Tokyo Is the New Paris | Hacker News Reader

Tokyo Is the New Paris

noahpinion.blog

72 pointsjseliger121 comments

I've just wrapped up a 6+ year stint in Tokyo. It is my favorite city in the world, hands down. Maybe similarly to Paris, Tokyo is a great place to _visit_, especially for a few weeks or months, but a difficult place to live long term.

My hope is that, with all the gentrification pain that this recent tourism push [0] is bringing, we will see a much larger and more stable international community settle in Tokyo. Currently, long term Japan life is best enjoyed by introverts (generally).

[0] https://www.nippon.com/en/ncommon/contents/japan-data/222973...

* 6mm~ to 32mm visitor increase in the past 10 years. Gov target is 60mm by 2030.

> Currently, long term Japan life is best enjoyed by introverts (generally).

And long may it continue.

Could you elaborate on "long term Japan life is best enjoyed by introverts"?

AFAIK Japan is a high-trust, high-context society. It is difficult to break into social groups or make new acquaintances, while the infrastructure necessary for living a "solitary" existence (supported by service-providing strangers) is extant and quite sophisticated.

I have a slew of thoughts I still haven't completely fleshed out in a publicly sharable form yet, and are from the perspective of a western-raised person, but the summary would probably look something like:

- Most of your socially active friends will most likely leave within 2-3 years of arriving

- If you were raised in the west, family and culturally similar communities are likely quite far away (both in flight hours and timezone changes)

- It is notoriously hard to break into Japanese social circles, regardless of language competency. Acquaintances are easy, but I'm talking about deeper connections.

What kind of social circles are you talking about?

And why would you want to 'break into' them if they are so exclusionary?

Can you expand more on why you think it's a place best enjoyed by introverts?

I've only ever visited for a short trip so I'm curious to hear your take.

My guess? Hard to make friends.

It is very difficult to get into Japanese society. They are really friendly and helpful, but finding a common "wave length" is very difficult. Introverts have it much easier to live with that. Also, since there are a lot of introverts in Japan, the infrastructure for an introvert lifestyle exists.

it probably depends if you can speak fluent Japanese or not tbh

Even if you can speak fluent Japanese, it's just a different culture where fast friends, especially as adults, isn't as prevalent. You'll have the exceptions who might seek out friends from different cultures, but most people are just trying to get by and content with the social circle they already have.

I too love Tokyo, but I don’t want to see a larger international community move there. Those big cities with lots of expats and immigrants all end up looking like London or Toronto or New York.

I absolutely agree, but the tourism train is barreling forward at this point. I think an emotionally invested foreign community is the only way to smooth out future gentrification tension.

Rupert Wingfield-Hayes said it well in his "goodbye after 10 years" (sort of) writeup. [0]

> Will Japan gradually fade into irrelevance, or re-invent itself? My head tells me that to prosper anew Japan must embrace change. But my heart aches at the thought of it losing the things that make it so special.

[0] Japan was the future but it's stuck in the past https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-63830490

It might be the circles that I move in, but it seems like Japan fell out of favour as a tourist destination?

I know lots of people who went in the early 2000s, and I also visited myself a handful of times. It doesn’t seem to be quite so on the radar nowadays, which is strange considering how interesting it is.

Hm, might just be your circles? Anecdotally, lots of people I know have been to Japan in the past decade.

I do notice less people talking about going in the past couple years (but that's due to COVID restrictions, etc)

I think this is an interesting piece of semi-related anecdata from 2021 [0]

> The Japanese cities of Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto have earned the first, second and third spots respectively on Condé Nast Traveler’s 2021 list of the best major cities in the world.

> The cities were selected in a poll of over 800,000 Condé Nast readers as part of the publication’s prestigious, long-running Reader’s Choice Awards, and won particular acclaim for their world-class cuisine, inspiring cultural attractions and seamless blending of tradition and modernity.

[0] https://theincentivist.com/japanese-cities-conde-nast-best-m...

I wonder if that is less about Tokyo/Japan falling out of favor versus other Asian cities falling into favor?

Since the early 2000s, many Chinese cities, as well as other Asian cities like Seoul, rapidly developed in both scale and modernity. Tokyo sort of remained the same.

I couldn't read the whole article. Is he talking about 1920s Paris, or 2020s Paris? There's a lot to like about Tokyo, but there is a tendency toward conservatism in nearly all aspects of Japanese society as well.

