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Doesn't Japan see homes as a depreciating asset while America's economic treats homes as a persistent or appreciating investment asset? Wouldn't this be one of the big reason affluent companies and people are buying up homes in the USA and turning them into rentals?

*Edit, fixed wording.

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Yes, exactly. Our natural environment is similar, but our monetary and economic policies support different priorities.

Their cities are also much older. Tokyo is like 400-600 years old.

They ran out of undeveloped land long ago and were forced to increase density.

At least in California, cities are like 50-150 years old at best. Lots of cities are only running out of land now. In 300 years, I'm sure somewhere like LA will be dense.

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