Japan has a serious problem with lack of sound proofing in most of the buildings you'll come across, as well an insane amount of paper work involved in everything you do. Finding a house, moving, trashing large items, getting a car license, dealing with the bank, and pretty much every aspect of life you can think of, involves a lot of paper work as well as your physical presence.
If you're a foreigner who is moving to Japan, this problem is tripled, as well as some discrimination (not necessarily racism) you might find while looking for housing, due to fear of foreigners just leaving. These issues aren't very clear when you're there on a tourist visa due to how easy everything seems. Unless you have a company dealing with this stuff for you, you're going to have some headaches.
There's also odd day to day things, such as being unable to withdraw money from ATMs after hours, which is mind-boggling to a foreigner like me.
Otherwise, Japan is an amazing well oiled peaceful machine that just requires A LOT of paper work to get going.
How long ago did you live in Japan? Very little of this is true anymore. Unless maybe you're deep in the country and only dealing with businesses and authorities that stopped evolving decades ago?
I recently moved and only communicated with the real estate agent and the moving company by chat. Large trash reservation is online. Drivers license requires an application, but isn't that normal? Same with a lease; I think those are still paper in most countries.
I don't know of any ATMs that close anymore; maybe super rural banks still do?
It depends on the municipality, but the good ones have moved most of their paperwork online and allow you to digitally sign it with an actual signing certificate embedded on your My Number card and the NFC chip in your phone. If you're doing the paperwork on a computer, you scan the a QR code to complete only verification and signing with the phone.
Certainly not everything's cutting edge, but a lot of things are quite streamlined these days. Immigration paperwork, for example, is a cakewalk compared to the US, probably requiring about 100 times fewer pages at least in my past experience.
Edit: And as someone mentioned below, modern apartments are very soundproof, just not the old wooden ones.
Didn’t you still have to stamp the actual lease contract ? (+ guarantee paper, insurance etc.)
We went through the whole dance a few months ago, and while most of the discussions were done by chat/mail, we still ended up snail mailing a ton of paper back and forth to close the deal.
Also most bank ATM still have closing hours, it can be way later than it was 10 or 20 years ago, but it still closes at night e.g. Mufg’s Kouenji branch: https://map.bk.mufg.jp/b/bk_mufg_s/info/BA592126/
Going further west and some will close at 18h or 20h without remorse.
For soundproofing, it’s less a matter of modernity than of price. Foreigners often will only get access the super low and middle-high offers, so there is a higher chance to land on a pretty well soundproofed building. Your random Leopalace built this year will still have paper thin walls, and so do cheaper appartments in general,
Yeah, I had to sign the paper lease and various addenda probably ten or twenty places, which was a bit much, but I thought the process was smooth and reasonable. It's pretty neat the agent is required to explain everything you're signing in plain language. It means the lease is written clearly in the first place, doesn't have a bunch of extraneous items, and the lessee knows exactly what they're agreeing to.
I don't have a stamp and haven't needed one for anything in many years living here. I understand it's basically required for purchasing real estate, but I haven't done that yet.
I think the ATMs just close if they're in a building that closes; it's not because the ATM itself can't function at night. It's been years since I personally saw an ATM that was physically accessible but unusable. But I typically just use conbini, so I can't claim to be an ATM expert. I just know it's never been a problem for me.
Good point on apartments; I've been fortunate to not have experience with those paper-thin homes, but I do hear a lot about them still on Japan-based forums and such.
I was mostly reacting to the “we did everything by chat” part.
There are countries were this is a mundane thing, and you can go through the whole process digitally, including all the contracts signing. Sadly in Japan this is far from being the norm, and the stamping culture is one of the cause among many others.
There is a good 99pi episode on this, in extreme cases people need to physically go to the office just to stamp their papers.
(otherwise making a stamp is a matter of 30 min at any shopping mall, it isn’t a barrier in any way)
As someone living in Japan, none of this has been true for for me. Except for the driving license part, I can't comment on that since I never tried to get one. Perhaps it was like this 10 years ago or may be the case in rural areas, but life in Tokyo is pretty hassle and paperwork free.
I also had never had problems with soundproofing. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised how super soundproof everything was compared to the places I lived in in the U.S. But I've only ever lived in newer apartment buildings, not the old ones.
> Japan is an amazing well oiled peaceful machine that just requires A LOT of paper work to get going.
One has to wonder if that paperwork is an essential cause of such a peaceful state. It might well be channeling (male) energies that could otherwise end up unsettling society.
When even criminal cartels are highly-formalized, one has to wonder if the acceptance of ritualistic forms of bureaucracy is a key to the "dynamic stillness" of Japanese culture.
Are you arguing paperwork is placating men who would have otherwise been criminals and revolutionaries? That's certainly a take but it'll need a lot of convincing to believe it.