Ian Buruma - a former bit player in Tokyo's 1970s avant garde art scene who later became a New York Times correspondent - had many observations about this in his recent memoir:

What we had seen at Maro’s rehearsal studio was a very Japanese phenomenon. A theatrical method that had been created by a great artist, through sheer daring and experimentation, had become established as a style, passed on by masters of various schools, all with their own variations. This had happened to the tea ceremony, once a spontaneous expression of aesthetic joy in drinking tea, now a rigid set of rules, to be learned by wealthy ladies who pay a fortune to the various tea ceremony schools. The same thing had happened to classical theater and to flower arranging. And now, in a way, it was happening even to a once avant-garde dance form.

He also returned again and again to the mostly white expatriates he encountered at the time, and some of the characteristics and frustrations of their existence there:

Hovering on the fringes was where I liked to be, neither in nor out, neither one thing nor another, semidetached, a born fellow traveler, a male fag hag, an observer in the midst of sympathetic strangers. It was thrilling, but also a way of playing it safe. Perhaps that was why I was attracted to Japan, a society to which a foreigner could never belong, even if he wanted to.

... He, Donald, felt entirely at ease as an outsider. The great thing about Japan, he said, was that one was left alone. To be Japanese in Japan was to be caught in an almost intolerable web of rules and obligations. But the gaijin was exempt from all that. He could observe life with serene detachment, not being bound to anything or anyone. In Japan, Donald felt utterly, radically free.

[Donald] mentioned the “Seidensticker syndrome,” named after his friend, the scholar Edward Seidensticker. Ed habitually spent half the year in Japan. When he arrived in Tokyo, he was ready to kiss the ground. Everything was wonderful. Then, once he had more or less settled down, he began to get more and more irritated by “these people,” until after six months he was quite ready to go home.

I am rather left of center myself, but there’s something sooo… San Francisco? Not sure how to call it, a sort of special holier than though liberal take like:

> There's a lot to like about Tokyo, but there is a tendency toward conservatism

Where someone complains about a foreign culture being, well, foreign. At a certain point, I think, it’s critically important to stop comparing like this and instead frame it as a question.

My use of the term "conservatism" refers to the "averse to change or innovation and holding traditional values" or "tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions" definitions, not the meaning associated with American politics.

Has it occurred to you that maybe that is the reason Tokyo is a high trust society and a safe city compared to non-conservative 0-trust and dangerous American cities?

How dare you imply that people’s attitudes and beliefs have anything to do with where they’re from or affect the kind of societies they create. /s

Been living in Tokyo for 4 years now with my grandparents being from the Tokyo suburbs. The cool thing with Tokyo is as author says, it build upon itself, chaotically, while maintaining drops of ancient cultures.

But compared to the Big5 of trendy mega cities (NY, London, Paris, Tokyo and HK) the biggest thing is just that things *just works* ik Tokyo. Infrastructure is reliable, streets are clean (except maybe Kabukicho), people follow the rules, no Parisians, safe, trains come in time, things are clustered around stations so everything is close. I haven't lived in the 5 cities but talking/working for an extended time with people from there, the big feature seems to be that somehow Tokyo have so far dodged a lot of the issues big cities fall in to. There's some annoying quirks too, such as all the public transport stopping at around midnight, but that somehow added more to color an unique nightlife.

The biggest downside, probably compared to NY/London/HK is that it can feel quite lonely at times if you don't look or speak like a local. But there are hard-to-find microcosm of mini-communities, my recent favorite being SF-styled, mostly US expat populated Harry's Sandwich bar. When you come as a tourist you'll probably not find those, and like many of my friend just draw the conclusion that it's a lonely, isolating mega city, from all the "solo-friendly" stores and trains cladded with tired salary mens in suit you'll inevitably walk by。

But I do wonder why the sudden tourist surge? It have been crazy crowded after covid and almost all my friends decided to go to Tokyo this year. Is it really just opening up and the weak yen?

There is also more flight competition with lower prices, and these days some North American flights even land at HND.

Most of my city experience being in NYC made it so my first trip to Tokyo that much more special. Everything was so clean, the public transit always on time, the food always fantastic, felt safe while walking at night.

I always find comments like this a little awkward, because how much of Tokyo and Japan being "safe" is because it's largely racially homogenous, politically/socially conservative, and anti-immigration compared to other first world countries.

