Australia and New Zealand should be quite close, too.
So why aren't Japanese expatriates more common? Language?
This is because nearly all of the language education focuses on rote memorization, and oftentimes students who go 'outside the box' and learn to speak properly are punished.
My fiancee, a Japanese national, was bullied in high school for her 'weird' English... because she was the only student in the entire school who took advantage of the American teacher provided through the JET program.
Friendships are the second problem. Japan is a country where your friends are dictated by and large through group affiliation, although that's slowly changing. Making friends by talking to, say, the stranger next to you at a Starbucks is pretty unthinkable.
Third is arrogance; the idea of 'when in rome...' doesn't seem to exist here.
For example, I once had a group of Japanese 'friends' insist that it was totally okay to be amazingly rude by American standards, because their actions were fine by Japanese standards. Things like making plans and then never showing up, 'forgetting' to pay for their fair share of the beer, etc.
Fine logic, except we all happened to live in California at the time. Needless to say, I don't associate with these people anymore, but it's worth noting that few of them stayed in the country, and that even the two that kept on in the U.S. spend all their time with 'Japanese' friends, and have made zero effort to really integrate into the local culture.
I don't think it's a cultural thing - some people just decide to stay outsiders, and a subset of those people are rude by anyone's standards.
When I was in grad school, the Chinese students formed their own secret society to the extent that non-Chinese might never even know their name. Indians also had a secret society, but unlike most of the Chinese, they individually interacted with the outside world. Israelis, Russians, Koreans and various flavors of African all integrated more or less completely with the outside world.
In concrete terms, Chinese math students joined the Chinese soccer team and had Chinese advisers. Indians had secret Indian parties, but they played on the Math soccer team. Russians invited people of every nationality to the Russian vodka drinking parties.
Yes, but Russians have been using the ploy of "getting the foreigners drunk" for centuries! This has been a key element of their government's diplomatic strategy forever, and I hear that it's often used in business.
Similarly, where I went for undergrad, Koreans tended to have their own groups. Clearly they don't do that everywhere, and not all of them did - there were just enough of them that didn't want to integrate that it was easier for others to choose not to. A segment of any group does it if they're a large enough minority - it wouldn't be fair to criticize one particular culture for it.
Number one and three seems like common problems for people from large cultural environments. French/US/etc live in, more or less, a complete world without traveling internationally or learning languages.
The second seems just weird, but Japan's weird culture is what captivates gaijin. :-)
The program would obviously address Problem 1 and Problem 3 by being structured to ensure that new "interns" are immersed in an environment with new norms for language and culture.
Problem 2 would be addressed through a school-like structuring of the program -- everyone knows how to make friends in school, even if it's the introvert's 1 true friend. At the very least, people have the shared experience and come away with a circle of acquaintances. Structure the program so that this circle includes lots of natives.
The advantages of such a program would be obvious -- highly valuable cultural and language skills. If spending a year abroad working as a server is attractive because it's less work and just as much pay, then such a program would be even more attractive as it would have all the benefits of a working vacation year abroad combined with those of internship. Those providing work to the participants would also benefit by getting labor below market value.
I saw a survey recently that said the number of young Japanese who have no desire to live abroad is going up quickly. The very next day, I read an article about a big auto show in China, where one of the senior designers at Honda complained to a reporter that his young engineers were only interested in designing cars for the Japanese domestic market's needs.
Hard to say where it's going, though those are certainly disturbing ancedotes. I'm dropping down the rabbit hole; I start Japanese lessons in Tokyo next month, after years of dabbling in my spare time. I think there's going to be big opportunities for cross-cultural folks there.
If you get here before that, I'd be happy to show you around a bit. I speak the language pretty well (patio11 will back me there), and I'd love an excuse to hit a rooftop beer garden with a fellow HNer.
Back to squashing bugs and rolling out my shiny new search parser...
Those with good conversational skills aren't necessarily those who score well on standardized tests, and vice versa. Moreover, to get a work visa, those who can speak a foreign language well still usually need to have another marketable skill, particularly in places where the law requires a business to prove they've made effort to hire domestically first - making things difficult for people who've majored in a foreign language or any field where there's lots of competition.
Most people I know hope to either get their TOEFL scores high enough to transfer to a foreign school, or get into a job that will let them transfer out of the country.
Are you saying that many Japanese are seriously thinking about getting an international job?
(Or you know Japanese which work hard on their English?)
I spent a year at a Japanese university with a focus on foreign languages and international communications before getting a job here - so the group of "Japanese people I know" is definitely skewed toward the side of those actively working towards finding work outside of Japan.
(There is pretty much one exception here, and that is a young lady who wants to work as a freelance translator. Note that this has externalities for her life in other ways, particularly with regards to who and when she can marry.)
I think this explains much more of the issue than "culture", which is everyone's persistent all-purpose explanation for any difference between Japan and anywhere.
Export oriented companies ought to love getting Japanese people which understand the foibles of their customers?!
(I'm a bit scared to ask about that implications for "who and when she can marry"; sounds just too weird.)