> on the vibrant business and street culture in Japanese cities and the seemingly very, very low barriers to entry for regular people to participate.
An astute observation that allowing markets to operate without onerous licensing schemes and regulations often has wonderful upsides, allowing quirky and niche interests to survive and even flourish.
A similar situation was true of Melbourne's small bar scene vs Sydney's. Sydney's more expensive/onerous licensing requirements were prohibitive for tiny bars. Whereas Melbourne's licensing was more permissive and less expensive, resulting in an abundance of quirky and interesting venues. Possibly my favourite example was a tiny indy video game bar (it shut down during covid, I think). https://barsk.com.au/skgames/?p=done
A similar situation in the US can be seen in Boston. Historically terrible nightlife and for easily explained reasons. Liquor licenses are distributed by the state at a capped amount that can potentially be increased each year, meaning the majority of new businesses wanting to have alcohol sales will need to purchase an existing liquor license from another business, often at an exorbitant price (over 500k USD on average I believe)
This makes it extremely difficult for any new businesses to start, and massively advantages large chain businesses that have the ability to make the initial investment in securing a license, versus small or quirky businesses which just have no chance getting started.
Unfortunately most people don't seem to understand that over regulation can end up benefitting bigger more established businesses, simply because it raises the barrier to entry.
This makes so much sense to me. I've always thought Boston's nightlife was terrible when compared to places in Texas. You go to Austin and there are the most random bars, clubs, and restaurants. Most have their own quirks and personality, making it so no one place is exactly like the other.
There are some pretty awesome small, unique bars in Boston, but there could be so, so many more if the liquor license laws and rent prices were more reasonable, though.
"Night life" tends to refer to bars and clubs, and regardless of your personal stance on drinking the majority of people going to bars and clubs expect to be able to drink alcohol.
Because the economics of it are such that there's where you get your money. How much cover charge are you willing to pay to go out to a club playing local talent on a random weeknight? A cover charge that would actually cover costs at a venue with no bar would be exorbitantly expensive. This is why many places with cheap cover have a drink minimum.
Yeah, this is actually a problem for venues now that younger generations drink less alcohol.
People will drink a beer every set in a show, but they’re less likely to do that with coffee, soda, THC drink, or any other beverage except water, which most bar venues offer for free.
You can sell other drinks, food, entertainment, services, games, etc. Alcohol isn't the only thing people are able to do at night. There are plenty of activities that are possible.
I've thought the same thing. Would love if other people were into that.
I'd ask you to consider the following thought experiment. If the regulatory barriers are lower to establish a nightlife business establishment without alcohol as an option, and a large number of people want to do activities without alcohol, why do these businesses not exist in significant numbers?
It's certainly not a novel concept to open a cafe or a late night board game location. If they were sustainable businesses economically, which barriers currently exist that prevent them from being present in cities to the same extent as bars?
Alcohol doesn't just make more money because it has huge margins. It has decent margin, high profit per unit, and a magic trick: it makes people less cautious about spending more.
I have no interest in a second coke or a third coffee. I can drink tea for days, but if it feels pricey I probably only have one or two. Real estate is expensive if that's your customer profile
Alcohol is famously super high margin, though. People will pay like $5-10 for a 54¢ shot of Costco vodka or rum at a comedy club and another $5 if you mix 10¢ of cola into it, you simply can't get the same margins out of even very expensive feeling food which usually needs more labor and prep.
In addition, alcohol lowers the bar for entertainment. Comedy, music, dancing, none of it has to be as good to satisfy if people are at least a bit tipsy, which makes the performers happier, and the customers happier.
You certainly can drink caffeine at night. But maybe that's just a sign I am too habituated to caffeine, because I can drink it and have no ill effects on my sleep schedule.
Japan is full of licenses and regulations, it is almost the exact opposite of the free market utopia you're imagining. You're not even allowed to buy a car without a permit that proves you have a parking space for it.
What Japan does different is that it has sensible zoning laws that are designed around foot traffic rather than car traffic. Why don't you have small shops like this in the U.S.? Because of minimum parking space requirements for cars.
> You're not even allowed to buy a car without a permit that proves you have a parking space for it.
I would cross out "even" in that sentence, and then step back and admire it. This is one of the best things about Japan. For some bizarre reason there is an implicit assumption (at least in many places in Europe, especially Central Europe) that 12m2 of public shared city space should be reserved for your metal box on wheels and that it's somehow a right.
It is insanity. In Amsterdam, houses go for €9,000 per square meter. So a parking space should cost around ~ €9,000 × 12m2 = €108,000. Meanwhile parking permits for inhabitants go for €500-€750 per year. It's the cheapest real estate available.
It also helps that apparently in general street parking is banned (possibly at least in big cities) due to disaster considerations - eq. for easy access for rescue personnel after a major earthquake or Typhoon. Not to mention tightly parkiong cars potentially being a fire spreading hazard in such a scenario.
In comparison, even here in Europe there are tight rows of cars in almost every street, reducing space for greenery, eating up sidewalks, making street crossing dangerous and sometimes even making the street hard to navigate for the cars themselves, not to mention making quick stops for taxi drivers or food & grocery delivery cars almost impossible.
It would help if traveling into the city for work would take also 45m, instead of 2h jumping across train, tram and bus connections, and this on a good day, when they aren't missed by "pick random DB excuse of the day".
Ah, yes, DB: I am aware of their reputation and, sadly, they also run some services in the UK where reliability and timeliness of service is also already shaky enough without their further assistance.
