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Поскольку Япония - достаточно далекая от нас страна, ...
In German, inserting a prepositional phrase like "от нас" into a nominal phrase in this manner is considered rather formal. What about in Russian? I wonder if in conversation I need to paraphrase it somehow in a more relaxed style?
No, not at all.
Here's what would be considered formal:
Поскольку Япония — страна достаточно от нас далекая, ...
It looks nothing like German, but there's cast-iron logic to the word order here. Just putting страна at the end when it's not the most informative word in the sentence is fairly relaxed.
*Достаточно далекая страна от нас sounds un-Russian unless you specifically want to stress от нас (as opposed to it being remote from someone else).
If there's anything formal here, it's the use of достаточно instead of the more generic довольно. Think "fairly remote" vs. "quite remote".
There's nothing specifically formal or colloquial in such usage - "от нас" in this context just indicates the relative distance - from us to Japan. This can be equally used in official speech and in everyday conversation.
This is only adding an extra clarification to the meaning of the phrase. For example, a Muscovite may say "Поскольку Япония - достаточно далекая от нас страна" in a conversation with someone from Vladivostok, but not from Saint-Petersburg or Sochi.
Such an expression (despite widely used) usually reveals a speaker as a cautious person (if not a diplomat or mathematician) since all that stands behind достаточно далёкий (distant enough or even 'little enough') is just that Japan is distant enough to use the word 'distant' for it. Expressions with more sense are more clear: относительно, сравнительно далёкий (relatively or comparatively distant). Достаточно is used properly e. g. when it is followed by something, showing 'enough for what', otherwise expressions with it only reveal unsophisticated speech habits.
