I am born and raised in a sunny southern city and always admired nordics (from canada, north europe, moscow till japan) to excel at technology. Now in nordic town of 9 months of cold, I always witnessed due to snow, cold climate, and restriction to be at home most of the time, people focus more on brain work, and in south more on outside activities(cafes, dance) etc. That said, california is against my argument, but I find it really curious to understand which climate is the best one for programming; though I bet more on stockholm than hawaii.
Only a rather small part of Japan is cold (North of Tokyo basically, in terms of population the cold part of Japan would make around 15-20%). Most of Japan is between warm and subtropical. Okinawa is tropical.
Taiwan, quite similar to Japan in many respects, is tropical (same weather as Okinawa basically, it's quite close). I've been there recently for a few weeks and temps were in the 25C-32C range most of the time. Boiling hot. Yet this is one of the places of the world where more shit gets done and invented per capita. I was in a technology park, spending a lot of time in cafes, and it felt just like Palo Alto (but more on the EE side rather than on the CS side).
Now, these people have great beaches and a weather that'd allow you to spent most of the year if not all year in the beach, but they find a balance and are every bit as industrious as any cold Nordic country if not more. Same can be said for a good part of Southern China and South Korea.
It's a matter of culture, not weather. Responsibility and hard work need to be nurtured.
