I can only support the points about Japanese maintenance. I have been flying into Japan for 30 years and their standards are very, very high. Ball achingly high sometimes, as you are delayed until a level of perfection is attained that in most countries and flight decks would have resulted in a "good enough, lets go" attitude, but I have never pushed them on that. If you have never experienced good Japanese aircraft line engineering, then before you die, do it.
But that is not the only story here. The extra cost of doing the maintenance "properly" as opposed to just OK does not explain the appalling costs of training helicopters in Japan.
You may have heard of the intermediation problems of Japanese industry. This means that between the spare part being dispatched from Torrance, and the part being fitted to the machine, and being certificated to fly again, there are many constituents that will take their cut, both government and commercial. It can lead to prices to change an oil filter being over ten times higher than doing it yourself under FAA or CASA, the two that I know.
Another strange aspect of helicopter operation and training in Japan which must be factored in to the overall cost is the legislation on training. I've posted this before so forgive me, but if you want to train an autorotation you have to file with the authorites. For one.
If you want to do another one, you have to land, re-apply (a couple of days) and get dispensation for the next. And so on. Which is why you get so many of these delightfully keen Japanese students in the US doing their CPLs.
There is much more. Hangarage, landing fees are all way above the rest of the world.
Look on this as your competitive advantage. If a country is so screwed that a service is way above the cost in the rest of the world, get in there and get their people out into your country. A helicopter school that I went to in Louisiana had half their students from Japan.
When the airfare from one country to another is cheaper than an hour in an R44, you can be sure that an arbitrage in the training market will occur.