Tech industry needlessly idolizes the country, so you're unfortunately bound to read this slop until the heat death of the universe.
Its because deep down they know japan has something which they destroyed with there ideology and hate in there own country.
It's an age thing. Most HNers are in their 30s-50s so would have been impressed by Japan in the 1990s-2000s.
Japan is a decent country but everyone who writes about it tends to overindex on the posh parts of Tokyo.