I favour public transport when possible, but until goverments create reliable infrastructures that go beyond the lucky ones able to afford rents in city centers within the radius of good transport connections, or not having to go by bycicle to work while collecting km/miles as training for The Tour, most folks will go with the car option.
Full of licenses and regulations doesn't mean that the licensing requirements for bars in particular are onerous.
An example is where I'm from, in Canada. Licensing for cars is easy. Business licenses are easy enough, if they're non-physical.
But opening a bar means at least $50k of licenses/compliance costs. To have a bar, you need to serve food. To serve food, there's minimum requirements for all sorts of things from electrical to ventilation to plumbing. So you need to apply to the city to do a study and plebiscite in the neighborhood to determine no one objects to your bar. You need to have an engineer sign off on your design and the fire department to sign off on that. Liquor license is $$$.
And that's before even bringing up the cost of the lease (1 year rent as deposit) or the actual construction costs (last I checked, over $400 per square foot).
Requiring proof that you have a parking spot should not be an issue. If you have a car, you need to put it somewhere right? Parking is generally private in Japan, so it comes at a premium. In western countries people expect that the government provide sufficient parking spots, but that's not necessary the most efficient allocation of valuable land.
It's the difference between drivers paying for their own parking or having it subsidised by non-drivers, along with the various issues caused by motornormativity (when you design around cars, you exclude walking/cycling etc).
Texas alone is twice the size of Japan with 1/4 of the population.
There’s little need for efficient allocation of essentially infinite space outside of urban areas constrained by geological features. And in those places parking comes at a premium too even in Western countries.
> Because of minimum parking space requirements for cars.
This is not true. In a big city there are plenty of locations without parking or rely on public street parking. The issues are the onerous zoning, licensing and insurance requirements.
Land rights conversion. I believe if 2/3 of homeowners (living in a low-density area) agree to a proposed readjustment, then the rights of the land belonging to all homeowners are thusly converted. Oddly makes sense as the end-product, in turn, allows for greater density whilst retaining much of the aesthetic of said-land.
>> on the vibrant business and street culture in Japanese cities and the seemingly very, very low barriers to entry for regular people to participate.
> An astute observation that allowing markets to operate without onerous licensing schemes and regulations often has wonderful upsides
I suspect you are reading too much into this line from the article. Japan is a country full of bureaucratic regulations to the extent that it's often stifling -- especially compared to the US.
The overall lowered barrier to entry is largely a result of zoning laws differences between Japan and the US. In the US, zoning laws are largely permissive (you CAN build this here) where zoning laws in Japan are restrictive (you CANNOT build this here). This leads to huge differences in urban planning where Japan favours mixed-used development whereas the US has huge swaths of contiguous blocks separating residential and commercial zones.
Add to that, the cost of visibility is higher in the US because transportation is already car-centric. Small shops thrive on pedestrian traffic, which there is little of in the US outside core urban environments. NIMBY culture has killed much of urban diversity in America.
I'm all for reducing permit requirements, but realisitically these would be used by McDo and Starbux to externalize more costs while increasing their quarterly profit. Really, you need to have something that is trusted and rational without corporate corruption, which Japan nominally is. The US is going the opposite direction from that.
It's my understanding that houses in Japan are zoned to allow a percentage of the space to be used for a low-impact business, like the coffee shop in the article, and that bigger businesses are allowed on the bigger roads and in dedicated commercial/industrial districts. Also most houses can be converted to triplexes, too. This helps with density, encouraging more businesses nearby, less need for cars, better quality of social life, etc.
I see what you mean about the potential for abuse - maybe Big Money would buy all the houses and run small businesses from them? But regulations or taxes could be used to dissuade them. Theoretically, anyways.
I wondered if Japan does anything along those lines to avoid the problems you mentioned, but google ain't what it used to be and I wasn't able to find specifics.
- In the "Control of Building Use by Land Use Zones" you can see how even the most exclusive of zoning enables "Houses with other small scale function", Clinics, Schools or stores with very small footprints.
- Structures are restricted by the shape, shadow, and floor area.
- No mention of "single-family" housing.
A map (of Tokyo) overlaying the gradient of zoning from least to most permissive. You can see how the up-zoning follows the major roads:
https://tokyochizu.github.io/zoning.html
> I see what you mean about the potential for abuse - maybe Big Money would buy all the houses and run small businesses from them? But regulations or taxes could be used to dissuade them. Theoretically, anyways.
This isn't actually possible because owning a lot of houses is not a good business. That's why almost all landlords are small-time and not corporate. Houses are depreciating assets, so if you own more of them it's just more chances you'll have to pay for a roof replacement.
In particular in Japan, houses are worth less than nothing and you may have to pay to demolish yours if you sell it! (Less true than it used to be because construction quality has gotten a lot better.)
I am not here to nit pick about this post, but this made me think:
> owning a lot of houses is not a good business
Generally, I agree. What do you think makes commercial (office) buildings different? Probably 90% are owned by insurance companies, private equity, and pension funds. My guess: Scale matters. Also, maybe I am blinded by big cities, but second tier cities and below might have lots of small fry landlords that own one or two small commercial buildings
"Ownership of the nation’s rental housing stock is in transition. The approximately twenty million rental properties in the United States, and fifty million rental units within those properties, have been steadily shifting from individual to corporate hands".
Rent is profitable and the housing shortage is difficult to solve.
Missing the point. As long as an area has a shortage of housing rentals will likely remain a good investment.
That said I have to disagree that the housing shortage is difficult to solve, at least in a technical sense. It's due almost entirely to poor urban planning and infrastructure management. The problem is entirely political.
