A Typical Workday at a Japanese Hardware Tool Store [video]

I've never had a problem with used tools on eBay. If the seller isn't absurdly correct in their posting, eBay will take your side.

The only thing that has ever gone wrong on eBay for me was when a seller claimed I didn't return an expensive item that the regular price had dropped on by the original company (he was selling multiple of this item that was now $200 less than his asking price from the main supplier website). He was going to eat a couple hundred dollars so he tried to screw me over.

I sent pictures and videos of me packaging and mailing the item to eBay and got my refund. They didn't let me review the seller, though. It would've been an amazing review of that human turd.

> refer to buying pre-owned goods as "buying someone else's problem."

I suppose this is true enough, in terms of risk, when you're talking about yard sales etc. But I'm perfectly comfortable buying from places that screen, test, and possibly even refurbish the incoming inventory before reselling it. I've bought many cell phones from resellers like this online, and I find that pawn and thift shops generally do a good job at this.

I don't think that the 'shiny object' allure applies to industrial tools to the same degree as with consumer goods. Every machine shop I've ever been in, save for maybe a couple, is stuffed with used machine tools, plenty of them older than anyone who works there.

There's a healthy market for machine tools at auction, they're just not things your typical homegamer would need/want/be able to use (example: $200 for a 240/3ph drill press)

I've been finding lots of good used tools on Facebook Marketplace. I've bought a handheld belt sander, a circular saw, clamps, and more without anyone scamming me or giving me a broken tools.

> I've heard more than one co-worker or family member refer to buying pre-owned goods as "buying someone else's problem."

Well, there are lots of people with more money than intelligence. Knowing how to evaluate purchases for quality is a basic life skill, if you always buy whatever's available brand new you'll get taken.

People like that tend to be fairly helpless as soon as they're outside of where they feel comfortable.

That sentiment isn't shared across the whole of the US. One area is in kid stuff. Thrift/secondhand stores selling baby/small child clothes are very common in most suburbs. Kids outgrow stuff very quickly so a lot of parents go to stores that specialize in baby clothes, toys, and various stuff. New designer kid's clothes are mostly bought by grandparents or first time parents. There are some stores the specialize in secondhand sports equipment too - so parents can have a trial run to see if their kid really likes a new sport before investing in it.

Online marketplaces seem to dominate the secondhand market in the US though. Or there is a storefront but also has a big online presence.

that, and thrift has been utterly destroyed by resellers. thrift stores now have to raise their prices on whatever crap hasn't been picked out by resellers already. thrift shopping used to be a lot more like going to yard/estate sales but now almost everything left is just the absolute bottom of the barrel, and anything that isn't is so expensive you might as well buy new.

Speak for yourself, sure, and maybe your coworker or family, but not an entire country. Tool libraries and used shops exist in a lot of places in the US. The fact that you don't have nice tools in local thrift shops is as much a sign that the people in your community hold onto, take care of, share and/or repair their tools as anything else.

There are also tool lending libraries in some areas. I love mine <3

This is such a shame to hear. I buy almost all my large electronics used (laptop / cellphone), used vehicles are often a steal, I love used clothes, recently looked into buying a used suit (but I found a comparable quality new suit for less), I'll even by mattresses/bedding/furniture used if it's coming from a friend (so I can confirm I won't get bed bugs). I don't know what my point is here, I guess just that used stuff is soooooo good for the price.

That's a shame, many US metros have a Habitat for Humanity ReStore[1], I volunteer at one, which certainly does have used hand and power tools, some pretty beat, others just fine (the obviously busted ones that are donated get broken down for recycling).

1: https://www.habitat.org/restores

> I've heard more than one co-worker or family member refer to buying pre-owned goods as "buying someone else's problem."

Well, products just aren't built to last these days. Just take electronic devices... for phones, if it's not an iPhone and maybe a flagship Samsung, after two years the resale value isn't much because it's either bent and scratched to hell or it won't get any more software update. For laptops it's just the same. After 2-3 years, unless it's Apple, usually the battery is shot, the hinges are worn out and the plastic body next to the touchpad is as discolored as the keyboard is.