You're pointing out differences, but they're not why it's safe. Are you claiming the immigrants and other races cause crime?

No, but throwing disparate groups, each with their own interests, into the same pot, is not as conducive to harmony versus everyone belonging to more or less the same "in" group.

Both a melting pot society and a homogenous one have their pros and cons. I love the former, but I also don't pretend to think there aren't serious cons to a melting pot and pros to a homogeneity.

You still have no proposed link from "melting pot" to crime. You're just stating some demographic difference between the countries.

Meanwhile there are some differences, especially in policy, that are very easy to link to crime: Japan has practically no guns. Japan has universal healthcare. The US has a poverty rate of over 10%, while Japan has a poverty rate of under 2%. Japan builds housing. Japanese public education is much more equitable and supported by the national government.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007...

Maybe it's a chicken and egg question?

Why is Japan able to do that, and the US isn't?

When practically everyone is a fellow Japanese, you don't have people griping about universal healthcare (or social safety nets in general) benefitting the "other" who "don't deserve it".

Or feeling that you need to own guns to "protect yourself from the other".

There's an easy link from guns -> violence.

You're proposed link from homogeneity -> gun control is completely unsupported.

Considering most developed countries have strict gun controls, the US is unique and you can't really apply the issues of guns to anywhere else.

But a lot of pro-gun advocates cite that they want guns to protect themselves.

My general point stands. If everyone around you is part of your "in" group, you're more likely to be willing to help them out and less likely to see them as a threat.

I would like to believe that most people are able to transcend racial, ethnic, religious, or even national boundaries to help their fellow man.

However, reality shows me this is not the case.

Look at the homicide rates in some Latin American countries with no guns compared to similarly disarmed, poorer Asian countries.

> No, but throwing disparate groups, each with their own interests, into the same pot, is not as conducive to harmony versus everyone belonging to more or less the same "in" group.

This is not true, and not possible in practice. In any seemingly homogenous group there are various subgroups, often at odds with each other for whatever reason. It's just human nature.

Harmony has more to do with local culture, the economy and other quality of life issues. Have a look at a place like Australia, which has little conflict overall even though it has a large and growing immigrant population. That has to do with an egalitarian culture and being a fairly wealthy country with nice weather.

I'm not really seeing where the racial diversity is in Australia. The 2021 census data shows majority of Australians are White/European and then some Chinese/Indian.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Australia

That's because you think in terms of White and Black, which is a US centric view. The diversity is by ethnic background, skin colour is irrelevant.

A more enlightening statistic is that about half of Australians have a parent that was born overseas, which means they have an ethnic background.

https://www.abs.gov.au/media-centre/media-releases/2021-cens...

I can't speak specifically about Australia since I'm not familiar with it.

But what is "local culture"? It's made up by the local people. In a homogenous society like Japan, it's Japanese culture.

In a melting pot society like the US, it's a mix of the product of old European immigrants that have mostly merged and assimilated with each other, African Americans forcibly brought over via the slave trade that emerged with their own culture, and finally combined with more recent arrivals from Asia/Africa/Latin America who are much less assimilated.

When one or more cultures meet, sometimes they adapt positively. Sometimes they adapt negatively. When you have so many cultures mixed together, there is bound to be friction.

That doesn't necessarily mean violence, but it can be something more subtle - like certain races or groups resisting interacting with each other beyond the bare necessities. I wouldn't be surprised if this is true in Australia too.

I'm Asian American, and I am ashamed to admit I have zero African American friends (I have Black friends, but they are all more recent African/European/Caribbean immigrants). Cultural norms and upbringing has a lot to do with it. At the risk of sounding too clinical, one of my goals is to genuinely befriend more African Americans.

There is a common culture in every country. It may have different components like regional, political and ethnic differences, but there is always a larger common culture.

Your view suggests you think that people rigidly stick to whatever culture they're born into, but that's not the case. The longer people stay in a country the more the local culture seeps in. The children of immigrants typically adopt the local culture, even if it has a ethnic flavor.

So there is a natural trend toward the local culture. If your view were true countries with permanent large immigration programs such as Australia, Canada and the US would over time become balkanised, but that's obviously not the case. Different ethnic groups tend to an understanding of each other rather than conflict. There isn't naturally friction due to ethnic differences, just like religions don't tend to be add odds with each others members.

