I agree. When I lived in Japan, I was invited to (local) friends' places often, including for a couple of kotatsu sleepover parties. It was probably more frequent than being invited to a friend's place in Vancouver.

Probably because most of my friends in Vancouver live in sharehouses or basement suites where they aren't allowed to have guests by their landlord, while my friends in Japan had small but respectable spaces that they had much more permissive ownership of.