Japanese grandparents create life-size Totoro with bus stop for grandkids (2020)
mymodernmet.com
mymodernmet.com
Or kids at this specific stop are treated to a moment of joy while waiting for their train to come...
Time will tell...
You and I live in different worlds. I only know one person who travels that often, after he became wealthy from a successful buy out. Overwhelmingly the people around me travel a handful of times in a lifetime.
so ... why?
Yes, I agree, because life would get boring really quickly. People should be able to express themselves (in a civil, legal manner) so that the world can be more colourful and filled with art and beauty.
But also no, I don't agree. Have you seen the impact tourism in Japan has had on the local ecosystem as of late? They've literally banned tourists in some areas because frankly: more tourists act like animals. They litter, act rude and disrespectful, and are just obnoxious. Also, in a lot of cases, they provide little to no financial growth or benefit to the local economy. Look at Venice, for example.
So I think when making something like this, there has to be some degree of forward thinking around how it's going to divert (tourist) traffic to the area and what impact that's going to have on the locals.
A quick Google search confirms tourism is the dominant industry in Venice. The claim that this fuels "little to no financial growth", is therefore first-order backwards. If you could set forth an edict and gradually empty Venice out into a touristless town over the next 5 years, you would probably see economic growth tumble downwards, not up.
Now capitalism would eventually catch up, it always does. Italians are cool people and hard workers. But ask e.g. the Baltic states whether they're secretly happy they lost ~a century of economic growth before finally getting the chance to enter a boom time, because it meant their economies stayed local. Then ask them another question: Suppose you didn't have much industry of note, but tourists just loved you and flocked from all over the world to see you, would you take that? I think you'd have a lot of takers.
One should a much stronger argument than "But... but tourism is icky" before you go messing with one of the primary economic levers of a whole city. Preferably an argument backed up by graphs and forecasts, because it runs contrary to basic economic wisdom. Absent those I feel comfortable guessing that the median Japanese town which bans tourists will probably suffer economically for it, in no small part because that suggests tourists were at some point a big deal. Any eventual industrial rebound, if it happens at all, will happen because they gradually became cheaper to work in than surrounding areas (I wonder why?), and would not be sufficient to make up for the lost compound growth of the 5-10 years where a key industry for that area was kneecapped.
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Arguments Supporting the Claim:
1. High Leakage of Tourist Revenue
Much of the tourist spending in Venice ends up outside the local economy:
Many hotels, cruise lines, and travel agencies are owned by foreign or non-local entities.
Revenue often flows to large tour operators, not to Venetians themselves.
Day-trippers (especially cruise passengers) spend very little per capita.
2. Overtourism and Cost Externalization
The externalities of mass tourism (e.g. garbage collection, water bus crowding, maintenance of ancient infrastructure) are borne by the municipality and residents, not by tourists.
The economic cost of wear and tear on fragile historical structures is immense and undercompensated.
3. Loss of Local Businesses and Services
Traditional shops and services (bakeries, fishmongers, schools) are being replaced by souvenir shops and Airbnbs, which often serve short-term tourists.
This creates a "hollow economy" where real life becomes unviable for locals.
4. Depopulation and Real Estate Inflation
Real estate is increasingly purchased by investors for short-term rentals, pushing locals out and reducing residential density.
Venice’s population has dropped from ~175,000 in 1950s to under 50,000 today in the historic center.
5. Low Multiplier Effect
Much of the employment created is low-paid, seasonal, precarious, and lacks career development.
Limited reinvestment into the community fabric (education, public health, sustainable infrastructure).
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Counterarguments (Why Tourism Still Brings Economic Benefit):
1. Tourism Is a Major Employer
A significant portion of Venetian jobs is in hospitality, transport, and retail, all tied to tourism.
Completely removing tourism would collapse the current local job market.
2. Tax Revenues
The city imposes tourist taxes (tassa di soggiorno) on accommodations and more recently, even entrance fees for day-trippers.
These can help fund infrastructure and conservation—if well-managed.
3. Export Substitute
Venice doesn’t have a diversified industrial base. Tourism is one of the few export-equivalent services Venice can offer due to its geographic isolation and fragile ecosystem.
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Conclusion
While tourism contributes significantly in gross economic terms, the net local financial benefit is undermined by:
revenue leakage,
rising costs of living,
poor job quality,
and infrastructure stress.
