It was primarily the former. Had I been in a jurisdiction where it was legal, it seems very possible I would have tried some of the alcoholic drinks—of course I

It was primarily the former. Had I been in a jurisdiction where it was legal, it seems very possible I would have tried some of the alcoholic drinks—of course I don't know this for sure, because that's not what happened. I didn't have a strong desire for it at the time, so it's not an ideal test case, but neither is it an isolated case; other situations with age-restricted materials or activities went very similarly. (I'm eliding and slightly distorting a lot of surrounding details both because my memory of the time is often fuzzy and because I don't feel inclined to detail too much of my ancient personal life here. The central points, however, I'm clear on.) It might be worth adding, to circle back toward the original topic, that while I notice that this isn't “normal” in much of the US (where I live), people around me have wondered whether I got this tendency from somewhere else. (In fact, I had one (non-Japanese) Asian immigrant parent, and while that one was quite chaotic about following the local laws, it's possible that more indirect connections had strong subtle influences.) Some societies are much more regimented and/or conformist, and Japan is frequently described as both (not that I would know what bearing it has on these specific questions). The “natural pattern of rule breaks” is not universal, neither in cultures where it's nearly-expected, nor between cultures.