Yes, the asset bubble was a major - perhaps the primary - cause of the collapse. But what I was talking about was the failure to recover. Basically, after the crash the government had to step in and force the banks to write off their losses, stop lending to failed companies, start lending to new ones, and get the green shoots growing again. They just couldn't do it. Just why they couldn't is the subject of countless books and essays but the result is not contested - Japan needed painful, wrenching reforms, and never got them.

Risk-averseness is probably the wrong word to describe this phenomenon but I didn't know how else to put it. Basically there's a cultural tendency there to try to keep the status quo at all costs. Risk averse, resistance to change, unwillingness to step up and be the one who proclaims the nakedness of the emperor - call it what you want, but what it boils down to is they needed to make a hard decision, and in the end, couldn't. Whether or not other countries could have is a matter for further discussion!

there's more rooms being built in CRE than there are people.

CRE? I presume you mean Chinese Real Estate? Really, there's over 1.3 billion rooms being built? I'm going to need a citation for that. It seems ridiculously high and, indeed, impossible.