PG-rated : 40 reasons to think that the Japanese are superficial

[Maciamo]

I agree that japanese in general are very interested in good food. However, I do not think that this makes them superficial.

The French and Belgian are also very interested in good food, but it isn't the main topic of conversation, even at the restaurant !

Most people in the west eats crap food even though they could afford to eat much better food.

What is the West for you ? North America and Scandinavia ? Have you been to a country called France and another called Italy ? Hint : that's in Europe, a bit more south than Danmark.
Btw, food in Japan is much cheaper than in Europe. You can have bento, a tendon or Chinese food for 3 or 4 euro, and a set of 12 sushi for take-away cost only about 5 euro.

This lack of sense of taste and quality can hardly be taken as a proof that people in the west should be any less superficial than the japanese.

No it only proves your ignorance about Western cuisine.

The socially accepted outlets for so-called intellectualism, solitary reading of books and newspaper publication sales are near the highest in the world.

If only what they were reading was intellectual. I repeat myself but you won't find any intellectual magazines in a Japanese convenience store, just manga, porn, manga with porn, tabloids with porn and fashion magazines.

If what they read was so "intellectual", how comes they would remain so ignorant of things of the world, so ignorant even of their own history ? This shows how casual an activity reading is in Japan. It's not because Japanese students spend more time studying during and after school than almost anybody else in the world that they learn more. In fact if they didn't go to school at all, and didn't read any books as adults, it wouldn't change much. I often feel they have no memory, or no sensitivity to understand what they are reading. I have been a teacher and I was in a good position to know about their memory.