Maybe they need to watch more anime?
When your only real connections to another country involve ingesting a bunch of pop culture, it’s easy to get a warped view of that country. In our case, it’s really easy to look at Japan through our rose tinted shades and see it all as a happy, smiling place filled with peace, harmony and cat girls. According to a poll recently taken, we should all probably disabuse ourselves of that notion as quickly as possible.

According to research from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development based out of Paris, only 40% of Japan’s residents have indicated that they are actually happy with their lives. This is a steep drop from the OECD average of 59% from other countries that took the same poll.

Unfortunately the research didn’t really indicate reasons for the lack of life satisfaction which is unfortunate. The fortunate part is that I can speculate all I want about these findings on my own. It’s sad that so many people in Japan aren’t happy with their lives but maybe our gaijin eyes can help a little bit. So what do you think? What could turn our friends in Japan from this…

I think it is because their society is so focused on the all for one idea. People put other people before themselves, and there for end up doing things they don't want to do, or having friendships that are only held together by social normals.
"The nail that sticks out gets hammered down."
It makes the country as a whole amazing, but it hurts the individuals of that society. It's also a very sexist country.

That's probably because most of japan just got destroyed? how would they possibly be happy right now.

>>4

The majority of Japan was untouched, in actuality - only the outlying coastal regions were affected.

>>5
I don't know exactly how much harm was done in Japan, but I'm guessing that a natural disaster like that could potentially throw off statistics because it reduced the morale of the whole country. Also, you have to account for friends, family, etc. that were indirectly affected by other's loss.