First, I want to make it clear that I have tremendous respect for Japanese people and Japanese hams. We spent 2 years there and our son still has Japanese citizenship because he was born there. I got to know many JA hams and was impressed at how active and enthusiastic they were back in the 1970's.
Having said that, when trying to work a DXPedition in the Asia/Pacific area, one begins to wonder just how many JA's there really are???? It reminded me of a joke....
General Chesty Puller was a famous Marine general in WWII. He was interested in taking an island and had two Japanese prisoners. He asked the first one "how many Japanese soldiers are on that island?". The soldier said "oh, many, many, many. As many as the grains of sand on the beach". Puller sent him away and brought in the second prisoner. "how many Japanese soldiers are on that island?" This time, the answer was "as many as the stars in the sky". A Marine scout came running in with a report. "How many Japanese" asked Puller. The scout said "A whole damn potful of 'em, sir". Puller then said "Well, I'm glad we finally found someone WHO CAN COUNT!"
So, ham radio is alive and well in Japan and I welcome them to the pileups, no matter what their numbers are!
I've worked a bunch - 8 new band counters today so far, so no real complaints about the competition. I worked on the 160M antenna some and fixed a bad connector on the 80M antenna.