Cars are also pretty bad. It's either "buy a new car and risk a lemon" or "buy an used car and pay the difference to a new car in repair costs", and on top of that the second-hand car market is pretty dead. You can't do much in terms of repair yourself any more on any car younger than 10-15 years when cars started to be hyper-crash-optimized computers on wheels, with a shrunken chemical factory attached to the exhaust port.

Furniture, even worse. Almost nothing is made from real raw cut lumber any more for weight and cost reasons, it's all sawdust and glue... or in IKEA's newest trend, cardboard.

Clothing for adults, that's the worst, the fast fashion/shein/... crap completely tanked the market. The stuff that you get offered is falling apart after maybe two washes.

The places where second hand still rocks are the ones where either the market is slooow moving (ham radios) or baby stuff because babies grow out of stuff and need new stuff so fast that it doesn't really make sense.

Yard sales?

If you find some old commercial grade tools (like a general contractor might've bought decades ago), the ones I've used are built like tanks, and a given one probably works fine.

> Man, I would love it if this kind of thing existed in the US.

Then actually come to the US instead of making assumptions and you will see that it most definitely does!

Having to deal with month long escrow and ID tracking so that law enforcement can potentially claw back inventory is another dealbreaker.

I have used some hand-me-down tools from my father and recently bought new tools. I don't have 20 years experience, so take my opinion for what it is worth, but I concur with the repair guy.

Pick up anything with a power cord or a battery from 2000 or 1980 and it becomes pretty obvious.

Tool quality has definitely improved over time, but... and this is a big but... many people buy lower quality tools now than were available previously because of their low cost. I would put any of my Japanese or German/Czech hand tools up against any of the big brands of the past (many of which I also own thanks to yard/garage sales) and say they're better, not just from an ergonomics and design perspective but from an actual strength/reliability perspective. Most people, at least in the US, though are only familiar with low-quality China/Taiwan made tools which have lower quality metals and a lot of plastic content when it comes to hand tools.

If you invest a bit of effort into finding good hand tools, the options are much better these days but you have to be willing to pay.

What was so interesting about that? Seems so obvious as to be mundane to me, so I'm curious as to what I could be missing.

That may be true overall, but it depends on the tool. I've bought a lot of my tools for a few bucks at farm and estate auctions. I have two large Craftsman adjustable wrenches. The older one, made in the US, is heavier and there's a lot less play in the mechanism, so it's the one I reach for first. That's been typical for me.

Generally, newer tools are lighter, which is nice when you're carrying them around, but sometimes it means they're more fragile. I have a 1955 McCulloch chainsaw, and it's a beast, must weigh 40 pounds and have about 200 parts in it. The carb is a complicated thing with a lot of moving parts, and there's a gearbox between the engine and the chain. But I bought it for $12, cleaned it up a little, got a stuck part in the carb unstuck, and it started. Not bad for a 70-year-old piece of equipment that looked like it'd been gathering dust for years.

My 2024 Stihl is a much better saw. It's far lighter, which is important when you're carrying it all day. It's much simpler, with fewer things that can go wrong with it. It runs higher RPMs, so it cuts wood faster. But there's enough plastic in it that there's no way it's going to be around in 70 years. I'll be happy if I get 10 out of it.

The ideal would be the design quality of the Stihl, with all the legitimate improvements they've made over the decades, with the materials quality and manufacturing care of the McCulloch. That combination is probably available in a high-end line, just not at consumer prices.

The tools they sell in Japan are different than the ones sold in North America.

It used to be there was one hardware store in town and you bought what they carried, and they would carry tools of a sufficient quality to avoid returns and complaints.

Now you can buy tools from several thousand different manufacturers and people trend towards the less expensive options.

