Gosh, that’s hard to answer- I can’t speak for everyone, but my impression with most people is that of admiration. There are a lot of businesses who are trying to remodel their economics and public relation services off Japanese models and we’ve had entire art movements that have been influenced by their culture, although our efforts were never anywhere near the quality of the original. I guess the feeling that I’ve encountered time and again is that of “wow, I wish our country was more like that…”

Which makes it even more surprising and flattering when Japanese people visit our country and say such kind things, especially when they love something that, we imagine, is relatively obscure on a global scale.

Basically I’ve never met anyone from the UK with a bad thing to say about Japan, we’re pretty much a low-key fan club (and according to my history lessons we have been for a pretty darn long time) :Tb