You don't need to have friends from other ethnic groups, or a particular ethnic group, just like you don't need to have friends in other political or religious groups. Life isn't a bingo card. All you need to do is subscribe to a few common fundamental values, and that's generally easy for people in a given country to do, even if it takes some time.

> how much of Tokyo and Japan being "safe" is because it's largely racially homogenous, politically/socially conservative, and anti-immigration compared to other first world countries.

Citation very much needed.

For instance Russia is socially and politically conservative, mostly "racially" (everyone is "white" because according to you that matters) homogeneous, anti-immigration (outside of limited amounts of labourers from the former Soviet republics), yet... it's not safe nor clean nor developed. Same can be applied to a host of different countries across the world.

Hmm, I looked at the list of the world's most dangerous cities, and even scrolling all the way down did not reveal a single Russian city (its mainly South and Middle America, South Africa and the USA). Can you give a citation for your claim?

Just because Russian cities aren't among the most dangerous in official records doesn't make them in any way safe. If nothing else, the complete lack of rule of law, with arbitrary detentions, should be enough of an indicator of an unsafe place.

That needs citation, too.

Now you’re moving the goal posts. There’s plenty of places that lack political freedom but are very safe in terms of day to day life. E.g. China or Singapore.

Well it's a facet of day to day safety - if the police can detain you and torture you to death because they don't like your T-shirt's opinion, that country isn't safe on the expression side. Safety isn't only from random robbers and murderers, but also the state.

Most people just want to be safe from robbers and murderers. Trying to conflate political safety with physical safety is just wordplay.

99.999% of people will never be in this situation and they don't care. Ask people if they want Singapore's safety and they will take it.

30% of Russia isn't white.

Their skin is various variations of white. A Tajik or a Chechen are still white-ish coloured (which is why differentiating by skin colour is one of the stupidest ways to differentiate people)

By white people mean European (which is broadly a mix of Near Eastern Farmers and Western Steppe Herders)

How much of white Russia died in Ukraine in last 18 months comparing to non-white?

What is the point of this question?

This feels like an attempt to cash in on modern western antipathy to Russia to win an argument. I would not call Russia especially homogenous, especially dangerous or especially poor. It has modest crime that is relatively low for its income level (which is globally around the low-middle end of the spectrum). Crime in Russia is higher than China, but lower than Mexico (two countries with similar GDP/capita). Russia is also pretty diverse and it has a long history of being a diverse multi-ethnic empire. Commentators in during the Napoleonic Wars even mentioned how the diversity of the Russian empire was a point of national pride. A huge variety of peoples live within the borders of Russia: Kalmyks, Cossacks, Tartars, Russians, Jews, Baltic/Volga Germans, Belorussians, Ukrainians, Finns/Karelians, Moldovans, Georgians, Chechens, Turkmen, Armenians... The fact that the leadership of the Soviet Union passed from a Jew (Lenin) to a Georgian (Stalin) to a Ukrainian (Kruschev) to a Russified Ukrainian from Siberia (Brezhnev) would suggest that the country has a very different attitude toward ethnicity than who it is construed in the context of America.

Racial homogeneity doesn't necessarily explain why you don't get mugged at night. A mugger doesn't see race; a mugger sees money, or lack thereof on their own part. Threatening someone with violence is their path of least resistance, so maybe there's an alternative in Japan (a working social safety net perhaps?).

Racism exists everywhere. Often, one or more groups are downtrodden, and that leads to the social grievances that result in things like crime.

Racism exists in countries like Japan too. Except the number of non-Japanese (or non East Asian who can often pass for Japanese) are statistically so insignificant that it is far less of an issue than say, the US.

I've seen comments like this in a number of places and I'm sure the high degree of social cohesion is a big factor but I think that this list is perhaps too narrow. I would also add that the high degree of social cohesion is supported by high wages and a strong labor movement. Japan has a constitution that was written by New Deal Democrats that gives labor and unions a lot of rights. Labor is strong and well paid (Japanese CEOs are also strong and well paid but nothing like CEOs of American companies who feel no shame in taking a 10% pay bump while firing 16% of their workers). Japanese politics are simply different. American pundits would look at a mainline LDP and variably call him a fascist or a communist depending on the issue.

