No, I think Germany'a bureaucracy is quite efficient along the dimensions you describe, like PDF forms, but it still is generally a longer wait, and a lot of unhelpful unresourceful, unmotivated, personell. But on paper they appear more efficient.
My point was that just because Japanese processes look inefficient they aren't necessarily so.
You can get a lot of stuff printed out and processed by the Tokyo city halls in a matter of minutes (they look up your details in a DB). They also have a lot of paper piles, but that hasn't affected my experience.
There's still a lot to improve in Germany too. From a Northern European perspective the German bureaucracy is archaic and inefficient, though points for thoroughness. The main complaints would be
1. Lack of Internet services. This may be hindered by lack of national strong authentication? I'm not German national so not sure what the pain point there is.
2. Paper based. The paper is the document, instead of being a representation of a fact. I'm not used to storing paper. I assume this is also at least a partial reason to the astronomical side costs of apartment purchases.
3. Lack of communication between authorities. Granted, this may be by design as a privacy guarantee. Regardless, taking a paper from one place to another is inefficient. I'm used to, say, banks reporting my capital income to the tax office without me having to work as a useless mediator.
But Germany is the epitome of efficiency, no? That's what I meant. Japan always gets a bad rep but Germany should too. At least in Japan the staff is typically nice (excluding the immigration office as the only exception I know of).
Germany somehow is indeed seen as efficient. There's some truth there, in comparison to Southern Europe at least -- everything works and corruption isn't an issue -- but it's by no means a gold standard. I've started to call it "German thoroughness" instead.
My point was that just because Japanese processes look inefficient they aren't necessarily so.
You can get a lot of stuff printed out and processed by the Tokyo city halls in a matter of minutes (they look up your details in a DB). They also have a lot of paper piles, but that hasn't affected my experience.