What the hell is a Japanese RPG?

Okay, so yesterday I was screwing around on the internet like I always do and stumbled upon some Final Fantasy XIII coverage. Cool. I'm a big FF fan, though some would say "freak," so I read through most of it. The thing that struck me though was not the radical change in gameplay, but use of the term JRPG, mostly in the vein of 'JRPGs suck and America is sick of them.'

This is a bit puzzling to me because I didn't know that games were classified by country of origin. Does anyone call Halo an 'American FPS'. Didn't think so. This is pretty beyond stupid, because as we all know, most games come from japan. And yet Mario isn't a Japanese platformer. No. This namiong trope is only applied to certain games. And by 'certain type' I mean games not for 18-24 yr. old white males.

Think about this seriously for a moment. Metal Gear Solid is pretty popular series despite being wierd as all get out and is created by the very Japanese Hideo Kojima. But nothing is ever made of the game's Far Eastern origins. Why? Cuz MEN like it!!! HOT BLOODED AMERICAN MEN!!!
We can't have them thinking they're playing something foreign. Oh no.

But take something like Final Fantasy, with its pretty boy characters and its large female fan base and all of a sudden it's japanese? I call bullshit on this, because it's done for no other reason than to other and discredit. using Japanese in this way means a lot and yet very little. If they want to connote that it's an anime-styled or turn-based game, they could say that and be more accurate.

This othering is really annoying and unnecessary.