Something ridiculous is happening on the other side of the World

We are used to keep going by saying something like "we are not competitive enough" or "african runners are simply better than us". Maybe we aren't wrong (probably africans are actually physically stronger than us!). Anyway, what we can see is that on the other side of the World someone is working a lot better than us, and preparing "tons" of more proper runners.
This is the introduction anyone can write looking at the Ageo City Half Marathon results, where 290 runners from Japan ran below 1h10', which was won by the junior runner Kenta Murayama (1993) in 1h02'46''. Impressive. The comment of the race winner at the end of the half marathon follows: "The wind was really strong today, but even though we were running into a headwind a lot of the time I was able to deal with it and I think I ran pretty well. It would have been nice to lead the whole way, but I think I ran up to my current level and that that was pretty good. I ran 62 today but was shooting for 61, so on that point it was disappointing. I think I would have run a better time if I'd gone with 5 km to go, so I want to improve on that in my future races". More impressive. What is happening there???
Eventually, since we're going to have the FIDAL election very soon, I guess that a good point is just to to study what's happening there and the reason why it's happened, in order to work on a better Italian athletic federation, both from a runner's perspective point of view and for a better organization and co-operation between the different realities that are characterizing our Country...