Then again, political issues can be some of the most difficult to make progress on so perhaps I agree after all.
I understand that to be one of the differences in approach to zoning, zones and buildings are considered on a spectrum of "impact". A high impact building like an industrial plant shouldn't be too close to low impact buildings like a single dwelling. But because it's a spectrum you get a natural mix of low, medium, and high impact buildings. A large residential complex might be considered medium impact and so can go next to a shopping complex that is also medium to high impact etc.
I would imagine that a great deal of Tokyo's megalopolis fits nicely in the medium impact zone, allowing housing, small scale manufacturing and commerce to mingle in an organic way.
It's kind of the other way around: McDonalds will find a way to operate in pretty much any kind of environment. They have the deep pockets and knowledge to do so. They have restaurants across the world, including in very tricky places like Venice, Italy.
It's the small, local guy who with low margins who is not going to thrive in an environment where it's very difficult to get past all the hurdles to even start up.
> They have restaurants across the world, including in very tricky places like Venice, Italy.
You raise a great point. Their internal property consulting unit must be incredibly sophisticated, mixing international best practices with local, specialised knowledge. It would be interesting to hear some detail about how McD's selects their locations.
Vietnam has so much street food and coffee shops that McD and Starbucks cannot compete. That being said, Vietnamese zoning is pure anarchy and it would be too much for any Western country.
It’s weird, I’ve travelled for work and pleasure more than pretty much anyone I meet (I’ve visited 90 countries, worked in 21, lived longer term in 5. Currently settled West Coast US) and I’m somewhat of a fast food connoisseur lol - KFC, Domino’s, BK, Pizza Hut, etc are all without exception better in Europe and Asia with the exception of ,in my opinion , McDonalds. Maccies is better here as a rule. Sure you get the shitty franchisees sometimes but generally speaking!
This is a semi controversial opinion so, it’s interesting you feel the same way!
It's not a big difference but Japanese burgers are smaller (of course) but the buns aren't small enough. So there's just way too much bread in my experience.
Also, US has a mango pineapple smoothie that's really good. I refuse to look up how much sugar is in it.
American city planners influenced the construction of an elevated highway through the middle of Seoul in South Korea. Years later, that monstrosity was demolished.
https://youtu.be/wqGxqxePihE
It's not really the planners given that planners have no real power and just do what they're told. The problem is that the elected decision makers are beaten down by established rich homeowners and shy away from and all conflict. So we have a cascade of shy conflict aversion as lazy and uninterested elected officials defer endlessly to planners, and planners who don't want to cause drama for their elected bosses and get themselves fired capitulate and do the safe thing that the wealthy established homeowner class pushes for.
One of the most known examples happened in Germany after WWII.
After the war Germany had lost quite a lot of businesses, infrastructure, industry and farming. Also obviously lots of manpower. Produce was scarce and inflation was extremely high, so it was actually quite difficult to purchase anything even though people had money. the Allied Forces introduced price control on almost all essential good in order to stop inflation. That obviously did not work at all and most goods were actually traded in the black market, so you could actually buy bread by paying with cigarettes.
A German economist, Ludwig Erhardt advised to remove all price and legal controls and to replace the old mark by a new one, but the Allied Forces only agreed to the latest, so a new currency was introduced, the Deutsche Mark, replacing the old Reichsmark. That had no effect whatsoever. However, Mr. Erhardt, from his position as Director of Economic Administration, decided unilaterally to remove of the price fixing and other regulations. And literally overnight, German streets filled with sudden and unplanned pop up markets, everyone started to sell anything they didn't need, just by the street or from their front yard.
In 1949 Erhardt became Minister of Economy for 14 years, and later, in 1963, Chancellor.
I think another factor is real estate: a population shrinking by more than half a million people per year eases some of the pressure on rent and land value...
When I lived in New York City (before COVID), I saw many local businesses get priced out of my neighborhood, only to be replaced by high-margin chains like Starbucks/H&M/etc. They were the only ones who could afford the rent!
Looks like https://maps.app.goo.gl/sa5JdGPMoZKiUiUP7 in Osaka is still going, though I remembered it being called "spacebar", a fantastic male for a retro gaming bar.
Thank you - I rushed to the comments section to mention Melbourne's bars.
Re 'more permissive and less expensive' - I think there was a time (20 years ago?) when Melbourne city would give a license basically anyone. There were bars in old convenience stores, out the back of record stores & barbers. Just so much fun.
I entered a jazz izakaya in Kanazawa with only two stools and no room for anyone else. There was an old man on one stool and a bartender in his 70s or 80s. It is rude to tip and they will not except it but offering to buy a drink for the bartender is encouraged. I ordered a Japanese whiskey and offered the old man and bartender one. There were piles of knickknacks and maybe $15,000 worth of stereo equipment including a record player, planar magnetic speakers and a vacuum tube amplifier in this little room. I heard the distinctive sound of Sonny Rollins saxophone and used the translation app to say I saw Sonny Rollins play live at the Monterey Jazz Festival and he played an encore of La Cucaracha for close to two hours where his band eventually left the stage and he kept playing and playing. The bartender pulled out a Sonny Rollins record from his stack of vinyl and put it on the record player. The three of us sat there for 40 minutes not saying a word listening.
