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As in last time's Commenting on "10 Reasons Japan Is Better Than America", here I comment on a post on the Hunter Nuttall website: 10 Reasons America Is Better Than Japan.

I hoped I could agree with many of the points in the article – but even more than last time, I found so much to disagree with. Here I go, with excerpts from the list followed by my comments:

1. Credit cards: I didn’t see a single place in Kyoto or Tokyo that accepts credit cards.

What? When was this alleged trip to Japan the author speaks of? 20 years ago? Here in Tokyo, credit cards are accepted at supermarkets, convenience stores, bakeries, florists, hardware stores, restaurants, rental agencies, pet shops, pretty much every retail outlet imagineable... heck, in many ever-lovin' taxis, even!

2. Water; 3: Napkins and toilet paper: In the U.S., every restaurant gives you water right away and will continue to give you as much as you want. In Japan, you don’t get cold water unless you ask for it... Most Japanese restaurants don’t give you napkins... And Japan has only recently begun putting toilet paper in bathrooms.

First, congrats to the author on picking up on an often-ignored oddity that I was going to write about; he beat me to it. It's true: there are restaurants that don't have napkins, and there are restaurants (though hardly all restaurants, as implied) that don't serve water unless you ask for it. (More annoying: restaurant staff which, when you do say "Water, please!", smartly return with one glass. "Uh, water for everyone at the table this time, please...")

With napkins, things are at least a little predictable. It's generally a small class of more "traditional" joints - mainly ramen, soba, and other noodles - that skimp on the serviettes, while the rest of the eat-out biz does provide napkins. What's unfortunate is that noodles are a dish that really do call for some face-wiping afterward, so the withholding is a bit of a mystery. Best to carry tissue at all times!

I suppose the culturologists will have some contrived explanation for the missing water and napkins at some establishments, but there's really a simple explanation: poor customer service. No, I'm not claiming that poor service runs rife through the country or the industry or even all aspects of the restaurants in question. Service in restaurants in Japan is overall quite good! But there are exceptions, and here we've got one. (Or two.)

That brings us to the final necessity, though. "Just started putting toilet paper in bathrooms"? Say what? There were, and no doubt still are, public toilets that expect you to bring your own, but for the most part, public toilets or those in an establishment will have TP. Again, I have to wonder what times and places the author is talking about. Maybe he chanced upon a restroom that'd just been "cleaned out" by a heavy user, and decided to label it a national issue. I don't get it.

4. Affordable fruit: Fruit is outrageously expensive in Japan. I saw some melons that cost $50...

Come on, folks, give it up already with the $50 melons. Yes, there are high-grade, perfect-quality fruit specimens given as gifts, and that includes $50 melons. But that's not what people eat at home or at restaurants! Go into an actual grocer's, and you'll find fruit and veggies at reasonable prices: a buck or two for a bunch of bananas, a few bucks for a nice melon or a bag of citrus fruit.

Reasonable, that is, for a big city in a country that imports most of its food; I'm not saying it's cheap by global standards. But it is cheap enough to be unworthy of comment. (Which is why lazy writers ignore all that and jump right to "OMG FRUIT COSTS $50 IN JAPAN!")

5. You can do things your way: One of the kanji characters is simply a box. But you can’t draw it however you like... The process is more important than the results.

If anyone wants to write about the weary "Japan is a rigid, do-it-this-way place" trope, have at it. But the above is a lousy example of the claim.

People in Japan do learn a specific order and direction for the strokes in a character. That's not because of some "process vs results" dichotomy, though. It's a practical matter: in flowing script, including typical handwriting, a standardized writing method makes the cursive results recognizable. Do-as-you-please stroke order and direction makes such script very hard to read - which sort of defeats the purpose of writing.

In other words, it is about results, after all.

When I was a young'un in the US, we learned writing using that paper with the little lines indicating the baseline for letters, the height of capital letters, where a "t" stops, how far down the "y" dips, and so on. All very controlled and prescribed; penmanship sure wasn't a lesson in "do things your way". How is that any different from the Japan example given?

(Finally, contrary to a later claim, one does not have to "go through 24 weeks of classes to have a rudimentary understanding of how to drink tea properly". If the author is referring to the hobby/art known in English as tea ceremony, that description simply misunderstands what's being studied.)

6. Relatively little discrimination: ...And they even discriminate against pure-blood Japanese, born and raised in Japan, who have ever set foot outside the country.

Yes, there's discrimination in Japan, as in the rest of the globe. As one interesting local example, employers in Japan are quite free to specify gender and age requirements for hirees, which I think would get a US company in hot water today (though maybe not so long ago in history).

Discrimination is a big topic, and books can and have been written about it. But the particular example given above is pure silliness. Traveling, studying, and working overseas are utterly mundane things in modern Japan, at least in the cities; outside of some oddball crowds, they will not get one ostracized.

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