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Comment by jack_pp | Hacker News Reader

While I'm happy for OP I'm afraid finding a "paradise" and telling the internet about it has the risk of ruining it. If 10k people read the article and 1% go to the same place and blog about it and bring even more people, then sooner or later it will be ruined and chances are localities will ban such adventures.

I've done something similar.. some years ago there was a casino I would go to where you would pay 10$ entry fee and have access to a buffet, for the whole day. They had great food too. So I told an uber driver this "hack" and less than 6 months later they started checking whether you were playing or not, you needed a special ticket to access the buffet. Now I have no idea if me not shutting up about it has caused it to be closed off but there's certainly a chance.

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I doubt there's much risk of that in this case. A person who wanted to imitate this would need to:

- Live in Japan, or be able to get a Japanese visa

- Have a Japanese driver's license

- Have a remote working job with flexible enough hours

- Be willing to live a van life with all its inconveniences

Plus it's not like there's any particular single paradise to be ruined. Japan is a big place. Even if 1000 people did read this and suddenly started van-lifeing around Japan I doubt it would make a difference.

Yeah you're probably right, this particular lifehack/exploit has a very high barrier to entry.

But the general idea still stands. I remember hearing Anthony Bourdain would not adeverise great little restaurants he found for fear of running them.

It would be fairly straightforward to enter Japan on a three-month tourist visa, use an international driver's license, and rent a van.

> Be willing to live a van life with all its inconveniences

This would be a show stopper for me. But apparently enough people are into it that #vanlife is a thing.

If not you someone else would have talked. Same for this post. Japan has a population of over 125 million (4x US?). Over 2000 children are born there per day. We are not movie protagonists, don't worry about it

Closer to 1/4th not 4x. US pop is over 400M.

331M

Citizens. Not all who live here are.

This is wrong. The census counts everyone, and while it's not perfectly accurate they also have methods for mitigating that, combining in-person surveys and sampling methods.

Bad math sry lol

It’s probably fine.

For one, barrier to entry to Japan is high enough that people stampeding to this opportunity is unlikely. If it really takes off, I’d expect places to adapt and turn the free parkings to paying places, and monetize the whole thing as they do for any new trend.

Then more working age people coming to Japan would be a great outcome. The demographic situation is pretty dire and tourism also fell a cliff.

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