Hironobu Kageyama's Apology for the "Shinkansen Incident"

2/13

Regret.

Today I received a message from Lantis. It seems that passengers who were in the same car as us on the bullet train on the way back from Nagoya left extremely angry comments on blogs saying that we were very loud and a huge nuisance.

It's embarrassing, but this is the whole truth.

Just like it's been written on blogs, inside the car we had an afterparty, and we drank and got loud.

Now that I think about it, we must certainly have been a very annoying group to the other passengers in the car.

Is this how upstanding adults behave?! That kind of scum shouldn't talk about morals as if they were important!

Just like they said, we were thoughtless.

We were relieved that the live was a success, and on top of that we had been drinking, and we got carried away.

We were immature people. And that's over with.

To the people in the car with us that day, we are truly sorry that we ruined your precious downtime.

We regret it. We're really sorry.

From now on, since this lesson has been pointed out to us, we have learned from it and we won't do such a stupid thing again.

-Leader Kageyama

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Honestly, I am really surprised at this. I'm surprised that so many people on the train went out of their way to complain and become angry at the JAM Project (even hardcore fans); I'm surprised that they went ahead and issued an apology; I'm surprised that this is news in Japan.

Of course, the reason I'm surprised is entirely cultural. Can you imagine this kind of thing happening in America? Can you imagine, say, a rapper being called out just for being "loud"? Beyond that, can you imagine that rapper issuing an apology? (Now that would be news!)

I don't know whether I should say "Ohhh, Japan" or "Ohhh, America."

What do you think about this?