If you are in Kyoto, I recommend a similar style bar called Brown Sugar. They tend to have these types of names, for example, in Sapporo there is one called Jim Crow. [0] However, if in Sapporo, I recommend the half note. [1] Most bars and restaurants for that matter will not serve me because I do not speak Japanese, so they say. If I wanted a drink I would stick to Karaoke and jazz bars. I made some friends in Kyoto who were finishing their 4th year studying engineering at University of Kyoto who were from Africa -- these kids are African royalty. They spoke perfect fluent Japanese and they couldn't get access into bars that would let me in. So the names are fitting and likely they know exactly what they mean.
I recently heard Craig Mod[1] in an interview. He has walked thousands of miles in Japan and has produced books that document some of what he has seen. The photographs he has published online are beautiful, but I've never seen any of his books so I can't comment on those.
Anyway, in the interview, he talked about places that sound like what you are describing in the first paragraph but he called them kissas.
I'm working on this[0] 2 hr 52 minute interview with Craig about his new book. He makes the point national health care is a big part of what makes this work. There is a safety net, so people are empowered to take more financial risks.
Cheap housing surely also contributes. Iirc, apartments in most of Japan are incredibly cheap as a result of a diminishing population and National government level zoning reform.
Here in Australia, we have an incredibly robust system of Public Healthcare, just like japan, but taking financial risks is downright suicidal with our house prices.
On kissaten - 店 ten is the kanji for "store", though you might also learn 屋 (ya, lit. roof). kissa means consume tea (喫茶), more or less. I didn't notice them on my first visit, I wasn't into coffee then, but they're everywhere and a really nice way to get breakfast (egg toast + siphon filter for a few hundred yen). Not necessarily the best coffee in Japan if you don't like dark roast, but it's often made to order and not out of an urn.
Izakaya I would associate more with drinking and small plates of food, but not necessarily a catch-all for bars.
YMMV I guess, but I found the best coffee at kissatens, and I hate dark roasts. Lots of great, sometimes super tiny, third-wave pourover types, too. But I guess Japanese coffee culture is more about evening consumption since there were many that were open at 10PM or later, but very few open before 10AM.
I can see espresso cafe culture spreading a bit through Japan, with australian style cafes offering great espresso and mixed cuisine on the menu. I think japan/australian cafe culture colliding has been an incredible thing. It's happening in Australia too, where the Japenese aspects of small inexpensive foods are mixing into Japan influenced cafes here.
I think Australia and Japan have a surprisingly symbiotic cafe culture that's betting blurred together.
I think it's the only place I've been in my life where the coffee actually tastes like the tasting notes say it does. Even when they say "mojito", which was surprising.
I agree about Glitch, though it gets super busy. There are cafes which also serve their beans if you don't want the wait. I would also recommend Fuglen's tasting experience in Sangubashi. It's a bit theatrical, but great if you want to try something a bit different.
"Kissa" just means café, but when you'd use the word is complex.
Basically in Japan Japanese words feel retro or else appropriate for personal and family life, while English words feel clean and modern/corporate/business-y.
So a Japanese word like kissaten gives the impression of somewhere from the 60s that's full of old people and you can't breathe because of all the cigarette smoke. But it also specifically means a coffee shop and not a bar I think, so there wouldn't be alcohol.
> these kids are African royalty. They spoke perfect fluent Japanese and they couldn't get access into bars that would let me in
Let's imagine we discuss a tiny bar in New-York or Paris that wouldn't let asian or black people in. I doubt the discussion would be only about how this place is nice and cosy and everyone that could possibly get in should just try it.
It's like Japanese people have a free pass to be a*holes, but only them, because you know, Japan ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
> Most bars and restaurants for that matter will not serve me because I do not speak Japanese, so they say.
Really? That was certainly true 15 years ago, but things have changed a lot after the tourist flood gates opened under PM Abe. Even Golden Gai in Shinjuku Kabukicho which is/was a bit notorious for turning away foreigners is more "friendly" than ever. The irony is that so many bar/alcohol related terms in Japanese are loanwords from English. You could just say the English word with fake Japanese accent and they would probably understand you!
> I suppose, religion aside, that that feeling is wonder. That is not a feeling I often feel running errands and going out in America. But it’s a feeling that the Japanese business landscape and built environment is able to spark frequently.
On our Friday stand-ups we generally chat for a few minutes about what we're up to for the weekend, and my update is usually something along the lines of "I'm going to go outside and let New York happen to me". I'm feeling that wonder less and less here in the city as all the quirky, niche things have been driven out due to rent increases and are being replaced by their private equity owned, multi-national versions. But the ability of the city to spark wonder certainly exists in our environment here more than in most in the US since we navigate by foot and not typically by car.
I'd prefer optimizing for wonder than most other things.
Edit: Actually there used to be a Japanese cafe in my neighborhood called "House of Small Wonder", which was attached to an omakase spot. They had a big tree growing out of the middle of it, going up out the roof, with space for maybe 15 or less. It's now a Glossier makeup store.
NYC is the only "real city" in the US (that I have visited; Chicago seems similar) and yet NYC is not an easy place to live unless you make a lot of money. I have traveled abroad extensively (including to places like Japan) and think the state of American cities is a genuine shame. We are missing out on so much.
Absolutely. And whenever you bring up wanting to build cities more like NYC the discussion inevitably devolves into people clutching their cars and complaining it would be tyrannical to make people walk and take public transit. It'd be great if we had more options here, rather than everyone that wants to live in a big city piling into just NYC (which is still a small city in the global scheme of things).
These small cafés/bars are called kissa (kee-sah). Unlike a regular café, the kissa is designed to create an atmosphere allowing for a quiet appreciation of the music while drinks are served as an accompaniment.
