Snapshots of Tokyo’s vivid street life

Individual families were not expected to walk out into the fields and personally make them habitable. They certainly weren’t turned away by policies designed to preserve the status quo, compensate/empower those adversely affected by a proposed change, etc.

Highway construction, planning codes, development and mortgage finance, public debt, subsidized infrastructure, etc. were all assembled and optimized to make it as easy as possible for suburbia to happen precisely as it did.

That was a choice. We could make the same choice about urbanism. (Imagine an Interstate Highway System-level investment in urban subways). We don’t.

* Japan has a very open zoning law. There's nothing stopping developers building residential buildings of different pricing levels right next to businesses. This more often allows people to move close to their work.

* partly thanks to the first reason, Tokyo is quite a bit less centralized than, say, NY. You can also see this clearly in its skyline. I found that even during rush hours it's usually no problem for me to arrive where I need on time - on those lines that can get completely full the frequency of connections tends to be very high, so you can just wait in line for the next one. And yes, queueing for a train actually works in Japan.

* Even when taking a crowded train I still feel more relaxed than a similar situation in Europe or the US - mainly because Japanese are just more considerate. People are always filling up empty spaces, move with the flow and give space when needed - you just ask nicely and otherwise do what you can on your part to make things work together. There's also no smells and no noises. I think I could get used even to rush hour - just put on head phones and move like everyone else, don't rush, calculate additional time so you don't have to.

Don't get me wrong, their system is far from perfect - it's just that among the alternatives I find it one of the better ones. The problem I have there is more with work culture and education, but there's hope for betterment lately at least for the former.

That's an interesting thought. Do you think photographers should have a moral responsibility? A famous example I can think of is the controversy surrounding "The vulture and the little girl" by Kevin Carter.

In terms of street photography, is it OK to "creep" or invade someone's privacy, especially that of children? There is certainly a line between telling a story and trashy exploitation, the question is where is it?

Because we're social animals and most people don't have the ability to simply ignore harsh/insulting/whatever words directed at us.

It may well be possible to develop the ability to ignore such words, but if it is, that's an ability that would take a fair bit of time to develop, so is out of the reach of most people right at the present moment.

Slurs are used by people who have structural power in society, directed at those who do not. It's punching down, not punching across or up. That's what is meant by taking offense to someone's words.

Forgive me If I question whether or not a man, which is quite a privileged identity, is truly being punched down upon from someone more powerful by the word "creepshot".

9-22 years old. some of them were well within the internet era.

I looked up more info on the shutter sound accompanying photographs taken on smartphones. This has been in effect since 2001. But I was wrong about it being a law. It looks like all the cell phone carriers in Japan self-regulated and made it a requirement themselves.

source: https://theuijunkie.com/japan-camera-sound/

Except that we're (we in a general terms, I've stopped posting photos on social media years ago) choosing which pictures we're posting, where and with what filters (public or friends only).

For me the creep will be the person who keep looking at the same person, not just taking a look.

Speak for yourself. There isn't a single image of me anywhere on the internet. Am I not entitled to keep it that way?