[ponker]

New York is absolutely not as "weird" as Japan. I've traveled a lot to the major business cities of the world and outside of Japan, all first world countries have a shared culture that gets stronger over time. The sights/sounds/smells/interactions/people you see walking down the street in New York/London/Paris/Stockholm/Singapore/Milan are more uniform than anyone in those countries would really like to admit.

Japan is the only wealthy country where everything is its own, necessarily making it "weird" to the rest of the world.