I remember a Japanese family in this area. They had been here for over a hundred years but still kept up with their relatives in Japan. This family had become quite wealthy.
They made a trip to Japan to visit family. After only a couple of days they couldn’t take it any longer and moved into a hotel for the rest of their visit.
Japan is several orders of magnitude more compressed than Europe. Personal space, like that of a crushed commuter on a rush hour Shinkansen subway car in Tokyo, must be found inward. Such commuters can be seen standing in place supported by all the bodies pressed up around them with eyes closed as if they're taking a nap. Interior spaces of homes, offices, restaurants, bars, are all efficiently miniature. And unless one is raised in that compressed reality it is stressful.
Japanese-Americans are no different than any of us whose ancestors came from someplace else. I've got a colleague (San-Sei, third generation J-A) who felt completely alien when she visited Japan, and had the added burden of dealing with the reactions of locals to whom she looked as Japanese as them but reacted almost like Donald Sutherland in the final scene of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" when she opened her mouth.
Is that good or bad? What was it that they couldn't take in Japan?
Why, what happened? What's the rest of the story?
Maybe it had to do with having a brick for a pillow.