For example, when you visit the San Francisco Bay Area, the actual posh areas are Marin, the Tri-Valley, and the hill adjacent areas of South Bay suburbs (eg. Woodside, Atherton, Saratoga, Los Altos, Los Gatos, Foster City, San Mateo).
Your average Japanese or other foreign visitor isn't visiting or staying in those suburbs nor would they be able to afford the hotel fees for hotels in those areas.
This is a major reason why Japan and Euro-trips have become fairly common amongst younger Americans now - renting a decent 4 start hotel room or Airbnb in a posh area of Japan that is out of reach for most Japanese comes out roughly the same as a middle-of-the-pack experience in the US because an American median salary is double the Japanese or European one.
Would even go as far as to say many comments about the place being trapped in the 80s or 90s don't match reality. For instance, the only time I've ever been asked to use a fax machine was by a US company.
Every time you read a story about some Japanese town offering people, even foreigners, money to move there and occupy an abandoned house, keep in mind this is a gesture of desperation, not gratitude,
The only reason it recently reversed in the US was due to COVID.
Second, many countries are modern in some ways and backwards in some other way. To label a country as modern or not is silly.
Here how it works: I build a porch today and my neighbor builds a pool. In 30 years, he builds a porch but I build a pool. If you cherry pick porches, I look outdated and he looks modern, but it’s reversed if you cherry pick pools!
Most finance roles in Japan almost exclusively hire Japanese nationals
> Japanese mega venture/US tech companies
They don't tend to hire foreigners in most cases except for Chinese (Taiwanese and Mainland) and Koreans