Culture shock is not OMG they eat X here. Culture shock develops slowly from the stress of being away from home and living in a strange land. You are long over people eating X or what ever, and then one day you're just sick of it all. Not exactly ALL of it, but you tend to fixate on the defects of the strange place you're in and you're in a perpetually bad mood, very similar to the stressed out shitty mood someone quiting smoking is always in.
Some of the points he makes are valid. There is lard in bread, I think that's MUCH better then the hydrogenated fats of margarine. Lard may not be good for you, but it is better then the alternatives.
And smoking is definitely bad for you. And as an European I feel that American corporate culture bleeds far too far into everyone's personal life, much like how the author feels about corporate partying in Japan.
The no-real friends thing also strikes me as something I can say about Americans, who from my perspective seem to have trouble forming deep adult friendships.
But the author and I have two options, get over it or go home.
The curious thing about culture shock is that it never strikes in the very first moments of awe when you just arrive. It takes a little while. But then you tend to get over it and then many months or some times years later it hits you again, and this time it is WORSE. And many immigrants/ex-pats never got over the second wave. They (we!) just end up pissed off at the host culture.
* EVERY JAPANESE POP SONG IS ABOUT THE SAME THING * Yeah, that's kind of every pop song period. And this attitude is a classing sign of culture shock.