Thinking back about this, I guess I actually have seen plenty of people here complain, and I'm all too familiar with getting elbowed by obaasans fighting to get on the train before me or up the stairs out of the station. (As an aside, you really have to wonder what they're thinking when these little old ladies with canes deliberately charge into your back--do they think they're going to push you out of the way?) At my office, for example, there's plenty of complaining but as others have mentioned, it's never done directly, and it's never done in front of the person involved which is why this really surprised me. I'm working at a more traditional Japanese company, and the few times I've said something on the more direct side, no one was really sure how to react. I also for example accidentally knocked over my coffee cup one morning last week, and let out an expletive which really freaked everyone out.
Back to the airport...you had to be there, but what the guy said was I thought really direct (for Japanese), and the situation was really not much of an inconvenience at all--we were still getting back to Tokyo on time. That's what got me to wondering if Japanese people in general were particularly irritated by delays since almost everything here is so punctual. The two Japanese people I was with (one from Kobe and one from Kyushu) were also a little annoyed, but nothing like this guy.
But, I guess in addition to delays, you also have to watch out for running out of Japanese meals and cheap daicon
...
Unmatrix, that story about the NEX is great, but were you going to the airport? If you were delayed 40mins going to NRT, that could really be a problem. I sometimes cut it a little closer than I normally would banking on the trains almost always being on time.
Alex