What time does the sun rise?

Yesterday I wrote that the days are getting longer day by day. That reminded me of one thing.
Whenever I travel to Europe, I realize that the dawn is very late. For instance in Paris on the midwinter day, the sun rises as late as at 8:40 while in Tokyo at 6:50. But if you look at the sunset time, they are not so much different between the two cities. What it means is in European countries, which are located very north, set their standard times in favor of day hours. It is, according to my theory, because daytime is quite precious in winter. As a matter of fact in Paris, they have only 8 hours or so of daylight in the midwinter. If they set the time so that the sun rises at, say, 6 o'clock, Parisienne would have no time to enjoy outdoor lives on weekends because it would be already getting dark at 1:00 p.m. and the night would quickly arrive at 2:00. This also explains the extremely late sunset in summer. When I went to Ireland I enjoyed golf until 10:00 p.m.
Compared with those countries, Japan is quite faithful when setting the standard time. The sun culminates at around noon. Does it reflect Japanese character that loves punctuality?
The picture was taken on my way to the office in Zurich, Switzerland in mid-October. At around eight, it was still dusky and gray.