I noticed this too, most japanese food taste like very light dashi or soy sauce and i’m not a huge fan . I cook, so I’m able to adjust/add flavor. If you’re interested, you should try rolled omelet with curry and garlic powder or ginger pork with some chili flakes. They’re pretty easy to make.
This is me but opposite. I've had the opportunity to eat Indian foods because I went and joined a feast in celebration of Holi (an Indian festival) and damn, full of spices, I tell you.
I love it, really, but as a Filipino who mainly grew up with salt and pepper as spices (we have lots of spices but the culture I was born at wasn't much on spices but rather, condiments... To emphasize this, we only have salt and MSG ready in our house as spices but we have different condiments [soy sauce, bagoong, ketchup (banana and tomato), sarsa (non-spicy and spicy ver), cheese sauce (three types), chili-pickled vinegar, sugarcane vinegar, vinegar, and a lot more]), so I was shocked at how flavorful the dish I ate was.
As a Japanese person... let me say that I don't like ramen lol. But it's not true that our food is tasteless or only like dashi/soy, truly traditional Japanese washoku is full of deep, natural flavour. Things like ramen or sushi is not all Japan has. The biggest problem is you cant get the same ingredients elsewhere, even within country. So every region has their own specialty food. It makes such a huge difference because the natural flavour of the ingredients is what makes the taste unique.
I don't live there now. I live in a very multicultural country/area now so I'm use to eating all different countries food, and like them all for different reasons.
That was me when I was a teen and had very high expectations of the Japanese cuisine bc everyone in the anime/manga I've watched/read makes it look very delicious. Lmao, the current me now though, loves the Japanese cuisine exactly because of the subtle and natural flavours.
It wasn't until I hit my 20s and I've had more opportunity to travel that I started truly appreciating the differences in other cultures' cuisine. Simple stuff like onigiri especially, has me looking for it for DAYS, and now I have a stash of seaweed and kewpie mayo at all times to make my own whenever I feel like it. Still though, personally, I find myself gravitating towards cuisine that are similar to my country's cuisine because that's what my taste buds feels at home with.
Lol I remember that I was an anime fan before I could taste any Japanese cuisine and I was very disappointed when I first tasted an authentic ramen because it was tasteless (all I could taste was salt and little umami) and didn't live up to my expectations. I tried other Japanese foods then and it was either gross/tasteless so when I read manga/novels praising Japanese cuisine endlessly afterwards, I just roll my eyes because I felt disillusioned.
Anyways, that was two decades ago. I can now eat Japanese cuisine and find some of them especially tasty lols but it's really not as great as it is hyped up especially when you're born in a country rich in spices. It truly depends on a person if their tastebuds likes your culture's food or not.