What makes different cultures, anyway? It's true that every culture has characteristics to make it unique. Those characteristics include everything from what they eat to what they wear to their skills to their ideas and how they communicate. If the Japanese were just like us, well, they wouldn't be another culture. One shouldn't go around blasting broad stereotypes, but there are things people of a particular group have in common that make them unique compared to others. That's how we get different cultures. Right?
And Japan is actually closer to a unique civilization historically than simply another culture, so you can't argue the magnitude of difference between Chinese, Japanese and Korean men is similar to that of Norway, Sweden and Finland for instance.
At any rate, the point isn't to have an academic argument. It's a matter of common sense, really. If you have been around as many people from a particular culture as Enomi apparently has and still don't feel that the good outweighs the bad, that they're lacking in something you need, or have a fundamental sense of rapport with enough of them to matter, it may not be worth wasting any more time on. Not that I ever understood the idea of a particular attraction to the people as an entire people to begin with....
Did you start dating your boyfriend for the "novelty"?
No, we were basically thrown together over a period of time and forced to get along, not to mention waaaay too serious and considerate of other people around us to fool around so half-heartedly. Basically, the person should be the foremost object of your interest, but that doesn't discount the culture that has formed them either. It's fair to say he's entirely different than any American man I've ever known....but just because he's Japanese doesn't mean I don't sometimes feel bored at his reticence and 13-14 hour work days plus weekend afternoons/evenings, more like a sister than a lover, impatient that it has taken nearly 2 years to completely relax together. For anyone who thinks dating a Japanese person is going to be a mind-altering or magical, sooooo different other-worldly experience....
Do you suppose the Chinese, Koreans, Thais, Vietnamese, Indians, or the Bangladeshis would be more willing to make concessions to Western ways?
I would consider the Chinese I've known to be much more down to earth, intellectual and interested in foreign cultures. I haven't had enough experience with the others to know, but I would imagine you'd find plenty of potential partners in developing countries who would make concessions to their culture for a chance to marry a Westerner and immigrate out. Besides remnants of decades/hundreds of years of colonialism and now multinational corporations already dot the landscape in most of those places.
Could it also be possible that the Japanese have to have the temperament for dating Westerners?
Yes, certainly. They have to be openminded and tolorant (nonjudgmental) as a start, which I think a lot of them are.