Thus, the statement is partially true: mass tourism as currently structured in Venice is unsustainable and offers diminishing marginal returns to locals, especially compared to the burdens it imposes
How much of the money stays in Venice? Just because you handed over cash at a till in a cafe in Venice, doesn't mean a single local sees a lick of that money. They might not even see a lick of the taxes, neither. I've been to Venice... have you? Thanks for Googling about Venice, but try going and speaking to the locals, because I have.
No patience for these complaints. Either you want tourist money or you don't. Seems like half the city lives off it and the other half hates it. That's an internal problem.
Same in Barcelona.
Take last year's "Lawson with a view of Mount Fuji" thing. The city had to to take all kinds of counter-measures to international tourists flocking there just to take a photo. Meanwhile, there are dozens more Lawsons in the area with epic views of Mount Fuji in the background, and not a tourist in sight.
Kids are becoming a rarity in Japan
sidebar: The opposite of this awesomeness is counterproductive absurdity. The latter is what copyright always devolves to when it is insufficiently restrained.
If this were a Disney character, it would have been destroyed a long time ago.
https://www.ghibli-museum.jp/en/welcome/#:~:text=Poof%2C%20B...
i swear tourists better not ruin this
And you can down-vote me for me not liking Tokio for the fact that their bus stops have no benches, but that is a must-have for someone like me who has disabilities, and many cities in Hungary (and even small towns) have benches and whatever you could call it (container shelter of some sort) to protect against the rain, so don't tell me Hungary is better in this regard than Tokio, or is it? This is surprising to me. Maybe Tokio does not have enough elderly people or people with disabilities?
In any case, if shitty villages with a population of 100-500 have benches and a shelter at bus stops in Hungary, surely Tokio could do it too, I wonder why they are not doing it.
If you want I could probably find it on Google Maps FWIW. I hope the pictures are old (pre-modernization).
Do not mistake my comment for hatred of Tokio, however. It is just a place that I simply cannot visit for such reasons. There is nothing more to it.
All major stations, stops and etc. that I can think of have them though.
No, the question is 'Where else there are decorated bus stops?' and there are countless examples of that. But no one cares (= no one will make a HN post about it) if you see that in Poland [0] or in the UK [1]. So 'Thing, Japan' + HN has a very strong Japanophilia
0, https://www.whitemad.pl/en/bus-shelters-as-painted-anna-wojt...
So no, any bus stop that's been decorated is not "the same thing outside of Japan." This is specifically about being the bus stop from the movie.
In my urban neighborhood, there are some houses with interesting or odd art works on their lawns, often what you'd call folk art.
Your city may be different, of course, but I wouldn't expect this to cause a problem, if installed by permission of the owner, in most cities. HOAs might throw a fit, they like to do that.
This sculpture isn't particularly tall, but height restrictions are popular. A sculpture that does not appear to be stable, or appears particularly flammable might be reviewable as well. There's no utility connections, so there's no need to review those.
All the land around a bus station is typically city-owned, I wouldn't give it a week before a work detail is despatched to remove it.
No surprise, messages in spray paint are generally discouraged. Had you drawn a mural, it may have been treated differently.
> All the land around a bus station is typically city-owned, I wouldn't give it a week before a work detail is despatched to remove it.
When the bus stop is on a gravel road next to a field, as depicted in the article, I doubt the land is city-owned. But yeah, no surprise, the city doesn't want you to dump your stuff on their land, and they'll remove it.
Edit: from the google maps picture, it's not even on a gravel road, it's next to gravel parking for a small building. What municipality is going to give you shit for putting a sculpture next to your parking lot, unless the sculpture is obviously dangerous, offensive, or subverting building codes (if your sculpture is occupiable space, it needs to meet building codes)
At my last house, I believe my lot went to the curb, although we never had it surveyed, and I didn't measure the width of the street. That wasn't in a city, but it did have a sidewalk; the county established standards for the sidewalk, but as the landowner, I was responsible for maintenance of it. The land between the sidewalk and the street was in my undisputed control, although looking at the county assessor interactive map, the lot line may fall a few feet on the house side of the sidewalk; the plat map shows a 50 foot gap in lots for the street and google maps measurement shows the street is much less than 50 feet.
Besides, think about it, have these parents completed an Environmental Impact Report? How do we know this is not terrible for the environment? Chesterton's fence. Regulations are written in blood.