What is it about Japan that people find even small empty towns like this fascinating?
PS: I include my self here. Just spent looking at pictures of around Okutama. Very beautiful.
PS: I include my self here. Just spent looking at pictures of around Okutama. Very beautiful.
I think there are a few things that make Japan fascinating to anyone who lives in a car-oriented culture, and a very important aspect is that even the small, out of the way, rural towns are still connected via passenger train, which changes the relationship of the small town to the central hub in important ways like what's described in the article here. Getting off the train in a small town is very different than getting out of your car in a small town.
You can find this same dynamic in the US, btw. You'll find that old rural towns, that grow up connected to the central hubs by either boat or by passenger train, have a lot of the same charm and feel. But if things are developed along roads, there's no presumption about walkability: they are designed for people to get in their cars and go from one parking lot to another.
Anyway, I'm actually totally clueless about this and speculating with very little informed knowledge outside my lived experience. I should probably delete this comment.
As someone who lives in one such place: no, they are not connected by train. Here in Aomori you can't go anywhere without a car. The whole prefecture is how you describe the US.
I’ve been to Japan 4 times and have driven in 25 US states. Rural areas just tend to be car dominated. A few towns have charm but most are just where regular people work and live.
Certainly there are a few to be had but (my impression) pretty much none in North America. Probably some places in Switzerland and Austria that tick most of those boxes which people seem to find similarly fascinating.
I live in a small decaying Japanese city and there is nothing fascinating about it. With a few exceptions, most Japanese cities and towns are really ugly.
It’s more so that US small towns are deeply uninteresting since many have been hollowed out to have the same chains. Japan has followed the opposite model and promotes obscure regional specialties like an obsession.
Here in Washington state a lot of the small towns don't have a whole lot of small businesses outside of super tourist oriented towns.
I am an European guy living in the inaka (Japanese countryside), and to me small Japanese cities and towns look like small US towns: a few big box stores here and there, a bunch of konbinis around the corner, and a million houses scattered around in awful urban sprawl.
Also, michinoeki are cool the first few times, but afterwards they are all the same: a bit of local produce, and the usual assortment of locally-branded senbei / ramen / printed cookies.