I respect Noah's opinion on this. But he's also objectively a weeb (not meant pejoratively). The experience of visiting a city can be a sublime one, different things will speak "spiritually" to different people. The experiences that he had in Tokyo and the happiness it brought him are echoed in my experiences of Barcelona, Berlin, etc. Basically this is a matter of taste. One of the best things about globalization and relatively free movement between states is the ability to experience so much in a single life. There is no best city.

I agree with this.

One of my best friends is a huge anime fan. He's also caucasian-American. He finds a sense of wonder and exoticness traveling to Japan, and Asia in general.

I'm Asian. While I enjoy traveling to Asia, I don't get the same sense of wonder and exoticness as I do traveling to...Europe. Which coincidentally, he does not.

Tokyo isn't even the best city in Japan. Osaka and Sapporo are both much more livable: They both contain most of the amenities and conveniences of Tokyo -- but everything is cheaper, distances between spaces are shorter, and nature and green spaces are nearer to hand. (Much nearer, in Sapporo's case.)

Tokyo is very closely analogous to New York City... but nothing in America, and very few cities in Europe or elsewhere in Asia, are anything like Sapporo.

I lived in Tokyo for a year and Nara for three. Tell me about Sapporo!

Sapporo is a big city by any reckoning, at around 2M people. It's larger than Kyoto (1.4M) but slightly smaller than Osaka (2.6M), both of which you're surely very familiar with, from living in Nara. The thing about Sapporo is that it doesn't form part of any regional bloc...

Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto-Nara is practically a single megacity, at this point. (And you can arguably include Nagoya.)

Tokyo-Chiba-Yokohama is a hyper-megacity. Driving from one end of the other can take many hours.

But Sapporo is a rather isolated, standalone city. Hop in a car downtown, and you can find yourself in the woods within 20 minutes. I'm not exaggerating in the slightest.

And whereas Tokyo is a city of neighborhoods -- like the way Ikebukuro, Asakusa, and Shinjuku are rather self-contained spaces -- Sapporo has one primary downtown/nightlife district, which is very convenient. It's not inferior to any of Tokyo's neighborhoods, either; in fact, it's considerably larger than most of them. It also has a system of underground pedestrian paths that's one of the wonders of the world, IMO.

So it's a big city, surrounded by nature, without sprawl, with clean and well-defined spaces.

> Many great cities become museums of themselves, their lack of new development an homage to their glory days.

This is sometimes how I feel about Athens. It’s such a cool city, and the Acropolis is a marvelous site to see from a rooftop across the city. Yet I have this desire for the city to properly restore the Parthenon, paint it again, and turn the Acropolis into a public space of gathering. Many would object to that idea for legitimate reasons, but it makes the city look like a has-been, long past its peak. Ancient Greece was an area full of beautiful colors[0] rather than white and brown marble. I would love to see a return to that.

I need to give Tokyo a visit. I’m interested in cities that keep their character while also maintaining themselves and driving forwards.

[0] https://theacropolismuseum.gr/en/exhibition-programs/archaic...

Even better—Tokyo is Paris without the Parisians. And you can get croissants that are just as good as in France.

Sounds like my fantasy Canadian city, Montreal but without the hardcore Québécois

ouch.

The issue with Paris is not the Parisians. It’s the bloody tourists. Covid was great. Please stop coming. Thank you.

I've had one negative experience with a Parisian ever - everyone else has been very friendly - and I'm a dumb American that maybe knows a couple dozen French words.

In my university days, I took Latin. Ended up doing a lot of work and picked up a smattering of languages - but across EMEA, there was a core familiarity.

When work had me go to Japan, that lack of any foundational familiarity was shocking. The people were kind and put up with someone slaughtering their language (and practicing their English) It added a level of exoticness that is hard to explain.

Best part was work had finally implemented a 'you must bring back receipts' for expenses. 10 pages of something was dropped off to the poor sod in accounting. Their face was priceless.

I miss both Paris and Tokyo...

My high school language was Japanese. Attempting European languages in adulthood, I'm always thrown off by the object-verb order. My brain subconsciously skips over the action, hears the object and then is left waiting to hear what we're supposed to do with it.

I had some of the best French food I’ve ever had in Tokyo, and I wasn’t even searching for it. All the food in Japan was given so much respect and care, everything was delicious

Pretty soon, the French visiting Tokyo will report Tokyo Syndrome: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome

I've heard there is already something similar that occurs with anime fans when they first visit Tokyo.

not this fake syndrome again, for reference : https://www.slate.fr/story/47495/folies-voyage-paris-choc-re...

