It's 30 years to recover losses from the high. That sounds bad, but how long to recover losses if you don't count the ridiculous paper gains during the bubble? The point is you're cherry picking to give that statistic.
You gave a statistic that is meaningful only in the context of picking the worst possible date for comparison. Surely you can understand that.
I chose no dates. I described what happens if you used the same dates as the original comment at the root of this thread. The American indices recovered from the 2008 crash in a couple of years. Japan’s problems are far worse than a single stock market bubble in the 80s.
You gave a statistic that is meaningful only in the context of picking the worst possible date for comparison. Surely you can understand that.