I forgot to add...

Nearly everything i know about Japan i learned form non Japanese sources.

Most countries you can learn about from people native to its culture writing for foreigners, but if you want to learn about Japan there are nearly exclusive foreigners living in Japan reporting.

Add the different way to write and that Japanese is an language you only learn if you want to visit the country, that it is on the other side of the world for europeans and americans and that the main export is manga, anime and techologie, it is very hard for foreigners to learn much about its culture or interact with the culture, learn about it.

Japanese tourists are hard to catch too for questioning, they move to fast, you blink and they are gone!

As long you do not have the patience to learn basic Japanese and spend a lot of money to travel there it is very hard to learn a lot about it, Japan is still rather walled in regarding the culture.

My interest started professional, i learned Cabinet maker and one of our teachers showed the class an Japanese saw who is better constructed than the european counterpart, otherwise Japan would have remained an country on the other side of the globe for me.