This is true, and it's not unique to Japanese (Chinese does it too). But I'm not sure the existence of this specific feature in the language supports any particular generalizations about a "Japanese mindset."

To English speakers, using different counters for different classes of nouns is a pretty strange feature, but I'd imagine no stranger than the Japanese might consider our plurals. Japanese (and Chinese) don't inflect nouns for plural agreement at all. From there, imagine how English's seemingly random collection of irregular plurals must seem (feet, oxen, halves, deer, women, mice, children, dice, larvae, alumni, bacteria, etc).

I wonder what features of English-origin programming syntax they might link to this bizarre collection of special cases :).