It doesn’t necessarily make anything easier that the natural default of courtesy in Japan is, when in doubt, “maximum formality is employed.” To be honest though, I prefer the sometimes confusing formality of Japan to the curtness (or downright rudeness) of the US. Especially when it comes to customer service, the people pumping your gas in Japan are more friendly and polite than most waiters in Michelin starred restaurants in the US.
Funny, as a Brit I found the super-servile attitude of US waiters really creepy. And if anything Japanese service is less formal in a way that makes everything more efficient - you call the staff over when you want something (or to pay) rather than having to wait for them to come to you.
Yea there’s a weird disjointness where customer service or service industry workers can be relatively rude or arrogant in person, but online you get the super courteous maximally formal (although usually templated) emails.
Most of the stereotypical Japanese salaryman things exist in the US, they just exist a lot more strongly in Japan.
Are there companies with an overwork culture in the US? Oh yeah, definitely. But how many expect everyone to work, say, 9-7:30 at a minimum, plus some time most Saturdays, and to go out to the bar after work as a team multiple times a week? That would be extremely rare, maybe some finance companies and startups have that kind of culture, but not many.
I don't know if the US is necessarily that rude in comparison to countries other than Japan. It also definitely depends on the situation. Checking out at a German supermarket makes self checkout in the US seem friendly.
Tend? Perhaps. I've lived, worked and traveled all over the U.S. The smallest town I lived in was Sherwood, Maryland (population 44 at the time), and I now live an hour outside NYC. It really totally depends on the person you're interacting with, their personality, the kind of day they're having, the days they had before that. Culture certainly determines a lot of it, but that is harder to reduce to small town/big town dynamics. In America some of our most densely populated places (i.e. New Jersey) have some of the lowest rates of depression and suicide. People may appear to be ruder to each other in those places, or not, but something about the proximity of so many other humans creates some sort of social behavioral order that allows them to get along. People are strange, is really the tl;dr.
It seems to me that when you interact with fewer people per day, you can put more time and energy into courtesy. There's also a higher chance you'll run into someone again, so there's more incentive to treat strangers well. And small towns tend to be less diverse, meaning there are fewer incidents of rudeness resulting from different cultural expectations.
My tl;dr would be "the US is big and complicated." I've seen people working stressful service jobs be incredibly polite in Houston, and baristas being checked-out jerks in small-town Colorado. Overall, I would say that people tend to be more polite when they have more mental energy to spend. That tends to be in quieter towns, but not always.
