As some of you may or may not have noticed, when I add names of
people, I generally put the surname first. As someone from the U.S.,
this is usually accompanied by a comma after the surname. But I've
adapted to just using the more Japanese style of putting the surname
first because... of good organization. It's the same reason I use the
24-hour clock and the YYYYMMDD formats, too: just great for my
organization needs and alphabetical is (generally) chronological as
well.

It's funny how the military, sports teams/coaches, and newspaper
articles will refer to people by their last name primarily, but
interpersonal communication is usually done via first name or a
nickname. I suppose it's better to use a first name rather than a
surname if there are a bunch of Smiths around, but yeah,
organizationally the "backwards" way works better than my country's
standard.

I'm also one of the few Americans who uses the metric system for GPS,
but getting this country to adopt the metric system as a standard is
not only expensive, but it would be met with quite a bit of
resistance. But that's another story...