is it similar?

to break the laws of thermodynamics locally, you need to have an open system where the tally is made up elsewhere

is japan following a unified culture of choices the result of other people doing extra outside of japan?

You can't really break the laws of thermodynamics because they are statistical laws, not absolute ones.

When you have 10 atoms bouncing around you can pretty easily "break" the laws because you don't have the statistical mass for aggregate behaviors (what we call the laws) to arise.

So it's not really a law that entropy must increase, it's more a 99.999...% (envision a lot of 9's there) chance it will, and the number of 9's is proportionate to the number of energy points in the system.