yea i knkow... i struggled to describe the feelings i had about japan, this is the best i had lol. open to suggestions.

but primarily thinking of:

- nikkei/real estate not past its dotcom peak

- telecoms/internet infra generally 1 generation behind most other developed countries

- anecdotally seemingly very hostile/unstable politics especially to women and immigrants

- i vaguely remember some revisionist history around their ww2 atrocities?

IMO, the lower the real estate valuations, the better. Cheap real estate is one of the main points Japan has in its favor right now. Cheap transportation, cheap food, and cheap electricity all contribute to a healthy economy; cheap real estate is no different.

On the telecom side, as with so many others, Japan squandered their early lead by being extremely inward-focused, as usual. Despite their export-oriented economy and a few giants like Toyota and Sony, most Japanese companies are rarely interested in looking beyond their (shrinking) domestic market, resulting in "Galapagos syndrome", where diverse and sophisticated domestic technologies evolve in isolation from the rest of the world, only to eventually be crushed when global competitors catch up and subsequently pass them.

absolutely booming culturally though. food, tv, comic books, video games, trading cards all extremely popular the world over, which cannot be said for any other nation besides the US, which is almost 3x the size and hasn't earned that position on merit the same way Japan has

How about Rested on the laurels of its postwar boom?

1. For real estates, it's not bad. Agree for stock

2. Not true. Fiber is so ubiquitous unlike the US and maybe Germany?

3. For woman, it's changing but it takes long time to be applied to real world.

4. Such people exists of course. A problem is that a part of long running ruling party is linked to such people.