It’s natural for the Japanese to be more skilled at some things than folks in the U.S. or Europe. For example, the Japanese are certainly better at performing detailed, meticulous tasks such as designing small machines or perfectly painting Gundam models, and are also very creative when it comes to making new English words (Meltykiss, yum). Similarly, the Japanese seem to have an aesthetic sense that I think most Westerners lack, an ability to arrange something as mundane as food in a way that brings out its bi (beauty, pronoucned like “bee”), as you can see with bento and other types of Japanese cuisine. Another area the Japanese definitely excel at is dealing with the cramped and crowded spaces that are all too common here. At the Comic Market, the doujin convention held twice a year at Tokyo Big Sight, around a half million people need to make their way into the halls and find the artist circles whose books they want to pick up. Buying comics from popular circles means standing in line, which is extremely difficult to do when there are thousands of people milling all around you. Somehow, though, a line manages to form despite all the chaos, with the last person in line politely holding a sign that indicates that this is the place for new people to line up. One of the most important virtues for a Japanese person to have is gaman, the ability to endure an unpleasant situation, and you can really appreciate a society in which everyone understands the importance of being polite to others when there are that many people around you.
