TL;DR: Japanese treat the worst type of job as if their lives depended on them. If I ever see a Japanese tourist with problems, I'll storm the gates of Hell to

TL;DR: Japanese treat the worst type of job as if their lives depended on them. If I ever see a Japanese tourist with problems, I'll storm the gates of Hell to help them. :-) I went to Japan for vacation a few years ago. I have some bad allergies so in many small stores (conbini?) I went up to the cashier with some stuff and a machine translated note about my allergies. The cashier seriously read the content list of everything I brought, then made two piles of things I can eat and things I couldn't eat. Every damn time. We are talking almost a statistical sample here. That wouldn't happen anywhere else I've been, or even heard about. [Edit: I do claim to know this better than patio11, since he knows the subject area a thousand times better than me. He is too close. Do ask him about why/how, I saw the difference. And yes, I come from a place high on the social trust scale. There is still a big difference.] Edit 2: About the subject matter of renting friends, buying used underwear, etc. You need to make a difference between common phenomenons and extreme phenomenons in a tens of millins of people area. The tail end of the Bell curve with so many people is weird.