Originally posted by qchan

Even though Japanese woman love fashion, I've hardly seen anyone reading fashion magazines on train. Fashion magazines are too big and heavy to carry when commuting.
Wat's funny is that the most common reading in trains are manga mags, which are 3cm thick, but far the most bulky (which is why so many are left in the trains once they are read...).

I've never been to France, so I don't know magazines there. I can't compare with Japan. My image of French people are intellectual and (I don't know but) they maybe have more variety of magazines than Japan.
Alright, I am not sure if there are really more magazines or a greater variety of them in France, counting all magazines, even those printed to just a few thousands copies and are completely unknown, but what is certain is that most people know at least by name and sight at least a few history, literature, arts or philosophy magazines. In Japan, ask anybody in the street or check insde a combini, and you won't find anything. Instead people know mangas.

That's surely a cultural difference, but that's exactly what I was trying to point out. No need for Americans or non French-speakers to contradict what I say, because the comparison only hold between France (+French-speaking Belgium and Switzerland) Vs Japan. And as every European knows (I am not even saying "French"), the average American is low-brow. That's interesting, because from an average American's point of view, Japan may seem like an intelectual country where people spend so much time studying (jukus, etc.), but from my point of view, Japanese don't learn much at school (from what they know about the world, their language knowledge, the little they remember about their own country's literature, religion or culture), study very little at school itself (I've been told that highschool student only had 25h/week, while I've been used to at least 32h).

Just a benign comparison...