You can also, with just a little research, buy the best in the world from anywhere in the world. (edit: for now)

I built sets for a small regional theater company back in the 90s and we had, at the time, state-of-the-art cordless Makita power tools. Today's Makitas are so much better it is ludicrous. The old skinny-handled Makitas were barely powerful enough to do the job, the batteries didn't last long and had memory issues, the chucks were clunky, brushes would wear out extremely quickly, and the plastic was so brittle if you dropped them the housing would often crack or split.

I remember having to pre-drill thousands of pilot holes for screws and bolts, not because I was worried about the wood splitting but because the drills weren't powerful enough for longer and/or thicker screws.

Modern Makitas are more robust, more powerful, smaller and lighter, and more reliable.

They can drive 3/4" hex head lag bolts into soaking wet wood all day, something that was impossible for (or destructive to) 80s and 90s tools.

In the 80s and 90s I had the same Craftsman screwdriver set that everyone else in America had-- the ones with the clear handles that turned into a cylinder of greased ice the second a single drop of oil got on them.

Now I have a nice set of Weras and even when wearing oil-soaked gloves they are easy to grip.

My favorite episode is this [1], the owner is very unique in a way that he is a rare collector of hardcore punk CDs/vinyl.

[1] https://youtu.be/ky0YDKvGggo

I'm also a huge fan. Started watching him after a Japan trip. I like the format so much, I'd love to have something similar (day in the life) for various other countries.

His videos are well produced and I've watched quite a few of them, but it always weirded me out how much he says "Japanese" like he's figured out the algorithm will favor him more if it detects he's saying that a lot

Go to any of his videos with his wife, he'll consistently refer to her as "my Japanese wife"

It’s not surprising. They have a strong cultural identity and their whole country is far nicer and cleaner than any country I’ve been to.

Most immigrants here (I live in SF) are to be completely honest, not from very strong cultural identities. I’m an immigrant too, and my own people aren’t that strong with their cultural identities. After all, we GTFO’d the moment we or our parents could. Whenever I’ve been back I hated the filth and pollution everywhere, and the lack of care considering the litter and trash everywhere. It’s gross and sad.

Japanese people are happy with their culture on a broader level. I’m sure they have their problems too. Everyone does.

When I visited Japan I was so blown away by how proper and organized people were. It inspired me to live a more organized life. I went all over in both cities and rural areas, never saw trash. People were kind even with the language barrier. Even their homeless (they only have like 20k total) were polite and organized.

The video where he interviews a lawyer on the Japanese "guilty until proven innocent" legal system was pretty scary if I'm being honest.

They apparently try to force a confession even if you're innocent as the alternative is to basically let you stay in jail for up to 23 days per infraction. There is no bail and they interrogate you without a lawyer present (lawyer not allowed). It's honestly made me second guess traveling there as a foreigner. I'm incredibly respectful of other cultures, but would be scared something weird would happen and I'd somehow disappear into that administrative nightmare. You can't even talk to your family until that period is over, so you just roll the dice and hope confessing gets you a slap on the wrist.

On the plus side, I know the cities are supposed to be super safe.

Population density and I believe relatively business friendly zoning to make it easier to be close to apartments and etc?

Reuse and repair is also encouraged by having relatively more expensive, high quality but lower-production-quantity goods. When it costs less to buy something new, more gets discarded.

I would guess that low yield businesses per storage area is more viable in sparsely populated areas?

We have a used tool store like this near where I live. While technically being within city limits of the county seat it's located in the kind of population density that HN turns up its nose at for being unsustainable. But it's fairly easy to get to off a couple major highways so in practice it's more accessible to the kind of people who tend to need rebar tying guns and chain come alongs than it would be if it were downtown. It's possible it couldn't even exist downtown because its inventory might not turn over fast enough to pay the rent.

Also nationalized control of healthcare costs.

NHK World is full of such interviews and documentaries:

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/shows/programs/

Highly recommended - even live (no ads).