As a life-long admirer of Japan’s history and culture I’ve actually been consistently putting off visiting for somewhat related reasons (cueing Italo Calvino’s “Le città invisibili” [1]).

There are probably fewer differences between Tokyo and where I’m from than between it and its modern self in the 70s, 80s or 90s even.

I’d be delighted to learn that that’s really not the case.

Though even so, I would probably keep on being hesitant as in my head it’s still peak 80s in Japan [2] and I’d really like to keep it that way.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Cities

[2] https://youtu.be/4dR_KHXcu9w

Life's short; burst that bubble. I wish I had your background when I visited because there was so much beneath the surface I probably didn't grasp.

Not knowing your expectations, I can only give my own subjective opinions about Paris and Tokyo.

Paris - The cultural capital of the EU. - Despite the amazing metro, the traffic is horrendous. If you drive a car you cannot go anywhere. - Cost of living is driving many Parisians to leave. That and all the petty theft. - If you can afford it, Paris is a great city.

Tokyo - Amazing livable megalopolis. Besides it’s ubiquitous shrines and temples, Japan doesn’t keep many old buildings around and usually rebuilds on top. Their museums while notable cannot compare with Paris - Amazing metro but the main train station Tokyo Station is a hopeless confusing maze albeit fun clean but god help you if you’re coming from the Narita Express and trying to find the exit for the metro. Not to mention that many old maps/diagrams are oriented not by NESW compass directions but wherever the imperial castle is relative to you. - Despite being a top tier city, it is affordable. If you don’t mind the concrete jungle , you can raise a family there. - If you want to fully embrace the Japanese culture and language, Tokyo is a great city.

I visited Paris and it was splendid!

But all in all, Tokyo was far more amazing.

Never been to Tokyo, but Paris was quite a dirty place, trash on streets, you’d have to keep your belongings safe otherwise they’d get stolen.

Eiffel tower was nice but I was quite disappointed, was nothing like how the movies romanticized it.

Is the end of the article behind a paywall? The only two arguments I read are 1) skyscrapers are growing quicker than 3 other cities, and 2) it happens to contain the author's favorite cocoa shop. Surely I'm missing the bottom of it.

3. It’s fun to fly around the world with friends!

https://archive.ph/vgiNk

Ok, so that's the full article. I think it's a bit short on explaining why Tokyo is replacing Paris.

I fully honour the author's preference. There are so many ways of judging a city, and looking at cocoa bars and speed of building construction seem very arbitrary to me. Are we talking about travelling? Living? A mix of both?

I can imagine that some of the similarities with Paris could be the size, a certain authenticity and history mixed with modernity, some kind of atmosphere, a food culture, lots of tourists amd crazy busy transportation systems?

I've never been to Tokyo, so it's hard for me to judge. But I've lived in Paris for a few years. Beautiful city to visit, atrocious to live in (by my standards, I know lots of people love it there, but also 3/4 of my friends kept explaining how they hated it there and would move, without acting on it... How Parisian!). This pretty much cured me against large cities.

I can imagine that you can do much better in livability, maybe that's what Tokyo achieved?

I'm assuming there is a fuller post behind the paywall because the one that I see seems extremely short.

I'm also going to assume the author is referring to the mythical Paris of the early 20th century for its artist/creative opportunities. If that's the case, a couple things:

1. None of us actually experienced early 20th century Paris, so we judge it romantically on the output (particularly in English/Spanish) of creatives living there.

2. Do we have (or the author have) evidence of a similar kind of creative output (particularly in English/Spanish) from Tokyo? My sense is no, even though I like Japanese food and Japanese punk. I don't like or follow anima/manga so maybe that is a blind side for me to see such evidence.

3. Tokyo is cheaper than Paris/NYC/London, but it's still not super cheap, and Japan is not the easiest country to move to. I'm not aware of many "creative" foreigners moving semi-permanently to Tokyo in anything comparable to Paris, 20th or 21st century.

Japan has a pretty hefty cultural presence with notable directors, and is pretty influential in terms of fashion, interior design, and architecture.

The usual issue is that Japanese culture is pretty understated, so the streetwear, the architecture, etc. is not something that immediately grabs attention like New York, Paris or Milan.

But see Zaha Hadid’s Tokyo Olympics stadium [1] vs the Japanese design that it got replaced with [2]

[1]: https://www.dezeen.com/2015/07/17/japan-scraps-zaha-hadid-to...

