One of our local guys drove me to some meetings in an E9x BMW 320i and he was commenting that car engines are bigger in the US. When he goes to the US and rents a Toyota, he said it's much more powerful than the same Toyota model here, like it will be a 2.0L engine in Japan but a 2.5 or 2.8L engine in the US with a 3.0/3.2L V6 option.
Then yesterday I got to ride the semi-local bullet train (which doesn't go as fast as the long-distance express bullet trains) and it went really, really fast, something like 180 or 200 km/h. The rails are super smooth so you see the speed but don't feel it except when you're in a station and see an express train go by without stopping.
Driving around I saw one guy driving with an old Aston Martin, but almost everything else on the street is Toyota, Honda, Suzuki, with a bunch of trucks and buses and a sprinkling of BMWs and VWs. Haven't seen any muscle cars. Haven't done any driving myself in Asia--last time I drove in a foreign country was many years ago in Germany (or a few years ago in British Columbia, Canada, which doesn't feel very foreign at all).
Taipei had armies and armies of scooters; Tokyo has more bicycle riders than scooters.