Japan making so many cliques totally works against them. I'm sure it helped in the past when rival townships had to compete for scarce resources, but that is largely irrelevant now, and they need to work together.

There's too much unwarranted loyalty in this country. When I showed my friend my new sunglasses he asked where I bought them, and whether or not I bought them at a particular store. The answer is, my wife bought them as a gift for me off the internet. To which my friend replied, "I'd have to buy them at insert the sunglasses store he always goes to that charges a premium."

No you don't. That social pressure is causing him to cave in and in the process be ripped off. This is like a unwarranted loyalty, or perhaps 'friend' tax. There's no reason to charge that much money. It is possible to buy things much cheaper (I'm talking at less than 70% of the price on offer) so you're basically getting ripped off, and for what? Faux friendship?

Another example that grinds my gears (haha) is when it comes to tourism. Where I live, the place is tiny and hardly ever appears on the world map. The towns here feel like they are competing against each other, so they all work separately, and with varying (read: bad) results. The irony being that Japan is built around the community. It's just the community is so tight-knit, that there's no thought for the wider community. Think global, act local. My ass.

New Zealand tourism is an example where working together can have positive impacts. The tourism industry there is doing quite well, and I put it down to having centralized power, and true co-operation.

In other words, my challenge is to unite these cliques somehow into doing the extraordinary. Not staying with the status quo.