[2]: https://www.dezeen.com/2021/07/28/japan-national-stadium-ken...

I suppose I should have thought of that—I'm wearing Japanese raw denim jeans right now—but I forgot all about fashion, so good point bringing that up. I don't know if there's much "you have to be in Tokyo" for, given the exportable quality of clothing, but it's a fair point on cultural output.

I still think Paris is magical and can’t wait going back there (working nomad here)

Let's visit Tokyo jungle in this July or August. F*cking hot and moist now.

Tokyo is a nice city but this is a weird article. Is it cut-off by a paywall?

https://archive.ph/vgiNk

Ok - apparently it is the full article. It is not a very good article.

The archive link has a paywall notice at the bottom

Yes, I saw that — but does the article in its entirety appear above that notice? I can't tell.

There's a certain group think among right wing bloggers that the answer to the housing crisis is to completely liberalise zoning/planning rules, however all these people (as far as I can tell), choose to live in areas with highly regulated planning restrictions.

I am sympathetic to making it easier to build, but we have to be honest about the trade-offs that have been made in some of these hyper dense asian cities. Namely, ugly buildings, and lack of green space.

It's also worth noting that these places rely on significant, long-term, investment in public transport infrastructure of the kind that they don't make in the US. This is something that's often missing from the debate.

Edit, I think people are misunderstanding my comment a bit. Personally, I'm favour of making it easier to build housing - I don't own property because it's too expensive and would love it to be cheaper.

I'm merely saying that I've seen a strand of thought amongst the right/wing VC crowd who believe in very aggressive liberalisation (pretty much build anything anywhere), which I don't think is practical or politically feasible.

I’m happy to hate on right-wing bloggers, but I’m suspicious that your “as far as I can tell” might be doing a bit too much work. Do you have any reason to believe that sentence is correct?

I don't hate right-wing bloggers, in fact I follow many and respect their opinions. However I think the debate around housing often lacks nuance, and a pure free market approach feels like it comes more from dogmatism than practical policy making.

It's possible that the bloggers I follow fit in my filter bubble, which is based around the California/London regions so there's likely selection bias.

I imagine the bloggers you refer to would find a lot of resonance with some form of the statement “At the federal level, I’m a Republican. At the state level, I’m a Democrat. With my close friends, I’m a socialist. And with my family, I’m a communist.” Are you perhaps missing a bit of nuance?

Being generous with your friends is not a political position, I don’t think it adds much nuance to our understanding of their political opinions.

Noah and other YIMBY types tend to skew left wing by any US definition that isn’t based around the moderate voter of San Francisco

And yet the moderate voter in San Francisco is on the right wing of most political continuums outside of the U.S. The statement stands.

Absolutely not. SF voters think police shouldn't crack down on people openly selling/using drugs, weather on trains, buses, sidewalks, or in front of schools because that would perpetuate racism. They also are removing algebra from middle school for DEI reasons. Many believe developers should not be allowed to build any market rate housing. The planning process to build anything requires years of environmental costing millions which is much more onerous than in most European and Asian cities. In Asia people in general are not onboard with the "woke" culture of San Francisco. Socially, they're much more conservative. In general, Europe is in between.

Eh, I think variety is the spice of life. Communities need to have the freedom to plan what works best for them.

> Communities need to have the freedom to plan what works best for them.

Tried that. Didn't work. Now a generation of young people are going to have to move thousands of kms away or live in their parents basements until the boomers die.

> until the boomers die

The earth tried solving that. We destroyed the economy and caused untold mental damage to youngsters to prevent it.

Yes. We need absolute iron hand in deciding in what place and what kind of housing must be available for all people.

Whenever people say they got it right this time, it really means they got it right this time.

> Now a generation of young people are going to have to move thousands of kms away

I feel like having everybody move for work in the first place was a significant contributor to the problem.

Ah yes, notable right wing blogger Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

https://www.curbed.com/2022/01/aoc-2022-pledge-pro-housing-y...

> I am sympathetic to making it easier to build, but we have to be honest about the trade-offs that have been made in some of these hyper dense asian cities. Namely, ugly buildings, and lack of green space.

Sure, we could create housing for the thousands upon thousands of homeless people, we could allow for improvement that makes it more affordable to live, we could allow for economic growth - but hasn't anybody thought about how ugly that makes it all look?