For the interested, Chris Broad (Abroad in Japan) interviewed the owner of such an establishment (Basie) located in Ichinoseki: https://youtube.com/watch?v=1-9RMSbl_Uo
> (There’s one that’s chock-full of Star Wars memorabilia, for example.)
It doesn't feel run down because it isn't run down. No dust in the corners, no dents in the wall - this is the difference between patina and "old crap": a lifetime of care.
> this obviously aging little structure doesn’t feel ugly or rundown.
That made me cringe a bit. The whole look of the place is deliberate. I mean, somebody put in a lot of effort to make it look just that way. Notice how every inch of it is spotless and nothing could be said to be out of place.
it feels a little mean to describe this as cringe, it's just an honest opinion from someone who feels differently from you
i wouldn't describe it as deliberate, but rather accepted and embraced. yes they're choosing to not update it and modernize and they like they way it looks, but its not like they took a clean modern space and deliberately aged it to look this way
> I’m not sure why it is that this obviously aging little structure doesn’t feel ugly or rundown.
as an aside, i feel it doesnt look ugly and rundown because it's largely natural materials and colors. it's normal for things in nature to look this way.
This is a really excellent observation. In addition:
> It’s such a curious, almost uncanny, feeling to enter one of these places. The inside feels much bigger and grander than the outside.
It makes sense for people to have an innate desire to be in places that are, you know, good for people to be in. The most obvious way to tell if a place is good for you is if it carries evidence that it has historically been good to other people.
Maybe we have some subsconcious processing that picks up on signs of human activity. That means wear and tear, built things, modifications. The way humans leave their mark on an environment when they spent time on it. All of that spent time is like accumulated votes that "yup, this is a good human place."
At the same time, we don't want to find ourselves hanging out in a dumping ground, slag heap, or other environment that humans have left their mark in by expoiting it. That's not a good place to be, because it's not just used, it's used up. So what we want to look for is not just signs of human activity (which a landfill has in spades), but a certain kind of caring activity. Marks in the space that seem to have been done to leave it more appealing to be in.
I think that's what the author is picking up on here. These tiny, aged spaces have a deep accumulation of caring attention. They feel bigger than they are because we pick up on that huge information density of all of the past people that have left their mark on a place. The place isn't large spatially, but it's large in time.
It's the exact opposite of how walking into a giant mall or corporate office can still feel claustrophobic because there's nothing—no things—there, no sense of history or connection to any lived experience.
It's also large in usability. That's hard to do with a small space; you have to think different. To think like that, you first need to live in a small space, and organically develop solutions around it.
Now, you could do that with any space, like a machine shop. But the "good human place"-ness of the shop will depend on the forces that shape that shop. If all the forces are purely commercial, you're going to end up with something that works commercially, but might not be so human-friendly. I think the disconnect between bland American commercial spaces and more intimate Japanese ones is the relationship of the owner-proprietor to commercialism.
In the US, I have been in a few cafes where I had to step back outside to check if I had accidentally walked into someone's living room. Same for hostels; the best ones feel like you're in someone's home. Their layout was not driven by commercial interest, but by a person just wanting to feel cozy. The space is them.
Whereas a Starbucks isn't a person, it's a chemical factory. If the music is too loud, it doesn't matter if I complain; the factory workers (supposedly) can't control the music. If the air is too cold, it doesn't matter if I'm shivering; the factory workers are paid to make coffee, not care about my discomfort. Our human connection to the space is irrelevant to the manufacturing and selling of chemical stimulants.
> I think the disconnect between bland American commercial spaces and more intimate Japanese ones is the relationship of the owner-proprietor to commercialism.
Much of this is building codes. There are simply many things you can't do in an American business even if you want to, and not for bad reasons either, but eg electric, fire safety, ADA, employee safety rules are totally different than Japan and force you to have much larger and plainer spaces.
The big one that kills everything is parking minimums.
Thought similarly. It looks very clean, is well lit, the decisions look purposeful (no random crap on the shelves), and the materials wear well (wood vs e.g. cheap plastic chairs).
I went to a cafe in kyoto near the bamboo forest where it was literally an old ladies house and in the moment, being there conjured deep resentment within me towards urban planners and zoning.
In the US our zoning is done very restrictively: in this place you can build a detached single family home with this kind of set back and up to this height. In this spot you can build low density commercial. Etc you can ONLY build what the zoning board says. Then there are also complications from HUD, like they dont give FHA loans for condos or if developments have straight roads.
In japan the national government has a zoning policy. The most common zoning is “light industrial”. But if you have a zoning policy, you can build anything at that level or below. So in light industrial you can build a coffee shop, or a house or an apartment or a machine shop.
There's just something about Japan that makes its simplicity so beautiful. Yes, we all know Japan has dealt with economic problems, lost decades, declining fertility, etc.
But they still manage to keep the beautiful simplicity of life that makes their culture one of the world's richest.
It’s a great place but what’s on the surface is a total illusion to the complexity and rules Japanese people have to deal with to make it seem this way. I’ve always believed that the beauty of Japanese society comes at the cost of the Japanese themselves. They have to sacrifice a lot to make it what it is.
Conformity is huge, there was even a row a few years ago when a school demanded to inspect girls underwear and make sure they're wearing the correct colored panties. Asking children to dye their hair black or straighten it is also not unheard of.
Shukumōkyosei literally means “to shrink and correct hair”. It’s a permanent straightening treatment that removes 70 to 90% of curls, volume, and frizz by chemically restructuring hair bonds.
