Chip Cities Rise in Japan's Fields of Dreams
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This is similar to the commute from Chicago (pop. 2.7 mil) to Downers Grove (pop. 49k), which was my commute. I didn't care to live in the Chicago suburbs, but I didn't mind working out there while living in downtown Chicago.
I can see a young family living close to Sapporo, but parents working at TSMC.
The other TSMC facility in Kumamoto (pop. 738k) on the other hand is 2 hours from the nearest big city, Fukuoka (2.5 mil). Kumamoto is actually a less tenable location for talent. Yet things seem to be working out (the current workers there are mostly Taiwanese expats though).
According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_areas_in_... the Sapporo metro area is 2.7M. Is that correct? Looking at the map the area between those two places looks a lot sparser, so it seems like definitely more of a small town by a small-to-mid-size-city vibe.
The Chicago metro area is 9.6M per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_metropolitan_area so that comparison feels pretty off.
I think a lot of people would take living directly in a 738k city over living 45minutes from a 2mil population city in a <100k city.
<100k cities are SMALL.
Not to mention that Chitose is where Sapporo's international airport is located, so someone who travels often might find it more convenient than living in Sapporo proper.
Sapporo gets cold.
Kyūshū looks like a much more attractive option.
Most Asian people love living around others. We crave the human energy, the hustle and bustle of economic activity, the opportunities, the food, etc.
Climate is something one lives with. Given the choice between Bakersfield CA and Chicago, I’d choose Chicago any day, only because the opportunities are greater in Chicago. I absolutely loved living in Chicago. Even Seattle where I live now is too small for me.
Any statement starting with "Most Asian people" that doesn't end with something like "have two arms and two legs" can be discarded. 4.6 billion people, many of whom are culturally as close to each other as they are to someone from Sweden.
Even here in Seoul, one of the more populous cities, so many people would move in a heartbeat if they could keep the same job and e.g. education for their children. They certainly don't love it.
That's interesting -- because Seoul is one of the most overwhelming examples of city preference (perhaps not internal desire, but opportunity seeking behavior) in the world. Korea has a problem in that the population is in fact too concentrated in Seoul, which creates distortions in the economy, and the government has been trying to get people to spread out more (Sejong City is an attempt). People are frustrated with things about Seoul but they still stay for the opportunity.
Let's flip the question this way: if apartment ownership was affordable, opportunities were good, air was clean, most things in life like healthcare, education, etc. were affordable, would people naturally seek to move to a big city?
Tokyo is such a city and the answer for many people has been yes. It may not be the preference of most people you meet online, but empirically the numbers reveal preference.
Younger populations tend to get attracted to cities, tolerating worse living standards in exchange for better wages and shorter commutes. But higher commodity prices negate benefits, and also lower standards of life suppress offspring, which is politically highly problematic. Isn't that the fundamental defect in concept of a city since the industrial revolution?
A typical luxury condo in Tokyo costs $1m, offer 100m^2(1k sqft) of single floor dwelling, with 300 individual properties on average spanning couple dozen floors. That might be a 0.1% lifestyle, relatively speaking, but objectively and especially in comparison with historical descriptions of opulent life, I can't exactly see how it compares.
If anything higher standards of living (and higher expectations of what children should get) suppress offspring. Easier access to medical care and family planning in cities also plays a factor.
So many would not choose such a big city.
2) The weather is definitely a big factor. The cold, some of the highest amount of snow fall in the world, strong winds, and houses without insulation make for a poor combination. It is so nasty that even the colleagues from Northern Europe were complaining. But it doesn't matter if you like or not; what matters is if the average Japanese person likes it, and they don't. When I travel around Japan and tell people where I live, they are always shocked and ask me what am I doing in such a cold place.
The data on population changes in the USA indicates the people want to avoid freezing temperatures over hot temperatures.
That data is probably at least somewhat biased by retirees who turn the air conditioner on and don't want to deal with some of the inevitable physical demands and transportation difficulties associated with snow.
The Sun Belt is getting younger: https://kinder.rice.edu/urbanedge/large-young-and-fast-growi...
It's pointed in other comments as well, but winter in the north means trains getting canceled, flights delays if it's really bad up there.
Aomori is land connected so there's still other options, but in the event of an earthquake in the middle of winter you're playing the survival game in hard mode.
Even if it's a smallish shake and you just need your gas checked and restarted by a technician, you might be out of hot water for a few days while it's freezing outside. Elderly for instance regularly die during these kind of disruptions, and you'd think they know what they're doing.
About elder people, we heard from the emergency services that, due the lack of insulation and central heating of most houses here, the most common type of emergency during the winter is elder people moving from a warm room to a cold room like the toilet and suffering from thermal shock.
Source: personal experience.
