The Japanese culture from my perspective (I happen to know a couple of Japanese people, a friend of mine has travelled there extensively) is one with big opposing forces. The culture has a chasm that's hard to comprehend for westerners. It helps if you grew up being exposed to Japanese games and comics. I've been exposed to quite a few Anime / Japanese animation stories as a kid - for some reason Japanese Anime is often inspired by European culture with European like settings.

Yes there is a lot of cuteness in the Japanese art and culture... yet at the same time the Japanese culture is quite harsh and demanding. Even more so than in the States or Europe. Businessmen pretending to have jobs for extensive periods of time when they get fired and when that facade breaks - committing suicide by the dosen. Kids having to go to extra schooling during the weekend just to be able to keep up and be able to go to University.

The very crowded surroundings in the big cities and having to travel the subway in such quantities that there are actually special people physically forcing more commuters into a wagon would make a lot of westerners angry or even agressive. But the Japanese behave very very politely. Conflict is avoided to keep things running along smoothly.
The supermodern busy cities compared to the ancient traditions and buildings and history of Japanese culture.

Videogames are a way to express that bottled up anger and stress - violent and horrific battles can be fought, things that can in no way be done in real life can now be done within the realm of the videogame. That's probably one of the reasons videogames are so big in Japan.

Western society and Japanese society are radically different where the way people interact and make deals is different - of course people are people and many things are also similar - so different that business can easily fail because the gap cannot be bridged. Even Europeans and Americans are more different than first looks and experiences would appear them to be. In Europe every nation feels and acts and behaves vastly different from the other with diverse traditions and habits. Put a few Europeans in a room and they note those differences quite easily - and of course we are used to being surrounded by culturally different folk more then Americans might be. Come and visit and you'll see that Spanish folk are very different from Danish or Dutch people. Still when in America - Europeans feel a stronger similarity amongst each other than with Americans. I've lived in the States for a while and I can confirm this. Still American culture is very easy to get into for a European - going back to Europe truly was a reverse culture shock for me - not a big one but still there was one to be experienced. It gives me a pretty good insight into the subtle differences between Europeans and Americans. And believe you me - I've been mistaken for native in the past ;) "You're from Holland? Hmmm isn't that somewhere around Wako, Texas? Hmmm isn't that somewhere upstate New York...?" People would react surprised if it turned out to be Holland/The Netherlands Europe. But that'll only work if I'm surrounded by the American accent the entire day - I pick up ways of speaking accents and all in a couple of days sounding pretty native. If you hear me speak English now I'll no doubt have the accent of the people arround me in Holland. You guys (Bill, Matt, Mat) must notice that I do interact and behave a little different in staff gatherings than you fellow Americans ? Although I must say my stay in the US has sortof never gone away and I still feel sort of like it's my 2nd home away from home and I am at ease and know quite a few of the little nicknacks of the culture in various US states when I am visiting - so perhaps in my case this isn't that obvious :)

But let's get back on 'Japanese Cuteness'....

-= Mark Vergeer - Armchair Arcade editor =-