Ah, I'm a white American, but also fluent in Japanese, and I love Japan (though I live in the U.S. now).
While we're presumably mostly familiar with American problems, here are some I find with Japan:
- inability to question authority (found in Korea, too, I'm told)
- misogyny. Not explicit, but more implicit, just in that women get stuck with shit jobs and get sexualized in all sorts of bizarre ways. (I *hate* snack bars and hostess clubs, not to mention massage parlors.(
- lack of creative thinking. If it's not by the literal book, it can't be done. Countless examples exist. (There's a good one in "Black Passenger, Yellow Cabs," a book you can hate, but which has a great example of this involving ordering milk at Mr. Doughnuts.)
- concrete EVERYWHERE. Where is the fucking grass?
- absolutely no rights as a non-citizen, which is compounded by:
- racial profiling. Yes, even us white males.
- cigarette smoking EVERYWHERE. (Though last I saw Shibuya had prohibited it -- - in its main thoroughfares.)
- service fees for "nothing" abound at restaurants and izakayas and bars, and key money for apartments.
- etc.
BUT, Japan is super clean, I think the Japanese are by-and-large good folk (as are people everywhere, duh), and it is a BEAUTIFUL country when you aren't looking at concrete.
Also, to the original poster, if you think the U.S. sucks, well, I mean, really dude? Read some economics books, a lot of the huge political issues for the U.S. aren't really world-ending and terrible (e.g. debt... we do have to pay it down, and it will be paid down at some point, hopefully sooner than later, but it's not going to destroy the U.S. or anything). Also, I think the driving culture of the U.S. is unfortunate, BUT it is its own means of freedom of a sort. Anyways, it's a place, it's not so bad, be grateful that you can be here for now.