even use the control panel of Windows or don't know how to use MS Word. There is no need to take any lesson for that. If you don't know everything is explained in the help (although I never use it as I am pretty intuitive, but I understand that no everybody is good with computers). I was shocked to see the number of "Pasokon school" that tought how to use Excel or Word, the how popular it was. I browsed job ads on Japanese sites that had options for being able to use Windows (and they even specified the version) or Word in the "qualification" section. But who can't ? Are they going to ask whether they can read and write too, or if they are able to use an alarm clock to get up the morning, or if they know how to take the train to the office ?

My theory on this is that it would actually cost to much money getting it to the repair shop. Not everyone has a car... I never did. If I had to pay 3000-4000 yen each way to take a TV in a taxi to the repair shop... well... I'm 8000 yen into a new TV. Throw in the repair bill, maybe 28,000... for an OLD TV? I'd spend the extra 10,000 and get a new one too.
I didn't say that they should take it back to the shop. I know many Japanese that buy a new computer because theirs is "too slow" or because their HD is full. When I asked whether they had tried to uninstall some programmes, defrag the disk, install a RAM booster or even buy more RAM or a new CPU, they had no idea of what any of these things were. And I am not even talking about the old grandma that don't know what a PC is, but (young) business people who use computer everyday at work. Rather than even wonder at how to solve the problem, or make a quick internet search, they just throw it away and buy a new one (and it should be a brand like NEC, Sony or Fujitsu, because brand is status - but only when not combined with stupidity).

Guilty as charged. If you work 60+ hours a week, your time generally becomes extremely expensive. If it were between 20,000 yen or 3-4 (maybe a lot more) hours of me fumbling through a DIY book + the time it takes to buy the parts + the money it takes to buy the parts, I'd take the 20,000 yen any day, and go hang out in the park.
I know very few people who work 60h/week. 9 to 5 (or 6 or 7) jobs are still the most common in Japan. That is true for 90% of the people I know, and they are almost all salarymen and OL working in central Tokyo (Nihombashi, Otemachi or Marunouchi for most).

What about convenience store literature in other countries? I can't imagine a gas station with nothing but business magazines.
I went back home the 2 first weeks of January, I was surprised to see that any newsagent (even in train stations or at the airport) had such a variety of magazines (you know like the Japanese magazines you find at Maruzen or other bookshops), with all kinds of things like cars, history, travel, sports, cooking, gardenning, classical music, pop music, cinema, fashion, health, beauty, electronics, investment, real estate, archeology, celebrities, games, comics, porn, computers, TV programmes, news, economy, and always foreign magazines too. I have never seen a Japanese combini having even a third of this variety. But again, I am not sure about the US.