It’s not surprising. They have a strong cultural identity and their whole country is far nicer and cleaner than any country I’ve been to.

Most immigrants here (I live in SF) are to be completely honest, not from very strong cultural identities. I’m an immigrant too, and my own people aren’t that strong with their cultural identities. After all, we GTFO’d the moment we or our parents could. Whenever I’ve been back I hated the filth and pollution everywhere, and the lack of care considering the litter and trash everywhere. It’s gross and sad.

Japanese people are happy with their culture on a broader level. I’m sure they have their problems too. Everyone does.

When I visited Japan I was so blown away by how proper and organized people were. It inspired me to live a more organized life. I went all over in both cities and rural areas, never saw trash. People were kind even with the language barrier. Even their homeless (they only have like 20k total) were polite and organized.

In a collective culture like Japan, you take care of your responsibilities yourself to improve the collective good. It’s basically the opposite of the tragedy of the commons in individualistic cultures, IMO.

The nail that sticks out gets hammered not because of a requirement that you conform, but because you’re not doing your responsibilities, so someone else has to do it.

America is much more conformist than Japan, it’s just than in Japan you’ll work a mediocre job and enjoy it because that’s your role and you appreciate that you’re a part of a whole. Whereas in America you might be able to theoretically do “better”, but there’s no safety.

> The nail that sticks out gets hammered not because of a requirement that you conform, but because you’re not doing your responsibilities, so someone else has to do it.

Unfortunately, in practice it's ingrained by a tonne of instances of getting told off for minor infractions of seemingly very arbitrary rules, to the point where it's so ingrained that you just stop questioning it because it's not worth the energy to do so anymore.

Yea, it's not perfect, and for some it is probably very bad to be in a collective culture where they can't stretch their boundaries or do something too differently than is socially acceptable.

Personally: I have mostly lived in a super-individualistic culture which, perhaps weirdly, feels more oppressive to me than a fully collective culture might. I now live in a place that straddles the two, and it works well for me so far. I think that it would be a dream if everyone could move to the place that feels most at-home for them, but until the world learns to share and support each other more, that is just a dream.

The video where he interviews a lawyer on the Japanese "guilty until proven innocent" legal system was pretty scary if I'm being honest.

They apparently try to force a confession even if you're innocent as the alternative is to basically let you stay in jail for up to 23 days per infraction. There is no bail and they interrogate you without a lawyer present (lawyer not allowed). It's honestly made me second guess traveling there as a foreigner. I'm incredibly respectful of other cultures, but would be scared something weird would happen and I'd somehow disappear into that administrative nightmare. You can't even talk to your family until that period is over, so you just roll the dice and hope confessing gets you a slap on the wrist.

On the plus side, I know the cities are supposed to be super safe.

Well... in Japan perception is more true than reality, and its legal system is a manifestation of that facet of the culture.

His videos are well produced and I've watched quite a few of them, but it always weirded me out how much he says "Japanese" like he's figured out the algorithm will favor him more if it detects he's saying that a lot

Go to any of his videos with his wife, he'll consistently refer to her as "my Japanese wife"

Well the wife bit is probably to explain that she's part of the culture. If his wife was, say, French, it wouldn't really make sense why he's explaining what she does.

Hey, those weeb eyeballs can translate into good money.

My favorite episode is this [1], the owner is very unique in a way that he is a rare collector of hardcore punk CDs/vinyl.

[1] https://youtu.be/ky0YDKvGggo

I'm also a huge fan. Started watching him after a Japan trip. I like the format so much, I'd love to have something similar (day in the life) for various other countries.