Taiwanese people will move to where the opportunities are. You’ll find many of them in the northern US states, which are, if not snowier, are definitely colder than Sapporo.
A large portion of the US has real winters. (And some of those areas get pretty hot and humid in the summer--like, umm, Tokyo.)
Even NYC, the largest city in the US has real winters (though moderated by being on the coast, it can dip down to 14F easily). And humid summers of course.
And Northeast cities, even into mid-Atlantic, are nothing especially delightful in the winter if snow isn't your thing.
That's what I've lived with most of my life and I've been mostly fine with it. But if you're with some version of a Bay Area climate or bust, you may not consider it acceptable. (And even a "Mediterranean climate" gets pretty hot in a lot of places in the summer many places.)
There's a reason that people who can afford to and want to put the energy into migrate locales from summer to winter.
To be blunt, this is a ridiculous comparison. Kumamoto is a large city in its own right, with a very high quality of life. It may not be as close to Fukuoka, but it offers plenty for residents itself.
On the other hand, Chitose, while close to Sapporo, is much smaller and doesn't offer the same level of living quality. Sapporo itself, though big, is pretty isolated compared to other parts of Japan, too.
Also most people would probably prefer the milder, more temperate weather of Kyushu over Hokkaido's harsh winters.
Having been to Sapporo and Kumamoto -- and many other medium-size Japanese cities -- this attitude can seem awful silly when you're walking around their downtowns. But it can be a self-fulfilling prophecy: if people in charge of "opportunities" leave for the biggest cities, then that's what matters.
Indeed, on my trip to Kumamoto I was visiting a fellow academic, and when I got there he told me he was trying to move so he could be closer to his family in Tokyo. He has since moved to Nagoya, and apparently is happier there.
But given all of that, Tokyo basically has its own economy, it's own rules, and isn't just "big", it works differently enough that people's choice isn't on which city, but whether they live in the Tokyo area or not.
For instance if you're gay, the Tokyo administration will give you an equal marital status. Kids's private school tuitions are partly covered (they're ragingly expensive in the first place, but you get prime access to very competitive schools). Health care will usually be completely free for kids. Remote working is usually treated differently if you're vaguely in the area or if you need a flight, living in the mountains in Okutama will land a better deal that living in Shizuoka, even if commute wise it's probably the same.
This is of course an issue, especially as national policies need to fit both worlds which is a pretty hard (the whole discourse on the spouse wage limit is basically centered on this divide)
I hear this a lot, but I'm quite the opposite. The suburbs are nice and quiet and I can go to the city for anything I need if ever.
Similarly, I will say that the smaller towns in Japan are quite nice and idyllic, and well within reach of the megalopolises by train.
I ended up mostly gravitating to the former but I understand the attraction of the latter and, who knows, I may change my preference some day.
Some clear empirical data is housing prices: People are willing to pay far more to live in many cities than anywhere else, often for much smaller residences.
> I can see a young family living close to Sapporo, but parents working at TSMC.
The Chitose factory is not being built by TSMC, it is a Rapidus venture (IIRC Toshiba/Kioxia is one of the partners). They just received delivery of first EUV from ASML this week.
No one with young family will live in Sapporo, too far specially during 5 months of winter when train disruptions/cancellations are frequent due to excessive snow/blizzards. For example, just this week, every day JR trains were cancelled and/or fewer trains were in operation, it snowed every day and temperature below zero.
Most permanent workers will likely live between Kita Hiroshima (Ohtani's Japanese Pro baseball team new stadium located there) in the north and Tomakomai in the south.
Sapporo population is less than 2 millions and declining (1,969,058 in March 2024 declined from 1,972,381 in April 2022). All municipalities within Hokkaido prefecture have declining population, only exception recently was Eniwa (near Chitose) where population increased by couple of dozen people, increase attributed to enrollment of international students in the area after lifting of COVID restrictions.
> The other TSMC facility in Kumamoto (pop. 738k) on the other hand is 2 hours from the nearest big city, Fukuoka (2.5 mil). Kumamoto is actually a less tenable location for talent. Yet things seem to be working out (the current workers there are mostly Taiwanese expats though).
Kumamoto is actually better/preferred location for Taiwanese expats, from proximity to Taiwan and warmer weather perspective, only little over an hour away from Fukuoka by Shinkansen. In comparison, Hokkaido is too cold and isolated, no high speed rail link to Chitose/Sapporo area or to mainland (Honshu).
Source: Live in Sapporo, also have lived in Ottawa, Toronto, and Seattle; was approached earlier this year by someone on HN for onsite role with a Rapidus US supplier.
It's good that the fabs are so far apart. No one disaster or attack is likely to hit both. Have to think about that now.
