True. Tight hierarchical social conditioning from birth. If reasonably fluent in Japanese and of European stock what is an all too frequent response to unorthodox queries? Shikataganai. In English that's usually translated as "it can't be helped" but the kanji suggest an even deeper meaning. A more literal translation would be: an official received methodology does not exist (so no action on my part will be taken). By extension this suggests that only received ways of doing things should be employed (which you should know already, gaikokujin). At least that's the way the social concept was explained to me by a Tokyo-based book illustrator friend with a philosophical bent during a recent visit.