During one of my many outings around the city, I noticed one particular Japanese restaurant that just bothered me somehow. And it was not the food because it was just like any other Japanese restaurant out there (and I'm not referring to Benihana.)
Anyways the name of the restaurant was "Mikado". Now one would expect, like the usual restaurants, the signage in the front would put "Mikado" in Japanese (ミカド) and then the English name under it. My understanding why this is done by ethnic food restaurants is because it brings a little authentic-ism (and to teach people a word in another language).
Confusingly, this particular restaurant had no Japanese characters adorning its facade, instead as I gazed upon it while eating at a restaurant directly across it, I saw three Korean words printed on the signage (미가도). Indeed the owner (safe to assume Korean) decided to use the Korean language instead to spell out "Mikado".
Now I have no problem with people opening up ethnic food restaurants that are different from there own, because let's face it that person cooking your pad thai is probably Mexican anyways. What I found wrong with that Japanese restaurant using Korean characters in the signage is that it just gives out the wrong message.
Picture someone not familiar with Asian cultures and all its nuances (okay basically anybody not Asian) patronize said restaurant, knows that he or she is eating Japanese food, thus would likely assume that those Korean characters he or she is seeing are in fact Japanese.
So my initial thought was "man, pretty soon they are going to think we all have the same languages too". This of course stems from the stereotype that we Asians all look the same ie. hard to tell apart between the nationalities and regions. It might not be too long before someone picks up something written with Chinese characters, and then proceed to ask a Korean what does it mean.
Of course the fact that the three major Asian language share a set of characters compounds the problem. Chinese characters, no matter how you say it (hanzi, kanji, hanja) are either being used or have been used in both Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.
As someone who had either learned or tried to learn all three major Asian languages, there are indeed plenty of similarities between the three. I am a firm believer in that once you learned one of them, the other two will come quite easier (or more confusing as things intersect haha).
So I guess what I am saying is the term "Asian" will always be a broad brush unless you physically live in Asia then the differences are much more apparent and appreciated (such as everybody hates Japan except for their electronics).