I agree, although I'll say that i worked in Japan for 3 years, 6 months of that I had a company car, and drove around in the Japan Alps, where they have wonderful mountain and country roads, which is I think why the Japanese also produce a lot of great sporty cars. True that in big cities, roads are congested and narrow, but leave the city, and there are lots of great, perfectly maintained roads, where people can open up their cars and have fun. Japan throughout its history has thrived on importing foreign ideas, products, technologies etc. and either improving on them or giving them a Japanese flavor. They do not hate outside advice, they listen very careful to what foreigners say, and pore over US research papers and technical data, while being very protective of their own. They also use foreign influence as a tool to undertake internal reform, which is difficult to do without the excuse of foreign pressure. They're equal to the German engineers, just different.
