Way back when -- what seems like eons ago but was actually only three weeks -- Preston J. asked in the comments about ethnic groups in Japan. Well, the short answer is that there is only one ethnicity in Japan -- Japanese; it is a homogeneous society. Oh sure, various gaijin exist, most notably a significant Korean population, but far and away the overwhelming majority of Japanese citizens are of Japanese descent.
That isn't, of course, an inherently bad phenomena. I suppose it's probably a fact of life in most nations around the world. Certainly I noticed the same reality in S. Korea. But for some reason it wasn't quite so off-putting on that trip (more comparisons between the two trips in another post).
I'm not nearly as critical of the USA as some of my friends, but neither am I normally the type who is moved by patriotic strands of pop culture -- don't bother looking for a Lee Greenwood CD in my house. But as I experienced Japanese ethnic homogeneity over the last three weeks, I appreciated more consciously the diversity back home, and even felt a sense of pride at what successes we've managed in our grand ethnic experiment, despite the scarring failures of our past and the current flaws that are still with us.
