I think the reason it hasn't caught on here is because municipalities, malls, theme parks, etc., haven't embraced the technology, so there's no need for it to be in our phones.
The top search results for "nfc asia" and "nfc hong kong" mainly return press releases and news articles about how NFC is being rolled out. In fact, most of the ones I found are as recent as July and August.
There was one older story from April 2011 talking about "hundreds of field trials" but no follow-on detail.
I'm not doubting that certain markets in major Asian cities have seen NFC rollouts. But I question a) the scale and b) the public reception. Indeed, since smart phones are still catching on in major markets in many Asian markets I am doubtful of how wide-spread NFC adoption actually can be.
I'd love to see some specific stories that refute my point of view.
The strength of phone NFC seems to be that it's basically a "smart card on your phone," and smart cards as a payment method are extremely common in places like Tokyo, Hong Kong, etc., largely driven by their ubiquity in the form of mass-transit cards (Suica, Pasmo, Octopus, etc).
Far more people have smart cards than have smartphones in these places, and so offering smart-card-compatible NFC functionality on phones seems a no-brainer.
The result of this is that NFC-on-your-phone has worked for ages in Japan, on all types of phone ("smart" and otherwise, except the iphone), and as it uses a widespread existing infrastructure, there's no real issue with availability.
In other words, NFC is not something that's dependent on smartphone popularity for success; rather smartphones with NFC are simply trying to take advantage of an existing successful system to become more popular.
As for the question "do people use it?" I can't refer you to any "stories" but I can say that I personally see lots of people paying for stuff with their phone.... [The main issue with smartphones seems to be that the iphone doesn't support NFC, and lots of people have iphones...]
Purely anecdotal, granted, but you asked for stories.
(Personally, I use an iPhone with a Pasmo NFC card duct-taped to the back of it.)
But all kinds of phones have NFC and can be used for trains and buying stuff.
Train stations in mainland China use something similar, though I'm basing this only my experience with one city, but a big one at that (Guangzhou).
Part of the reason why you aren't finding more accounts of successful NFC rollouts in Asia might be because you aren't searching in the local languages.