30+ years ago, when i asked the only practicing buddhist i recognized how i might become a buddhist, she told me, one should move to Japan, become fluent in Japanese, study in japanese for about 20 years, and maybe then a westerner might start to get it.
it seemed obvious to me even then that if Buddhism was just a cultural phenomenon, time was better spent otherwise.
edit: my question to her was not coming out of nowhere; i had been taking her classes in an academic setting for two years by then. 