The bureaucratic ideals tend to flourish in cultural systems that value order, as the Japanese one clearly does. If it's accepted that the collective is superior to the individual, as Meiji-era culture drilled deeply into every level of society, the next best question becomes how to organise such collective - enter bureaucracy. If one accepts he has to partake in bureaucracy for the good of the collective, one might eventually get to value the rituals in themselves, and the structure and order they provide, and feel a sense of belonging. Coupled with substantial guarantees of social solidity (job for life, always-increasing wealth levels...), this setup removes a lot of anger and criticism from the system, making it even more stable, in a virtuous cycle.
Obviously nothing is permanent, and various economic crisis have significantly dented this model, but I reckon it still does a lot to placate the kind of unrest that we give for granted in the West - where bureaucracy is reviled by the individualistic "animal spirits" we exhalt since the times of Homer.
> this setup removes a lot of anger and criticism from the system
It could also have the opposite effect, if citizens uphold their end of the bargain and the government doesn't; this is why I think there is more to this wrt competency on the government side.
Okay, I'll admit I had the same reflexive skepticism to your initial comment as the person you're replying to. . . and your very well-reasoned, detailed response is emblematic of the reasons I keep coming back to HN.
Japan was a very aggressive empire not even two generations ago, yet OP claiming that "Meiji-era culture values" are responsible for its current peaceful attitude passes for "well-reasoned"? What a load of IYI crap.
Just as a counterexample: Germany is also known for its love for bureaucracy, its tendency to submit to authority and for the constant, loud, bite-less protesting. No amount of bureaucracy has helped to "channel (male) energies" elsewhere.
I think it goes lost that my original comment said "an" essential cause, not "the" cause. Obviously social systems are complex creatures, and isolating a factor does not mean excluding all the other ones.
> Japan was a very aggressive empire not even two generations ago
Aggressive externally but peaceful internally, which is really what we're talking about. Probably as a reaction to centuries of brutal internal warfare, since Meiji internal cohesion has been emphasized above most other things, and it has held in a way that we've not yet seen in Europe on a comparable scale.
> Germany
Interesting mention, because German practices and values were among the most significant ones "imported" under Meiji; Germany had recently made a massive social and technological leap forward, precisely the sort of thing the Japanese wanted to make (and did make), and Germans were extremely self-assured. However, Germany lies on a cultural bedrock of fundamental individualism, like the rest of Europe, and various factions were soon clashing in the streets in the name of various ideologies, with the result we all know. I think a lot of Germans would find your "bite-less protesting" as a mischaracterization: German movements have been very, very bitey, before and after the various recent conflicts, producing (and exporting) terrorists and disruptors pretty regularly.
> Obviously social systems are complex creatures, and isolating a factor does not mean excluding all the other ones.
Yet here you are, defending the idea that we would be better off by leaning heavier into bureaucracy and collective compliance as a way to "internal" peace.
> Germany lies on a cultural bedrock of fundamental individualism (...) a lot of Germans would find your "bite-less protesting" as a mischaracterization.
Great. Now try to explain Switzerland. They are not exactly known for a "love of bureaucracy" or "the (national) collective taking precedence over the individual", yet they managed to get peace (internal and external) through centuries.
Do you see my point? You are trying to attribute to "bureaucracy" something that can be attributed to a bunch of other things. It is a bad generalization and a basic fundamental attribution error. This is what smells of IYI crap.
> defending the idea that we would be better off by leaning heavier into bureaucracy
I think you're projecting a lot, trying to put words in my mouth and being unnecessarily aggressive.
I've been very careful not to make any judgement of superiority of this or that system throughout this thread. I pointed out several times that the Japanese experience is very unique, and in many ways probably and fundamentally unaccessible to us in the West. "We" cannot be "better off" doing this or that because "we" are not Japan; they seem to have found a formula that works for them, and it's interesting to note how the various elements interconnect in such formula. One of those elements is the somewhat-ritualized bureaucracy, and my point is that it seems to contribute significantly to the success of that model in those circumstances. Obviously I'm not advocating mindlessly trying to replicate that elsewhere, nor am I stating that bureacracy is a necessary condition for social peace - this is just a strawman you are erecting for your own personal reasons.
> Great. Now try to explain Switzerland.
Did you even read my posts above? Scale is important when comparing such systems, and I was very careful to caveat my statements on this throughout, because I knew somebody would eventually bring up Denmark, Norway, or, well, Switzerland.
The Swiss Federation contains barely 9m people, with 211 p/sqm; Japan has 125m, with 333 p/sqm. Obviously we are talking about different orders of magnitude. It's not terribly difficult to get a block assembly to agree on something (still not easy!), but getting the whole city to agree on anything is a different ballgame.
I remember past conversations with you where you claimed that EU's bureaucracy should get credit for changes that would've happened naturally on the market. Here as well you are arguing that bureaucracy is the reason to Japan's "peace", when there are plenty of possible alternative answers.
