On my second trip to Japan, when I was going back to Narita airport, I met a Canadian guy sitting next to me on the train. He had come to visit friends that moved from Canada to live there. So he basically only had the cultural learnings from Canada/Western pop culture about Japan to go on.
He told me he was really surprised that Japan has McDonalds and things like that. "I didn't expect Japan to be so modern." were some of his words. His idea was like Japan is still slanted roof little buildings, everyone wearing samurai gear and kimonos, oaring little wooden boats and pulling little wooden carts around and so on.
At first, I thought "wow you don't know anything." But lately I see that's pretty normal. How would someone from the West have an accurate picture of Japan without delving into it? Pop culture distorts it and that's what everyone sees. Well, it's not only pop culture - my middle school world history class focused the classes on Japan by watching "Shogun."
Later, the Canadian guy wasn't sure which terminal of the airport to get off at, there's 2 of them at Narita, each is a different stop on the train. I asked a Japanese guy in Japanese about which one, then told the Canadian guy the answer. But he didn't trust me so when we arrived at the next stop he ran around outside the train in a panic yelling for someone that speaks English.
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