My theory is, the level of rules, bureaucracy, and society pressure is why innovation and having children is just too hard. It's very hard to find the space live, but the rules based high pressure society is all they know since the end of WW2.
If you're interested, have a read about the Zen period, and the way it sort of liberated society. It's faced challenges since the Kamakura period (it's golden age) but it was a fascinating period of brilliant art, innovation and reform.
I hope what I said doesn't come across as negative either. Like I said, it's a wonderful place and fascinating culture, it truly is, but it's as I said, not free nor is it at all simple.
I live in Sweden (as an expat), and I often struggle to explain to outsiders why I think it’s one of the least interesting places I’ve ever been to. There is something missing that I can’t usually grasp with words. This article has made it crystal clear; this kind of thing is non-existent here. Everything is impersonal, distant, matter-of-fact. Next time someone asks me I’ll link this article.
(The next obvious question is always “why are you still there?” and the answer is because it’s a great place to work.)
It is literally impossible to open a small "hole-in-the-wall"-kind of bar in Sweden. In order to sell alcohol you have to also serve warm food which means you have to open a restaurant, and following this means you have to have a kitchen that is approved by very strict hygiene controls. Like having a sink only for kitchen staff to wash their hands.
In the early 20th century the trick in the "Ölcafé" (Beer Café) was to have a sandwich that _no one_ ate that you ordered with your beer and this then gets sent back and forth between customers and the cafe :)
I live in Thailand as an expat and I have the inverse of your experience and more a kin to this article.
There just so many examples like the ones mentioned in the article. When I lived in Chiang Mai I'd just take my bike to any direction and always find something - be it a small noodle cart or a cafe someone opened up in their back yard or a small bar right under an abandoned hotel.
It's incredible how many invisible effects viability of small businesses have on a society.
You can have all the infrastructure, safety, and efficiency in the world, but if everything is polished and impersonal, it can start to feel kind of sterile
Man, I know it is a meme but Japan simply have mastered "aesthetics". It is especially incredible given that they achieved this in an urban area.
For example, consider the vines that are growing on that shed. Is that dirty? Should we clean them to get a pristine shed? Yes, you have to sweep the floor everyday to clean the dust, but should you cut down that small plant growing between the cracks of your building? Or the vines overtaking the roof? I think if you answers no to this, then you understand that sense of aesthetics.
For some people tho, they think its a bad thing (1), which I simply don't understand? I don't understand how people can willingly spend every couple of hours every week to trim their lawn to a pristine, perfect cube of grass. Is this beautiful? I think not. In my apartment, I have trees growing from the cracks of the building, and I think that's beautiful.
I don't know how they do it, it is not simply just being clean. I think parts of it is "allowing nature to take its course" which gives a typical structure depth and age.
> I have trees growing from the cracks of the building, and I think that's beautiful.
It probably is beautiful. It may also be inconvenient or outright dangerous. As the trees continue to grow and expand the cracks, the building’s structure becomes ever more compromised. Maybe the cracks will expand and more rain will come in, causing mold and making your home less effective at keeping its temperature. Or maybe they’ll expand in a way that a whole wall will fall off.
Seeing plants sprouting from the ground in cities is fun and aesthetically pleasing, I agree. But it is not always safe to let them keep growing.
It's a 1 storey building. Even if the vine means it will only last 50 years instead of 100 years, the risks are low and the cost to replace is low.
If we were talking about public infra where thousands will die if a structure fails prematurely, then sure, let's be careful about vines. But if a private land owner wishes to grow vines (or allow vines to grow) on their private building, I think it's fine.
I’m not talking about the building in the article, or even Japan specifically, but addressing the general point of trees and other growths which cause literal cracks and compromise structural integrity.
> If we were talking about public infra where thousands will die if a structure fails prematurely
That is exactly what I’m talking about. Well, maybe not thousands, even a four story building with a compromised structure can lead to unnecessary deaths.
> I’m not talking about the building in the article, or even Japan specifically, but addressing the general point of trees and other growths which cause literal cracks and compromise structural integrity.
Structural integrity or uniformity (or some other qualitative)? Yes, occasionally there is an actual structural problem (MSME here) but far, far more often things are torn down or discarded when a slight repair would suffice (other than the preference).
Depends on how extensive the growth is and how structurally stable the thing is in the first place. But expect major problems on the decades-timescale.
> "and in an invisible way?"
Yes. This is the main problem with allowing unconstrained plant growth near/in/under structures - the degree of structural compromise is hard to assess (especially without spending a lot of $$$), and failure can be sudden. You're not gonna get as much warning as you'd want.
In the US it's a popular look to have vines growing against brick walls. They're beautiful but often hazardous for structural safety, especially if not proactively maintained and constantly monitored (which is $$$!)
[edit] I think overall the focus on the "pleasantly ramshackle" aesthetics of the shack misses the forest for the trees. There's a lot of daylight between "permit small businesses in possibly unsafe structures" and "western status quo norms for business licensure".
I think something Japan gets done really well is making it easy and inexpensive to run businesses, especially hobby businesses. There are a ton of policies that encourage this outcome, and we can and should adopt entire rafts of them without changing existing regs about the physical structural stability of said businesses ;)
Short enough to kill you or your direct descendants. These things can look fine for years and then collapse in one day.
> and in an invisible way?
Makes no difference how visible it is if you don’t understand the risk and do nothing until something happens. And the longer you wait, the harder it will be to remedy.
> I believe buildings are seen as more temporary in japan than in the west
I’m not talking about Japan, I’m addressing the general point.