Just as an example, you could have at least try to attribute Japanese/Scandinavian/Swiss "peace" to the relative homogeneity of their populations and their cultural oikophilia (which gets often mistaken for xenophobia). It would be a much simpler explanation for the commonalities among different people, independently of scale and independently of any silly distinction between "external" and "internal" aggressiveness.
But instead of just considering Occam's razor, you start with a conclusion and then you try to build a narrative that gives some kind of support to it.
> One has to wonder if that paperwork is an essential cause of such a peaceful state. It might well be channeling (male) energies that could otherwise end up unsettling society.
Don't know where I should start. These two sentences do not make any sense. France and the Soviet Union are/were highly bureaucratic states, they do not seem to be revolutionary-free or that successful. And that "male energy crap" doesn't really mean or exist anywhere beyond these "alpha-chad" forums.
Peace happens when a majority of people accept the status quo. This is usually coupled with a ruler (or a government) that has laws that are compatible with the social expectations of said population.
Japan is not a particular exception. During its history (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Japan), it had its fair share of violence, revolts and internal conflicts. It also had periods of peace, like the one they are experiencing it right now.
> When even criminal cartels are highly-formalized, one has to wonder if the acceptance of ritualistic forms of bureaucracy is a key to the "dynamic stillness" of Japanese culture.
I think that if anything was to destabilize Japan it would be its inability to reform its bureaucracy. That being said, I don't think it's as bad as people think it is. You shouldn't look at bureaucracy as only government papers but the whole process of operating there. Japan is still a very efficient country and they do lots of things efficiently. Would you rather spend 30 minutes filling paper work and have fast public transport; or fill no paperwork and spend 1.5x250 hours on traffic jams?
To be short, the evolution of Japan during Meiji and the remarkable social cohesion that it has produced since, in my opinion, simply cannot be compared with the European experiences you mention. One of them does not even exist anymore, so it has clearly failed (and lasting barely half the time "modern" Japan has existed). The other is much less rigidly formal than the Japanese version, and has much wider social differences and inequalities as outcomes.
> that "male energy crap" doesn't really mean or exist anywhere beyond
Call it what you want, the reality is that violent action and unrest is a very male thing (and typically performed in summer, but that's another story). Look at videos of riots pretty much anywhere and you'll quickly see the overwhelming majority of actors (both among rioters and authorities) is invariably male.
History shows us we can have social systems where all women are effectively treated as slaves, lasting centuries; the other way around, eh, not so much. Surely there is a reason for that. (This does not mean society should indulge anyone's "appetite for destruction"; I'm just pointing out that shit-stirrers tend to be men, so if you can keep men busy, chances are that you can also keep the peace for longer.)
> Would you rather spend 30 minutes filling paper work and have fast public transport
Oh, absolutely - I never implied that bureaucracy has to be inefficient. Efficient bureaucracy can be tremendously effective, but typically it is efficient only when its cogs "believe" in the intrinsic value of having an efficient bureaucracy. My point was that such belief seems much stronger in modern Japan than in most other countries.
Japan's well oiled and peaceful machine comes from a thousand little things that everyone cooperates on. Only areas with large numbers of foreigners have trash cans in public (and still have litter issues). When you walk into a grocery store during a downpour, you do your best to dry off and leave your wet umbrella at the fire. If young people are whispering too loudly, someone will ask them to quiet down and they will listen. Mutual trust and respect that comes with a tightly knit and homogenous society.
I don’t mean to bust your bubble, but I live in a town in Japan with basically no foreigners, but there’s plenty of litter and it’s gotten substantially worse since COVID started and the few foreigners that were here all left.
Beaches are also getting dirtier and dirtier with people having parties and just throwing plastic bottles, alcohol cans, food packets, etc wherever they please. Quiet places far from town I used to visit 2 years ago turned into absolute dumps this past year.
Takayama, Kyoto, Osaka, Fuji, Tokyo, and Nagoya were most definitely full of tourists.
Kyoto and Takayama in particular were probably half tourists by population 2 years ago. Those towns are virtually ghost towns now that Chinese tourists are gone.
Visiting places with no foreign tourism and driven just by local industry, like Toyohashi or Yokkaichi or small islands, and you'll see considerably less cleanup efforts. Even going through Tokyo at 4 AM looks very different from Tokyo at 8 AM after some cleanup is done.
They must be, because you're a white liberal living in rural Japan and you know everything about the country. Those major cleanup efforts in small village like Bizen and Miyoshi are definitely just to impress the tourists. Crazy to learn that Nagoya is actually a tourism city, too. You're definitely not a jackass.