You can certainly increase density while maintaining green spaces. Westminster (A London borough) has enormous open areas -- Hyde Park, Green Park, Regents Park and St James Park - taking almost half the entire borough's area.

It still has a population of 25,000 per square mile. London as a whole has a density of 14,600. You could add another 6 million people in London while maintaining a density which would allow a third of London to be open green areas.

Yep, it's possible, but hard in practice for lots of places.

London has historical parks/commons which are fantastic, but for cities which don't have many large parks, it's hard to retrofit them.

West London is also the most expensive part, completely unaffordable for 95% of people. It's not a coincidence that the best amenities are there. Certainly not clear that you can have high amenity areas that are also affordable.

it's expensive because it's mostly nice (although the cheapest place I ever lived in was near west kensington tube station, just on the wrong side of the tracks, but about a mile from kensington gardens.

It's quite clear that you can have housing for 15 million people in the area of Greater London with the density and green space of Westminster.

Does that require grand architecture? Sure. Will it happen? Nope. But it's not a density problem, it's an allocation problem.

Instead great swathes of London are built over with high density semi and terrace housing with a tiny bit of poor green space per person (usually paved over to store a car which sits still 23 hours a day or more)

So they in favor of abolishing single family zoning?

Noah is a raging liberal so I’m not sure what “right wing” bloggers you’re talking about.

But the “investment in public transport” thing is a red herring. Prior to the pandemic, Tokyo Metro (a publicly owned private company) ran a profit. The other Tokyo subway, Toei, recovers about 75% of costs in fares. Transport for London regularly runs a surplus. The NYC MTA by contrast is at under 40%.

I'm not sure I follow your public transport argument. Both Tokyo and London have had many decades of significant government investment and support into their transport infrastructure. E.g. The billions from the taxpayer for the recent Elizabeth Line in London. Neither system would exist without very large gov support.

The point is that “public investment” isn’t why transit systems in America suck. The government invested about 60% of Cross Rail capital costs, and the line will likely pay for itself in terms of operating costs. By contrast, the government paid for 100% of the costs for New York’s Second Avenue subway, and will pick up the check for more than half the operating costs too.

The NYC MTA receives over $7 billion in public support annually, and routinely gets billions in federal infusions. It got a $15 billion covid bail out. Transport for a London meanwhile has gotten 3.6 billion pounds over the next two years as it comes out of covid. NYC’s public investment dwarf’s London’s.

American government spending has an extremely low multiplier because of onerous environmental regulations (primarily NEPA).

A mural in San Francisco cost $600k (!) to cover up due to environmental impact reports and legal fees.

Asking for more public spending is literally just asking to burn people's money.

Every place even a little bit exburan/suburban/urban in Canada and the US has highly regulated planning restrictions. It's unavoidable, so the fact people who criticize current planning rules live under them isn't a choice; it's a necessity.

Planning restrictions are also highly bipartisian. Both sides favour restrictions, often for different reasons and with different intent, and the result is no supply.

People like to point to Houston as not having zoning laws, but they have deed restrictions that behave in much the same way (and are even harder to undo). Houston does have some of the least restrictive planning rules and also has some of the lowest housing costs. This is not a coincidence.

I pretty much entirely see this content from "moderate" / "centrist" liberal pundits, not "right wing bloggers".

Indeed, it seems to me more so that there is a "horseshoe" with respect to this, where both further left- and right-wing folks both favor more restrictive planning / zoning, for different reasons. On the left, it seems to be related to a skepticism of anything being less regulated having a general stench of laissez-faire capitalism, and on the right it seems to be more about local control over planning being the mechanism for keeping undesirables elsewhere.

And the more "centrist" people I follow on the right just don't seem interested in this topic at all, for whatever reason.

North America does not have the same populations/density that is seen in east/southeast/south Asia. Therefore, North American cities do not have to make any such trade-off between density and green space.

In fact, density allows for more green space. Don't let single-family home suburbs fool you. Lawns are not green space. Laws are a pathetic attempt at greenwashing suburbs that were made by clear cutting forests or destroying nature. The less space humans take, the more can be left for nature.

Tokyo may be big but everything feels painfully mediocre.

It might be fun if one is happy to mostly ignore the reality of the locals and treat it as a silly island resort like the stereotype of Thailand (including exiting the local labor force ASAP). If you want intellectual conversations or stimulating work alongside others don't bother.

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