I can sort of get why people would not dig the first name thing. But at the same time it feels like a kind of cultural insularity, and a failure of imagination. Can people really not grok anything different from their own personal experience? My personal and cultural milieu is pretty informal and it would be weird not to call even the merest acquaintaince by their first name, but I really don't have a problem feeling the impact of the first name in Japanese stories. I see the same thing where people watch Shakespeare or whatever--they just can't even try to wrap their heads around different thinking, different social conventions, different institutions shaping people's lives. I think it's worth trying to stretch your empathy a bit.