yukio_michael talked about how "westernization" hadn't hurt Japanese culture all that much. I think this view can't be applied to many other East Asian countries at all. Japan as far as I know is one of the very very few countries that have been most successsful in keeping their own traditional culture. Japan takes pride in their own culture, while many other East-Asians cultures admire the West.

It is easy to find someone wearing kimono in Japan, walking around the city, going to Disley, festivals, etc. However, in China or many other East Asian cities, You wouldn't be able to spot any ordinary people wearing their traditional clothings at all, no matter, how long you look.

For some countries(cities), e.g. Hong Kong, adopting an English name is fashionable, whereas having only Chinese name(or name in whatever his native language is), is seen as old-fashioned. As far as I know, very very few Japanese have English name, Japanese people would think that their Japanese names are just as good as, if not better than English names, however this is not the case in some other East Asian countries.

I have been to Japan a few times, I really admire how Japanese can keep in touch with its tradition and cultures that much, and as the same time able to "modernise" the country. The tradition aspects and the modern (e.g. business) practices in Japan are intertwined together. (Sort of remind me of the pyramid in Louvre) However, in many other countries, areas, "modernization/westernization" tends to destroy their own traditions.

Another point is that, I am not saying if this is a good thing or not, but the fact is that the English language skills of Japanese people is far lower than many of its neighbouring countries. And language and culture are pretty much related.

Lastly, the differences between mordernization, and westernization has to be remembered, and these two words shouldn't be used interchangeably. While the former is pretty much inevitable, the later is not.

Linked to the above point is that, e.g. jeans, are adopted in other countries might simply because they are convenient, not because those countries feverishly admire the west. Even if completely separated from the west, these countries might develope jeans eventually. The west was simply able to develop jeans a bit earlier than other countries.

Also, I totally Silverbackman who in effect said that China worships the West simply because it is a communist country. In fact, the Chinese communism is very different from the western, e.g. Russian communism. All of the ideologies e.g. Capitalism,Socialism,Liberalism etc. have been amply discussed and written in the West in the past centuries because the social and political conditions in the West allowed it. The policy of a country just happen to coincide with one of the variants of these various ideologies is almost inevitable, whether the policy itself is influenced by those ideologies ot not (though probably they are). This doesn't necessarily mean that the country is being "westernized"