I've never been to Japan, but lived in Norway for a couple years and I always felt like they had mastered western "aesthetics". Norwegians seemed to really appreciate Japanese/zen styles as well. One thing I always found interesting is most homes in Norway will have fresh flowers, despite living in a climate not conducive to that at all.
They have this word called koselig that we don't have in English that means cozy plus a lot more things, and these Japanese coffee shops really do embody that word.
We have a word for that: Japandi. "Japandi is an interior design and architecture style that blends Japanese minimalism with Scandinavian functionality."
I remember roaming around the back alleys of Tokyo, as I'm wont to do to get a true feel for any place I'm visiting, and came across bicycles parked on sidewalks, covered with vines. Those bikes must've been there for several years.
Coming from SF, a couple of thoughts came to mind: first: wow these bikes have been sitting here for a long time. And second: this must be a _really_ safe place, because in SF, a bike parked outside won't last a day or two.
Funny thing is: the area didn't look rundown or anything. It was clean and well maintained. Except for the bikes in vines.
> I don't understand how people can willingly spend every couple of hours every week to trim their lawn to a pristine, perfect cube of grass.
I once went out of town for two weeks figuring much the same and came back to a freshly cut lawn and a five-day-old notice from the town posted at my door stating that I had three days to trim the lawn or they'd do it for $300.
It's because of setbacks, which are secretly done to make it easier to expand the road. (US traffic engineers only ever want to expand roads, never make them smaller.)
The time it takes to mow your lawn depends mostly on the size of your property. When I was a teenager up we had a little under 3 acres of grass that needed to be mowed. Even with a small non-commercial tractor-style riding mower, it took several hours to do.
Oh of course. But in a town that's rather unusually large. When I think of a place where anyone would complain about the grass not being cut for two weeks, it's in some kind of little townhome neighborhood with a really uptight HOA board.
> I don't understand how people can willingly spend every couple of hours every week to trim their lawn to a pristine, perfect cube of grass.
I do ours because our lawn is 70% tumbleweeds (kochia) and cutting it before any of it can go to seed increases the chance that one day it will be only 30% kochia.
Yes, the vine being planted ( or let to grow ) is a deliberate choice :). It's not unique to Japan thou.
> I don't understand how people can willingly spend every couple of hours every week to trim their lawn to a pristine, perfect cube of grass.
The funny thing is that you will fine plenty of Western-style gardens in Japan too: perfectly trimmed, symmetrical, sometime even next to Japanese garden. Japanese aristocrats quite love this back in the day.
> The funny thing is that you will fine plenty of Western-style gardens in Japan too: perfectly trimmed, symmetrical, sometime even next to Japanese garden. Japanese aristocrats quite love this back in the day.
And I dont think that part of Japan is pretty when I visited it. I understand that its not all perfect, of course.
Regarding plants, my English influenced yard in the US contains no “tortured little trees”[1], but is also intentional and beautiful. Investing in beauty without ego is difficult and unusual but not exceptional.
[1] The Essential Pruning Companion by John Malins
What's also magical is that businesses like that can exist without being run aground by bureaucracy. In my city it is nearly impossible to even get a permit for a mobile food stand.
This reminds me very much of one of my favourite series on Netflix, Midnight Diner (not Midnight Diner - Tokyo Stories, which is a Netflix remake with many of the same cast, but not as enjoyable as the original in my opinion). Most of the action centres around a group of regulars talking while at a small izakaya in Shinjuku, Tokyo, which is run by someone known only as "Master" and only opens from midnight to 7am. You see a bit of their lives outside, but it always reverts back to the izakaya where they debate on various topics. Given the setting, each episode feels a bit like a theatre play.
I tend to react a bit allergic to the Japan-everything fetishizing so prominent on Hacker News (although I've come to realize that it's mostly Americans holding up an example of everything they feel they lack domestically, and in that sense isn't so much about Japan as it is about America), but perhaps it's an interesting data point that at as a grumpy cynic I still want to second this recommendation. :)
For one reason or another, the Japanese school of story-telling has a pretty prominent streak of this type of low-stakes, downtempo "slice of life" premise like this, that I find very satisfying. The director Hirokazu Koreeda has made many films of this type as well. For a while my wife and I would alternate watching Spanish films by Pedro Almodóvar and Koreeda on movie night, working through both catalogs, which somehow made a lot of sense together.
> Japan-everything fetishizing so prominent on Hacker News
It’s far from exclusive to Hacker News. In fact, it doesn’t seem to be that prevalent here, as when it’s mentioned it at least tends to be in relevant context. Reddit, Tumblr, Imgur, and plenty of other communities both on and offline have an appreciation for Japanese culture.
> although I've come to realize that it's mostly Americans holding up an example of everything they feel they lack domestically, and in that sense isn't so much about Japan as it is about America
Also not related to America at all. It’s just as common in Europe and western countries in general. Generation probably plays a role. Find anyone who had their mind blown by an anime at a formative age, and you’ll find someone who to this day is likely to have some degree of fascination with Japan.
I'm honestly convinced it's a bit more prevalent in America, and I've explored this in earnest conversations with American friends. I don't mean to villify it either, as it makes a certain amount of sense. Their take is roughly that Japan is the benchmark case for a sufficiently alternative/different culture from an American POV and thus invites comparison. As in, yes, you could also cite equivalent examples in Europe (say, cozy hole-in-the-wall cafés in 200 year old structures with vines hanging off of them ...), but since the cultural overlap is much larger (or presumed to be), it's less striking. To quote one friend, "if you're going to make the comparison, why not go for the maximum you can?"
