[Debi]

I've read your post and you indeed make sense.
But I just can't agree with you.
There is too much generalities in such statements.
You talk about huge populations (there is around 127mil japaneses) as being this or that but you base your judgements on very small subset.

I'm not a big fan of labelling such huge population as being this or that.

But I do respect your opinion. Japanese is indeed a fascinating culture and it's exactly for that reason I'm going in Japan next week. But like I said, Japan is not just one big box on which you can write "Good Listener" on it.