Actually, a major aspect of Japanese culture is fatalism. We like to sit here on Reddit and talk about how calm and orderly they are in an earthquake, but a big part of that is that Japanese culture teaches people to quietly take any hardship in silence - from bullying, to illegal treatment from employers, to dying in an earthquake. Who cares, there's nothing you can do about it. Accept it silently.

And go ahead and call that "ethnocentric," but I do live in Japan, and I can absolutely assure you that the culturally conditioned response to hardship and complaint is, "Well, there's nothing I can do about that."

Not to be a dick. Not to be ethnocentric. But cultures have two sides to their coins. On the one hand, yes, Japanese people are calm and orderly, nonviolent and nonconfrontational - they are well-organized and don't complain. That's great, and it makes them strong. When Japanese people put their mind to something, very little can stop them accomplishing it.

But they are all of these things at a cost - they are not particularly passionate, they strive for growth but not change, they don't always care about the people around them, and they are happy to let the people commit all kinds of petty crimes without reporting or confronting them.

One thing about all those crowds of calm, orderly people you see - one reason for that is, when Japanese people do commit crimes, people don't report them and they don't confront the criminal in question. That's a big part of the order - there's tons of petty crime happening in Japan all the time. It's constant and blatant and unrepentant. Running red lights, illegal gambling, gropers on trains, sexual harassment, labor law violations. Japan is just plain rife with crime, and yet it is a nonviolent, calm, orderly society. Why? Because Japanese people are happy to let criminals commit crimes. They don't confront them, they don't start fights, they don't call the cops.

A groper on a train in Tokyo won't cause a scene. The woman will stand there, silently, accepting it. The people watching will look the other way. In New York? A man gropes a woman, she starts a fight, she slaps him. The people on the train shout at him. We look at that and say, "Oh, Americans are so violent. Americans are so unruly. Japanese people are so peaceful and calm."

That's not "ethnocentrism." That's a pros and cons list. America: people look out for each other; the result is an unruly society willing to commit violence, often to protect other people. Japan: people look the other way when petty crimes occur in order to maintain a peaceful and calm society, unwilling to commit violence even in self defense. Can we honestly say if one is better than the other? Can we not honestly and openly say, "Hey, I personally prefer a society where people are willing to fight for strangers' safety"? Is that ethnocentric, or is that just weighing your options?

As an immigrant in Japan, there are days where Japan doesn't work for me, and I want to go home. I'm tired of living in a country where traffic laws have no meaning. I'm tired of being surrounded by constant, blatant crime. Japan is wearying if you live there. Peace, calm, order - none of that is free.