I don't think its the paperwork necessarily. In my opinion it entirely boils down to individualism. Japan is peaceful because in general everyone values societal harmony. If you are going to step out of line, there better be a good reason for it. In the US, the individual reigns supreme, and society is exists only so far as it makes things better for you individually. Even many of the more collectively minded political movements in the US seem to by hyper-focused on individualism, comparatively.
There are tradeoffs. Japan tends to have more entrenched bureaucracy, more stringent cultural norms, etc. But it is also far more safe, harmonious, and, in my opinion, pleasant, than the US.
24/7 ATMs can be found at any convenience store, but there usually are fees associated with using them. Fees that vary depending on time of day and/or day of week. The ATMs anywhere else that is not a convenience store are also still, for the vast majority, not 24/7.
Most banks offers a few free convenience store ATM count per month. Usually requirement is like not using paper passbook or set the account to be given salary.
> Japan has a serious problem with lack of sound proofing in most of the buildings you'll come across
In older or cheaper buildings this is true. However if you pay you can have better sound proofing. For example some Japanese mansions (residential low-rise condominiums) are built from reinforced concrete and isolate sound fairly well. You just have to be careful to read about the building and its construction. You also have to be willing to pay extra for better construction materials.
> as well as some discrimination (not necessarily racism) you might find while looking for housing
This is true for rentals. I also want to clarify Japanese also experience discrimination so it is not purely a non-Japanese thing. Generally landlords have freedom to put whatever restrictions they want on who they rent the unit to. But this is for good reason. A landlord cannot easily evict a tenant. So the landlord is taking a huge risk in trusting that the tenant will respect the contract and actually pay the rent.
I will say in buildings owned by corporations or businesses, they sometimes don't have any discrimination by nationality. They do tend to have higher requirements for income and may discriminate based on your current company employment contract. Also they may require a specific guarantor company which tends to be more expensive. The guarantor company is sort of a risk insurance for the landlord paid by the tenant.
However things are quite different if you buy the land outright. Here the only restriction is bank loans. If you do not have permanent residence, the number of banks willing to lend money are very few. If you have permanent residence then you have many more banks to choose from. Otherwise there is no restriction on who can buy land.
> Unless you have a company dealing with this stuff for you, you're going to have some headaches.
I think it is all about perspective and expectations. In Japan the Japanese are used to dealing with bureaucracy (though many Japanese also really dislike it). The information is readily available, you just have research yourself. Otherwise you have to accept that you are moving to a non-English speaking country and it is your responsibility to find a way to understand the local language or get someone to help you.
I do agree that there are still many headaches to adjust to Japanese business and culture. But I also don't understand why everyone has an expectation that Japan must change to meet their expectations. Japan is a first world country with many issues, but it isn't a place where you can expect to be free of first-world problems.
For example in the US nearly nobody bothers to complain about credit rating agencies. Maintaining your credit is seen as something you control. Which isn't necessarily true. Credit ratings greatly affect American lives. So everyone is in a way obligated to participate in a non-government created scheme yet nobody bats an eye. Just sign up for a credit card.
I'm sure living in Japan comes with its own set of problems, but whenever I learn about something like this it makes it sound like such a paradise. I can't imagine how great it would be to live in a small, affordable community where I walk my daughter to school every day and can take care of most errands without using my car.
It seems in America you can pick 2 from safe, affordable, and walkable.
From first grade onwards kids actually walk to school in groups, without adult supervision (except for the occasional crossing guard). So while you wouldn’t be able to walk with your daughter, I think it actually says even more about the safety and walkability of Japanese neighborhoods that 6 year olds are able to get to and from school safely without adult supervision.
My two daughters went through elementary schools in Tokyo and Yokohama, and they walked to school in groups—called tōkōhan—that were arranged by the schools. In Tokyo, their tōkōhan met each morning in front of our apartment complex; in Yokohama, it met a block away from our house. There were about ten to fifteen kids in each group.
The children were taught at school how to behave safely in the tōkōhan, and older kids were assigned to walk at the front and rear of each group and to keep tabs on the younger ones. In the afternoons, though, the kids came home on their own, as different grades finished at different times.
In Yokohama, parents shared the crossing guard duties. For a week or so every couple of months, I would have to stand with a flag at a nearby corner for fifteen minutes every morning and wave each tōkōhan by. (I was working from home then and was available to do it.)
The streets in the area where we lived in Tokyo had sidewalks, but in our Yokohama neighborhood the narrow streets are used by both pedestrians and vehicles. That has always made me a little nervous, but fortunately there’s not a lot of traffic in our neighborhood; most of the people living nearby do not have cars, and those who do seem to do most of their commuting and errands on foot or bicycle. I feel less safe in rural areas of Japan, where pedestrians often have to walk along narrow, sidewalk-less roads with cars and trucks whizzing by.
Europe is like this too. I find America's implementation of zoning to be very weird. Maybe there are some upsides to it that I'm not aware of, I'd be interested to hear some opinions of the American system from those who favour it.