Right at the moment I assume that the Japanese government is probably still kicking itself for not spending whatever it took to keep Nikon's EUV-machine development going: apparently Nikon wasn't that far behind ASML. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_OOta7Y6Ik Likely it's determined not to make that mistake again; and it's not as if the US is in any position to complain about Japan having an activist industrial policy in semiconductors at the moment.
No, you can also do just enough to slumber away in mediocracy forever.
Japanese companies and institutions hate sharing knowledge (read: trade secrets) with each other.
There's of course so-called white hydrogen:
https://hydrogeneurope.eu/excitement-grows-about-natural-h2-...
But known reserves are really small compared to those of natural gas.
You can make it from electrolysis, but it's much more expensive to do so, so that won't happen.
* Central Queensland Hydrogen Project (CQ-H2)
A large-scale project that aims to produce 200 tonnes of green hydrogen per day by 2029 and 800 tonnes per day by 2031. The project will supply hydrogen to an ammonia production facility in Gladstone and may eventually export it to Japan
A commercial-scale hydrogen electrolyser project at Yara's Pilbara fertilizer plant that is currently under construction.
* ATCO-Hydrogen-Blending-Project
* Australian Renewable Energy Hub
* Boolathana Project.
It's the exact same story for any other subsidized technology at the beginning. If it were already cost competitive then the switch would likely already have happened. One of the common arguments against electric cars used to be that you were still burning coal or natural gas at the end of the day.
The technology hasn't remained static either. I barely follow hydrogen stuff but I recall there were several notable advancements in catalysis from various precursors over the past several years.
It's exactly the sort of medium to long term gamble that it makes sense for a government to invest in but likely doesn't for a corporation on its own.
I'm not convinced by that. The cheaper electricity gets, say the way PV is absurdly cheap these days, the less the inefficiency of electrolysis matters.
What doesn't change with cheaper PV etc. is that hydrogen is so hard to work with or store, both as a gas and as a liquid.
I can't rely on my gut feelings or comparisons to e.g. the space shuttle external fuel tank to say if these problems can be "solved" well-enough at an acceptable cost, as I've only got a GCSE in chemistry from the turn of the millennium.
The second most valuable is #25 by market cap.
So... they have working bullet trains.
Governments by nature are wasteful, corrupt, and incompetent, sure, but is Japan really particularly bad? You could point to spectacular high speed rail failures in USA or a healthcare system which costs double per-capita as other developed countries for much worse outcomes in most objective measures of public health, incredibly expensive violent and ultimately failed attempts to "export democracy" to places like Afghanistan, and on and on.
So... yes maybe it does, but it seems misleading to make a comment like that unless you can say how it's particularly worse than any other government's waste and failure.
Healthcare is an immense government expenditure though, vastly, vastly bigger than your examples, and I would say US government pumping in a trillion dollars every year for a substandard result fits the your description pretty well.
> or claiming Japan as a whole is bad/worse,
Oh. Well then as I said your comment seemed a bit strange to me if it isn't notably worse than other countries, I thought it implied that Japan is notably bad, but if not then carry on.
> I'm simply stating that the Japanese government's industrial policy of trying to pick winners has a long track record of subsidizing losers instead. Any (recent-ish) counterexamples you'd like to point out?
Counterexamples for what? I didn't say Japan's government isn't incompetent and/or doesn't take risks on investing in long shots, like other governments, so I'm not claiming there is no such long history. What I was asking is what makes Japan particularly bad, but you say it's not so I don't really have more to say.
Their past policy in favour of Canon/Nikon would look like a different story if the US government had decided that one of C/N could have EUV tech instead of giving it to ASML/SVG.
Your point is generally pretty decent, though. It's a pity you're having so many responses that are so low-brow. Industrial policy isn't healthcare etc. and the performative outrage on this site is getting quite tiresome.
So if the Japanese govt. is going to 'bet' on anything, then betting on a segment where Japanese inputs are critical, and where Japanese companies had led the world previously, is a safer bet than a segment where there is no history or inputs.
Bureucratic and indecisive nature of managing government employees are often brought up as a contributing factor, which applies to every government decisions ever, so this assertion do need citations to be a valid point in a discussion.
Hydrogen fuel is strategic because if it has even any chance to succeed it means a huge escspe route from China's influence, as the whole EV stack relies on them (getting rid of petroleum fuel is of course the same deal, Japan has no oil). That's basically a low risk high return bet. We're seeing how hybrids are still fairing better that full EVs and Tesla hasn't displaced Toyota either.
Computing standard is the same: they've been stuck with US standards for eternity now, up to iOS and android eating the national market when they had a decade long lead. Not pouring money into any half viable bet would be crazy.
これらのフォーラムでさまざまな言語を見て、返信できるのは素晴らしいことです。私はいつも言語が苦手でした。またすぐに戻ってきてください。あなたの視点に感謝します。