"For someone acquiring a non-native language, the difficulty of that second language is entirely dependent on that person's first language."

Yes indeed. Japanese, for example, may be the *easiest* foreign language you could study if you're already fluent in Korean.

Certainly, kanji is one of the difficulties – I name it one of the three things a person would find hard about learning Japanese ( http://www.homejapan.com/2008/02/whats_hard_about_learning_japanese ). It's a heck of a lot of work for Japanese/Chinese speakers, too.

But you're probably familiar with all the points in favor of Chinese characters, such as the vast richness they add to the written language, and even the way they arguably make reading easier and faster (once learned thoroughly enough). I myself vote to keep 'em (but then again, I would vote that way, having put in the time to learn 'em : ).

I cringe a bit every time a story like this pops up. Here come the myths, the misinformation, the wild exaggerations... Life was easier before the "anime/manga" fans took up their little obsession.

Well, let's be positive: This is a learning & teaching experience, right? So for the interested, a bit of debunking about Japanese:

1) "Kanji" is not a language.
I know, I haven't seen anyone on this page make that mistake, so I'm not pointing a finger at anyone here. Just at people out there who do think "kanji" is the name of the language – like Steve Jobs in his keynote a couple days ago. I had to write a debunking: http://www.homejapan.com/japanese-language-is-not-kanji

2) Japanese does NOT use "three writing systems". (That claim does appear on this page.)
Japanese uses ONE writing system. Precisely one. No more, no less. It contains multiple character sets, including Chinese characters (aka kanji), home-grown "kana" phonetic characters (with two variants, hiragana & katakana), punctuation & typographic symbols (including some from European languages), and Arabic numerals. Those all combine to form exactly ONE writing system.

It's nothing special. English uses multiple character sets, including Latin letters (with two variants, upper case & lower case), punctuation & typographic symbols, and Arabic numerals. All of which combine to form ONE writing system.

I haven't written a post on this one yet, but definitely need to. That "three writing systems" is a really common misconception. (Comment by Moridineas is very much on the right track, pointing out that the jumble of features and origins found in the Japanese writing system is just the normal way human language rolls.)

3) "OMG Japanese is so hard." Well, that's purely opinion, so I won't say it's right or wrong or a misconception or anything. I'll just add that there are learners with precisely the opposite opinion: I call it a wonderfully easy language to learn! There are plenty of reasons; see http://www.homejapan.com/2008/02/whats_easy_about_learning_japanese .

Lots more linguistic debunking at my site. But I'll refrain from further boring the good people here.

So, anyway. Fascinating stuff, and actually it's nice to see so many people take an interest. Let's just watch the exaggerations and stick to reality. (Yeah, like that'll happen. Who am I kidding? : )

"fluff... flecks of dead skin, fat, sweat and dust..."

So they found the Vista source code. Meh.

I can't believe this - yet another "the iPhone failed in Japan" article with NO SALES DATA to support the claim. Maybe it is selling slowly here in Japan. Maybe flopping miserably. But why make that claim with no numbers to back it up? Get the numbers first!

There are other reasons why Softbank might cut the price. End-of-season (that'd be now) goals. Inventory clearance for a new model. Or the biggest reason of all: a lousy economy. If the iPhone is sluggish in Japan, it's not the only thing; everyone from Toyota on down is bleeding money and laying off workers as sales slump for just about everything.

Even in a good economy, maybe the iPhone wouldn't succeed here. Maybe it would. Sadly, without any data upon which to base intelligent comments, we're still going to get non-stop uninformed punditry about market potential and breathless unproven claims of "cultural differences".

"It is - quite clearly - implicit in this claim, from your original post."

Er, no. Not a whit. If I am speaking for someone other than myself - implicitly or otherwise - then here's a simple question for you: Whom do I appear to be speaking for?

Honestly, I can't even guess what person/group you have in mind.

As for responding to all the rest: I fear we're both going to sound like pedantic parodies along the lines of The Comic Book Guy, so let's jump on the point of agreement: Be skeptical.

It's good advice in any field, including "cultural differences" - even when we have a person from Country X making claims about Nationality X. Common sense "show me why I should believe that" should still apply. (Smart observers have called the failure to do so "taxi driver syndrome" - as in, "My East Whatsitian taxi driver told me about East Whatsit poltics/economy/belief systems, so it must be true!")

So does Google Streetview present some special "cultural insensitivity" unique to Japan? We've got the claim, and it very well could have merit, but IMHO the claimant hasn't shown any support for it beyond "I say so". Until that changes, skepticism keeps me from believing it. You, others, and/or Google are of course free to make what you wish of the claim!