Eh, some of Europe. Yes, we are nowhere as obsessed as the Americans with suburban life and car-based commuting, because of 2000 years of urbanization (one of those things "the Romans did for us"), but in the last 20-40 years there has been a real shift towards similar models. Suburban hypermarkets, IKEA, entertainment centres, and the pursuit of "Wysteria Lane" habitats, have become commonplace for families across the continent.
Some of it is driven by economic growth (city centres have become increasingly unaffordable, particularly in capital cities), some by population growth (you can only scale up a residential block so much before it becomes a mess from a social perspective), some by fashion (hello Hollywood), some by speculation (it's easy to bootstrap a shopless residential suburb), some by urban planners simply failing in the attempts to create new urban centres.
You're still a short walk from the nearest primary school, shop and pub though. Granted lots of local pubs are going under these days and local shops don't have a massive selection. But it still beats having to drive for every little thing.
There is some "zoning" in the UK too, it is just not so set in stone. Most councils have areas that are pre-approved for new housing, any other areas would require planning permission.
Building in a conservation area (not necessarily rural!), on a listed building or in a "greenbelt" area require special permission, which is not always easy or obvious.
I think the theory must be that people want some assurances. If somewhere is zoned for housing, I don't have to do pointless paperwork to build houses. It also keeps commercial areas away from residential which might or might not be a good idea although I suspect most residents prefer it that way.
There are upsides, but only relative to the issues it solved decades ago. We stopped (drastically) improving our zoning from the original changes and now we're stuck with the consequences.
I don't follow. That video, while interesting, seems to be complimenting European city planning and critical of American city planning. I don't see how it's making a case for American zoning.
I may have learned something new from you, thanks! For me this was related to what I conceived of as zoning, but it appears that has a narrower definition.
You can get all three, you just have to live somewhere outside the two coasts I think. I’ve got all three in a small town in the middle. I walk on the sidewalk in front of my house to the library that is a few doors down from my incredibly affordable house. It feels like a Norman Rockwell painting.
I’m hoping remote work can allow more people to experience this.
Edit: modified the list of cities based on comments
Is your neighborhood truly walkable though? Do you walk to the grocery store? What about the hospital? dentist? Physical therapist? Pet store? Restaurants? Is there transit nearby?
Afaik, there are only a few cities in the US (all costal) which are truly walkable in the traditional sense, SF, NYC, Boston, DC and maybe Philadelphia and only limited parts of the cities are actually walkable. These are the only cities with limited single family zoning and didn't boldoze their city centers to build parking lots and freeways in the 50s like the rest of NA cities (see https://www.vox.com/2014/12/29/7460557/urban-freeway-slider-...)
Many cities and small towns in the US and Canada may have walkable elements in limited areas, but they are still very car dependent in most cases
Boston is /very/ walkable, the whole city can be walked end to end in a few hours and Somerville is one of the densest neighborhoods in the U.S.
I'll also say D.C. (and to some extent Northern Virginia and select parts of Maryland) makes car ownership optional, the transit system does a good job of covering a lot of neighborhoods.
I've been to a few college towns that also, by necessity, are dense and are walkable or at least bikeable oasis in otherwise rural areas.
The thing with college towns is that you tend to have the campus and, if it's in a rural area, generally a few streets of associated town. Technically walkable but, once you're not a student any longer, the campus is less interesting/useful and there probably isn't a whole lot in the ten or so blocks of the town that you can walk to. You can doubtless survive but the options are probably limited without a car (and most of your non-student friends in the area probably have one).
BTW, Boston did pretty much bulldoze the center of the city (the West End) for a freeway but spent some $10 billion (much of it federal money) to rectify the problem with the Big Dig. It was walkable before the freeway was dismantled but less so in Boston proper. (As with other US cities, it was also less safe in general a few decades ago.)
Just providing a non-coastal example - Pittsburgh is pretty decent for walkability and transit. It is a dense, small (in area) city. Trips by bus are often comparable to the same trip by car. I would say that most neighborhoods in Pittsburgh are walkable, but getting between neighborhoods is best done by bus, due to the big hills.
Some figures:
- 10 percent of Pittsburgh residents commute by walking [0]. 17 percent commute by public transit [1].
- "According to the U.S. Census Bureau, public transportation commuters in Pittsburgh spend an average of 32 minutes traveling to work, the 11th-fastest transit commute time of the 136 cities in our analysis. That is also just nine minutes slower that the average commute time for drivers, the fifth-smallest difference." [2]
The core of Boston is more walkable than SF is. Especially if by "walkable," you really mean walkable and with easy access to expansive public transit to easily get to all the other things you won't have in a small town center or otherwise within a 30 minute or so walk.
To the sibling comment, walkable means different things to different people.
