I very rarely suggest edits to HN titles but I feel like adding "for two hours" makes the title a lot truer than the New York Times' one, and that after you have the true title with the "Wow, Japan, how charmingly inscrutable" removed from it, there is very little reason to read the rest of it.

Abacuses are a niche hobby in Japanese schools, in the same fashion that e.g. competitive poetry recital is a niche hobby in American schools, and are factually not taught in the fashion that e.g. poetry is taught in American schools.