Perhaps we just value it less here in North America.
All stories of extremely small batch but precisely crafted products seem to come out of Japan.
For example, in the west, there is a commonly shared fantasy that automating away work will lead to happiness, having the robots doing it all is Nirvana; However, e all know deep down inside we'd still need something to do, we'd have to create some purpose or some object for ourselves. I bet most people would be outside growing food and playing in the garden with their kids if they didn't have to work. Many people in Japan actually do this, there is a LOT of small scale farming in Japan, they do not really share the same farming practices we do in the west. Step out side Tokyo and this is immediately obvious, almost everyone is growing something. It's much more small scale and often has more human involvement. I think Japan is culturally more suited to accepting the fact that life can be toil and toil is good, it is what there is.
I'm definitely not trying to say Japan is better, or all Japanese people are like this, just there is cultural roots which make some of these practices more suited to life in Japan than it would in other cultures.
That being said, I wouldn’t say they’re accepting of it; Japan’s rapid depopulation is overwhelmingly happening in the countryside, because it is all toil for less pay.
Anyhow, the land influences culture, so my point still stands, if the reason for their attitude to farming practices is because there is mountains, it doesn't make much difference, people don't know any different and that's how they have operated for millennia.
Japan’s rapid depopulation is overwhelmingly happening in the countryside, because it is all toil for less pay.
Right, like as if working in Tokyo is no toil for more pay? Sorry but you don't sound very well informed to me. In general, Japanese don't get well at all, I view Japan as much more of a socialist system than people realize.
Japan's aging population problem has nothing to do with whether you live in the countryside and grow your own veggies or not, it has to do with demographics and go visit any major city and you will find a lot of elderly people there too. Of course a small village is going to be more effected than Tokyo with 30+ million people when the population is shrinking. Either way, people from Tokyo eat sushi rice from rural areas.
Until the pandemic, the statistics show net population increase in Tokyo, Nagoya, Fukuoka, and Osaka and substantial declines in rural areas. The work’s not any easier, but you get paid more.
I’m not saying any of this is good, but let’s not get into weird exoticism and othering based on some idyllic vision of Japan.
Young people move to Tokyo because rural life can be boring if you're not into the outdoors. Watching rice grow isn't for everyone. However, you might be surprised to know that where I live there is actually a housing crisis because so many people are trying to find a house here after re-evaluating their life since the pandemic.
Also don't try and tell me everything is a rice terrace because it's not, there are plenty of crops being grown on large flat plains. That's just some kind of idealistic view you yourself have.
I do find this farming is just back breaking "toil" myth really interesting, it comes up a lot on HN, especially in the context of automation. Kind of the quintessential justification for everything. There is farming smart and there is farming stupid. Experienced farmers I know don't do a lot of work and are producing more food than they and their families consume.
My opinion, a lot of the farming horror stories come from uneducated populations having to farm without proper training and resources and farming in harsh environments.
I can't speak for Canada or Mexico, but due to so many benefits being tied to full time employment in the US and a general lack of any kind of social safety net, you have to already be independently wealthy or willing to be a starving artist to do something like that - invest a lot of time into learning a craft that probably won't payoff for decades (if at all).
All stories of extremely small batch but precisely crafted products seem to come out of Japan.
In general, I do think the west fetishizes this aspect of Japan's culture and thus overreports it. That said, many people around the world still do this. I suggest not relying on stories so much to understand the world around you.
Something that is kind of wild about the USA is that for as much as the culture seems to value entrepeneurship, the political and economic system is designed to stifle it and discourage people from starting businesses.
I'm sure it's similar across sectors. Tech startups are what they are thanks to private venture capital.
idk. Most of my YouTube recommendations are exactly that but from all around the world lol. I can’t even say most are from Japan. I would be lying if I did.
As a very simple example, I just watched a video about some candy company in Massachusetts that has been hand-making hard candy the same way for more than a hundred years.
(To stay honest, I do tend to subscribe to channels where the entire purpose is to showcase niche things from all around the world. Great Big Story, for example.)
> idk. Most of my YouTube recommendations are exactly that but from all around the world lol. I can’t even say most are from Japan. I would be lying if I did.
“Exactly that” = small batch, artisan videos
“From all around the world lol” = not only from Japan
“I can’t even say that most are from Japan” = Most of the videos on my feed aren’t from Japan
I think you’re hung up on the “exactly that” part.
I didn’t say “most of my YouTube recommendations are small batch, artisan videos from Japan and the rest are from all around the world.”
I said “most of my YouTube recommendations are small batch, artisan videos from all around the world.”
I didn’t estimate how many videos are Japan-related. I didn’t need to. GP said that “all stories like this are from Japan”. I gave my opinion that he’s wrong based on my YouTube recommendations. Not all stories are from Japan. Even with your misinterpretation of my comment, the conclusion remains the same lol since it was a reply to GP. You seem to have read my comment without that context.
Whether Japanese videos are overestimated (or underestimated which is probably closer to reality) in my feed is meaningless to the conversation that I was having with GP since the discussion (based on the highlighted quote from GP’s comment) was about whether all stories like that come from Japan. The conclusion is “no, not all stories like that come from Japan”.
Thanks for trying to teach me basic statistics though, I guess!
Some evidence:
1) Japan has a higher percentage of iPhone users (65.88%) compared to USA (56.74%), while being poorer than USA on most metrics (GDP, median income, PPP-adjusted income etc.)
2) I don't have quantitative data, but just from experience Japan has so many more high-fashion stores, expensive pastry bakeries, expensive candy makers etc, when compared to USA. And if the stores are there, the customers must exist too.
The reason we have less stuff like this in the USA is due to geography. We are a mostly flat country, rather than being mountainous or separated onto different small islands. Because of this, products produced via economies of scale can outcompete higher-quality artisanal products.
I've read that before the Transcontinental Railroad, it was cheaper and faster to get to San Francisco from a port in China than from St. Louis.
Eh? The US is the opposite of "mostly flat". And large swaths of the mostly flat part have low population density. The country is also very regional with considerable local diversity in what is produced and available locally.
The US produces a lot of very local artisanal products throughout the country that don't travel very far that are based on local tradition and history. That's been true everywhere I've lived in the US.
Eh? Most of the population lives in the Atlantic coastal, Gulf coastal, and Midwest plains. Only a minority of Americans live in places that could be considered "mostly mountainous", methinks.
Even Denver, the most populous city in (arguably) the most mountainous state, is actually a Great Plains city.
There was a story recently about Coppola. His property has something like ~70 soil type/grape combinations and he has more money than god, so he decided to buy fermenters for every combination and see what happens.