Walk to a hospital or a grocery store that isn't a small market/convenience store? You're already talking a city at that point. And, in the hospital case, probably not all the medical professionals you might conceivably want to see are likely to be within a one mile or so radius.
A ton of places are walkable in the sense that you can buy a house/condo and walk to a restaurant or two and pick up a few groceries. But, as you say, very few cities in the US are walkable in the sense that you really don't need a car without a lot of compromises/depending on others/using personal transportation services a lot.
FWIW you can have all of these on the coasts as well. For example, if you can afford a suburban Boston house, you can find any number of small towns in New England where you can afford to live and have a small walkable community (that is to say, in absolute terms these communities are expensive but in relative terms for New England they are not).
The problem this is missing is that "walkable" doesn't actually include everything you need to live. Jobs are the most obvious one, for those who don't have remote work or their own business, which is to say for most Americans. You'll also probably end up driving when you need to do serious shopping because your town center's general store isn't a Wal-Mart. Similarly for any number of specialized purchases or services.
In any case, small-town living and city living are very different. What's impressive about Japan is bringing a walkable, livable urban form to a mega city of 30 million people. When American towns start growing into cities (or when they are informally annexed into a larger cities' urban region) they usually do so by converting farmland into car-accessible suburbs, which is the problem.
What are you job options if you get laid off? How often do you and your spouse spend time with friends? I would hate moving to a small town and being cut off from seeing friends whenever I want to. Not to mention people tend to congregate towards larger cities, so moving to a small town probably means giving up quality food and my favorite events like sports and the symphony.
My gf and I don’t really like to socialize that much and prefer to stay in and play video games and watch tv, so we love it. The ubiquity of the internet has made it possible to live almost anywhere in my opinion. For $25 a month we can see and do pretty much the same thing everyone else is doing every night on the internet. We cook our own meals also. You can always make new friends in a small town.
There are trade-offs to be sure, but if you knew how low my mortgage payment is you might choose like we did. :) All the money I save has allowed me to invest heavily, which will allow me to travel and see the world instead of see a city go by every day on a commute to work until I’m old.
I see, so your "you can have all three, you just have to..." is actually unrealistic/bad advice to those who are not self-employed, not to mention those who actually enjoy doing things in the city.
How many places is being able to walk to a wide choice of professional jobs a realistic option? (Obviously if you expand the definition to reasonably accessible by public transit, the list gets longer but is still relatively limited given transit options and the fact that many offices are in industrial parks, not cities.) And sports/symphony limit you to a relatively large city or at least a college.
In many places, you can live in a smaller town and be within an hour or so of a city. It doesn't need to be a choice between living in Manhattan or the middle of nowhere in Wyoming.
If you can find a way to make money without working for a company that demands all of your time for a small wage, Japan is a great place to live. Having schools etc in walking distance means that all of the local people keep an eye out to make sure each other’s kids are safe. It’s really nice.
It looks from the outside that the downside is "small" living spaces. They look small by UK standards so I imagine that to an American it's like living in a closet.
It's a lifestyle difference. Americans enjoy the convenience of a home gym and paddling pool/real pool (if they can afford it). Japanese might walk to their gym or even prefer the onsen to the shower they have at home. Americans invite guests round, Japanese use cafés and love hotels. Americans stack consoles and gaming PCs, Japanese can also visit arcades. There's an equivalent for most activities, and it has lower CapEx and more variety. Maybe if your hobby is woodworking or car repair, Japan can't serve you for lack of space.
Here in the UK, it really feels like every business is taking my money and spitting me out as fast as possible (except pubs, which... are good if you want to get drunk I guess...). Vs in Japan where services felt cheap, trustworthy, and welcoming (such as clean toilets).
It depends heavily on region, but in the suburbs most Americans have room for something that wouldn't be easily affordable in an urban Japanese home (or urban anywhere home, i suppose). Maybe a lawn or backyard, maybe a pool, maybe a garage that can fit more than one car, maybe a driveway that can fit your car while your garage is used for something else, a house big enough to have a room that you don't use every day, and so on
I personally would vastly prefer a walkable, affordable, safe, dense urban region over a lawn, a 2 car garage, and a backyard. But not everyone would agree with me, particularly for some who would say that dense and walkable is a negative rather than a positive.
They are though. This varies regionally, but they're both multimillion dollar industries that push very hard to make their goods affordable to increase their available customer base.
I grew up in a lower middle class neighborhood, and every other house has a bench and some weights. Many of the families saved up for a treadmill or elliptical, and woe betide the child who thought they could use it. Someone on every block(usually more wealthy than the area average) had an above ground pool, and the neighborhood kids would go over and hang out there all summer.
Its not super crazy. When you consider the number of homes that have home gyms, or pools, or basketball hoops, trampolines, or swing sets etc. that people have, its a large number of homes. And even for those who don't, most houses in America are built such that one could buy one if they want.
I grew up in suburban Indiana, and when I went home to visit my parents, I counted it up and literally over 1/3rd of the houses I could see from their front porch had a basketball hoop in the driveway.
Desktop computers with CRT were far less popular in Japan than anywhere else, and compacity is part of the story for the TV/gaming console/computer hybrids that found more traction there than elsewhere. Perfectly usable furniture that lost its purpose are left on the curb for pickup - no space at home to store anything not in production ! The never-used formal dining room found in US homes would look bonkers to a visiting Japanese.
To be fair, I'm not sure how common this is with new/remodeled construction in the US. Entertainment pattens have changed for the most part and layouts tend to be a lot more open. In particular, you don't see the hard demarkation between dining area and kitchen area which dates to when the "help" worked in the kitchen and served in the dining room.
It depends where you’re coming from and where in Japan you choose to live. I moved from a small city with a high cost of living in the US to a small city with a low cost of living in Japan. My home in Japan is twice as big and a quarter of the cost of my former home in the US.
It can be very cheap if you're prepared to put the work in. There's a Youtube series about a guy who is doing up a large (even in UK/US terms) abandoned house which he bought for (IIRC) $40K: https://www.youtube.com/c/TokyoLlama/videos
Or even if you don’t want to put in any work, it can still be quite affordable.
Here’s a 10 year old, 18,000 sq ft house in Ibaraki prefecture (same prefecture as Tokyo Llama’s house) for about $220k USD. It’s not large by US standards, but definitely sufficient for a family of 4 IMO. And with interest rates in Japan being about 1%, the monthly mortgage payment would be about $625.
Sort of, but the reality is that when everything is structured the way it is in Japan, you don't really feel like you need much space in your apartment. That said, I lived there when I was single, and it would be very different living there with my young family. But I knew young family with houses when I was there and it seemed comfortable. I was also in Hokkaido (mostly Sapporo), which is not quite as dense as the Tokyo area (though still very dense compared to most of the US).
While true, I was mostly speaking of zoning. I consider things like gender norms as being cultural and not necessarily overlapping with their city zoning. From a pure urban design perspective, its basically perfect in my opinion. (That said, it's not entirely correct that culture and urban design are separate. I'm not sure Japanese cities can be recreated in America, if for no other reason than there is a huge gulf between how individuals view and interact with society in Japan vs. America)
It's also worth noting that while stressors from gender norms exist in Japan, the idea that their suicide rate is extremely high is somewhat outdated. Its been decreasing over the last few decades, while countries like the US and many European countries have increased, to the point where there isn't that much of a difference between the regions.
I agree with you on this one, but except for one thing. The walls are too thin to have your own space. It's quite uncomfortable that you don't have your privacy even you're at home.
If you are talking about walls within your home, that may be true, my living situation was such that I wouldn't know. If you are talking about thin walls between neighboring apartments, I never had much of an issue. Perhaps they are thing, but in general Japanese people are so conscious of others that I never had an issue with loud neighbors.
Japan's not a paradise in every way, but this is exactly why my family has settled here. The lifestyle possible in most of Japan is very difficult to replicate in other countries and invaluable to general quality of life even if you have to compromise in some areas.
Well if that's what they meant, then heterogeneous melting pots also allow for advanced societies to work. And ethnocentricity is a shitty indicator for social cohesion.
You are being downvoted but this sentiment is not wrong. See also the nordic countries and this Freakonomics podcast that goes into some detail: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/happiness/ In particular, note Denmark's notoriously strict immigration system.
The key point being that ethnically homogenous societies tend to work well. It isn't guaranteed but it does contribute because everyone is the same or similar. Similar ideals, similar goals and so on. The feeling one gets in these societies is stifling. We have nice things but they are for us, not for you.
No, it's not. It's a common opinion among white nationalists, but they are a tiny minority and they don't realize how different white people (or any ethnicity for that matter) actually are. If you put a bunch of British Columbians and Texans in a room, you might have ethnocentricity, but you won't have anything close to social cohesion.
This is a bad comparison. "White" is about as informative as "European" or "Indian". It conveys a vague notion of melanin levels and little else. Regions such as Europe or India are so diverse that a Finn and a Spaniard have very little in common. Same goes for a "Country" like India.
Someone from BC and someone from Texas actually have a lot in common - both are from immigrant societies and both speak the same language. Can't say that for someone from Kerala, India and Punjab, also in India.
Thats all fine, but we're talking about white nationalists...they're not exactly nuanced about culture. To white nationalists, whiteness is all that matters, and if we just kicked out all of the non-white people, we could participate in this enthocentric utopian fantasy that they have. Nevermind the fact that almost every ethnostate that has ever existed has had civil wars and irreconcilable differences. Hell, our own country is the result of some members of a homogenous ethnostate moving to get away from that state, and ultimately waging war against it.
Given the interminable arguments they have about "who counts as white" and their racial anxieties I'm sure they're more aware, on average, of the differences between a Texan, and a Californian, or a Scottsman and A Frenchman than those of us who focus on finding what we have in common and being good neighbors.
"Life Where I'm From" is a fantastic channel. His series on homelessness in Japan is one of the best and most thoughtful pieces on the subject I've ever seen, and makes me very much question the way of homelessness elsewhere.
Japan isn't a perfect paradise by any stretch of the imagination, but if you end up having to build several high-density megalopolises, it's as close to an ideal model as possible. It's very hard to describe why their cities are so good because it's a list of a million small things. If you can, visit and see. It's a wonderful collision of familiar and bafflingly different all in one.
More like a "lack of zoning". Japan's very limited zoning restrictions allows more natural cities to be built.
Additionally, the train companies own the land around the train stations and are thus encouraged to develop the land for commercial use, effectively setting up destinations for the users of their train systems. The cities then develop around the train stations as the primary hubs of commerce.
I lived in Tokyo for 2.5 months in a furnished 2br apartment ~7 min walk from 3 different subway stations (2 stations away from Shinjuku) for $1,500/month. The company renting the apartment caters to non-Japanese-speaking tourists and they handled all the paperwork. Visiting from the US for less than 3 months is hassle free. My experience was wonderful. I've now visited 6 times in my life and am eager to return. The streets of Tokyo (and other cities) always feel cozy to me - my favorite destination.
I have not used other companies and I used Fontana just once, but it was a great experience.
On the paperwork front - there was gas, electric, and water that I had to pay (you take the bill and pay at any convenience store - very easy) - the company can help if you have questions. They can also help close the three accounts when you are finished with the apartment. The apartment came with free WiFi. Minimum stay was 2 months (policy likely still in place).
I'd be interested in hearing how this is handled in various European countries, because "zoning" in the SimCity style doesn't really exist in the UK. We have an explicit permission system: https://www.createstreets.com/the-long-history-of-british-la...
(long, but extremely good, it describes the system as "nationalising development", very much in keeping with the postwar mood).
I agree strongly with his point that the Japanese style of zoning is more capitalistic.
Everything about modern zoning in American cities exists to prevent your neighbors from using their land how they want to use it.
We've made great advances in quality of life since the 1920s, but most places to live around my area date pre-war unless you can afford to live in a glass tower luxury condo complex. Rebuilding those 1920s-era buildings is generally not possible, and definitely not economical.
In Japan, it's common practice to buy a plot of land, demolish any structure currently on that land, and build your dream home from a catalog (based on your budget, of course). It's bafflingly capitalistic compared to how my city is run, where most of the housing stock is in violation of current zoning law, you're lucky if the house you want to buy doesn't have any asbestos, and presence of lead is treated as a dont-ask-dont-tell situation.
It is unbelievable how much more developed most east asian countries are compared to the west. While poverty, corruption and crime are rampant in western europe and the us, countries such as japan, south korea and singapore are thriving.
Japan is long beyond its thriving years. Once you go into the countryside or smaller towns, there are many boarded-up businesses, decay, and infrastructure that is in dire need of investment.
I think Japan's metropolitan zoning has some merits over the US/CA models. It just seems like here in the US we chose cars over street cars too soon and forced everyone to homogenize neighborhoods going forward. The idea of a mixed use zoning seems like a smart solution among other things we can try here in the US to clamp down on what I call "concrete hell."
Also, I believe the US Army wanted an interstate highway system to use in place of the rail network. So there were many stakeholders that brought us this car centric landscape into existence.
If the income/ wealth for a given city is not uniformly distributed (not delving into the reasons), having an almost strict usage of land based on higher incomes doesn't seem quite capitalistic as in US/ Canada. Quite a valid point by the narrator.
If housing is a basic need, vested interests are preventing it from becoming cheaper due to how much intertwined it has become with today's economic system. NIMBY is just class warfare with a catchy names and wrapped in supposedly noble intentions while impacting the poorest.
There is no evidence for the so called "class war" some people try to make as an argument for why housing is so expensive. They have built in assumptions that there already is a class war and then try to find evidence to support their theory, when in fact the high housing pricing can easily be explained by simple supply and demand which is usually caused by restrictive zoning regulations making additional housing either impossible or uneconomic.
If you're a foreigner who is moving to Japan, this problem is tripled, as well as some discrimination (not necessarily racism) you might find while looking for housing, due to fear of foreigners just leaving. These issues aren't very clear when you're there on a tourist visa due to how easy everything seems. Unless you have a company dealing with this stuff for you, you're going to have some headaches.
There's also odd day to day things, such as being unable to withdraw money from ATMs after hours, which is mind-boggling to a foreigner like me.
Otherwise, Japan is an amazing well oiled peaceful machine that just requires A LOT of paper work to get going.