Add the surplus in shared history, the far greater exposure to Japanese products (e.g. car brands) inviting more interest, and so on.
Sure, you can find manga/anime fand pining for that Japanese lifestyle also in Europe, and Europeans are certainly no strangers to orientalism through the ages. But the incidence of finding "look at how the Japanese are doing it differently" in random mainstream media is a lot higher in US publications. And it's also largely been US-based consulting companies and/or organizations that have taken the hoishin and the kaizen and what not global in corporate culture and particularly in tech.
It’s far from exclusive to HN, but HN is still a prime example of it.
There’s a ridiculous number of Japan-centric things that make it to the front page compared to any other culture. Tech has always had a Japan obsession.
> There’s a ridiculous number of Japan-centric things that make it to the front page compared to any other culture.
But is there a ridiculous number of Japan-centric things that make it to the front page compared to any other community? Are Japan-centric things discussed on HN more than Reddit, Tumblr, Imgur? Because that was my point; Japan is popular in general, not just popular on HN to the point it’s even worth singling out.
They idealize Japan through fetishized objects. If you showed the picture of that same coffee shop in Philippines or some south east asian country, nobody in the West would care.
But attaching the Japan label suddenly makes it more appealing as it invokes many distorted (and misinformed) aspects of Japan.
It's the same annoying vibe that Koreans get when they come across a foreigner who is into Kpop. Most Koreans do not care for Kpop as do most Japanese do not care for Anime.
Yet these exports create a parasocial relationship with a foreign country that when broken turn them into passive aggressive bigots.
The more you covet the harsher the rejection. Japanese and Korean society simply has no place for outsiders. Having a Japanese passport doesn't make you Japanese as it will not change your ancestral history, having your gender changed on your drivers license doesn't change the biological history and so on.
> They idealize Japan through fetishized objects. If you showed the picture of that same coffee shop in Philippines or some south east asian country, nobody in the West would care.
I think you're mostly right on the money on that, but I'll also say it doesn't have to be all fetishization. A lot of US Americans legitimately do live in places where you don't have access to cozy nightlife like that because it's not what the market provides, and if it's to your tastes, I can understand desiring it.
I lived and worked in South Korea for a number of years, and I really enjoyed some of the laid-back wine bars and whiskey bars there, made for working-age couples and small groups in their 20s to lounge around and talk with a drink. That kind of atmosphere is very commonly available there, but fairly hard to find in Berlin (where I live now), where bars more typically are tacky, sticky, and play terrible music so loud you have to yell at each other. I also miss the late-night coffeeshops a lot, where I spent many a night with the laptop doing FOSS stuff - your typical Berlin café closes no later than 7pm. There are exceptions to these rules but the sort of places I like are generally a lot harder to find.
Note I e.g. get the same opinion from Catalan friends in & about Berlin, who really miss their chill bars and street-side places from back home in Barcelona and similar. So this is again more of a "I like this foreign thing I can't have here as much" than it is about Japan.
I'm not so sure. Or, rather, reasons can differ. I'm not into anime at all, but every time I visit Japan (was just there in April, after not having visited since 2017), I am constantly finding little things and thinking "it's a shame we can't have that sort of thing in the US".
I'm generally positive on the concept of government regulation, but the US & US state governments tend to over-regulate so many things, like zoning and alcohol licensing (as mentioned in the article). Culture plays a part too, certainly.
Shoplifters was a recent international success and is maybe the most accessible. My favorites of his are After the Storm and Maboroshi, though. All of them feature wonderful characters and quiet adult moments.
On the arthouse circuit, I think he's best known for After Life, which is a bit more challenging (honestly: I found it a bit dull) but worth biting into.
Do you know that pang of melancholic joy-and-regret you feel after you've had a wonderful day and you know no matter how much you and the others involved try, you can probably never quite recreate that magic a second time? Grateful for the memory you'll always have, yet at the same time sad? That's how his movies feel to me, where I'm often both happy and sad I've seen them. It's pretty damn great when a movie can do that.
Interesting. I think I've only watched After Life and indeed found it very dull (and for the record: I enjoy slow-paced Japanese movies with "quiet adult moments"). I actually thought the premise of the movie wasn't well explored at all.
So maybe I would enjoy his other movies, if you liked them!
As the author and various commenters here note, there are many tiny businesses in Japan. In the big cities, they are often located on the upper floors of multistory buildings. Lately, for no particular reason, I've been taking pictures of the signs for bars in such places:
This is a function of affordability and low regulation. Another place I’ve been to which has so many lovely tiny little coffee shops and boutiques which may also happen to be someone’s home is Lviv, Ukraine.
Regulation is definitely the big stopper in most of the EU. Here in Czech Republic it would be incredibly difficult to open anything like this.
I almost opened a cafe/bar a couple years back, I even had a reservation deposit on a location, had the money to renovate it, had money put aside for it to fully fund the rent and utilities and staff for a year, but in the end I scrapped the idea because of the bureaucracy.
I needed: a hospitality trade license , a certificate from the inspectors for food hygiene and public health, a certificate for fire/gas/electrical safety, registration with the customs office, staff needed to do training for food handling, and I needed to register the kitchen with the regional hygiene office. It's not unreasonable, but it's a lot of bureaucracy for something I wanted to do as a fun side project
> I’m not sure why it is that this obviously aging little structure doesn’t feel ugly or rundown. It doesn’t trigger any negative feelings. It somehow feels atmospheric, like a living time capsule. The music, of course, helped.
Several things help prevent it from feeling run down: 1) the music, 2) the fact that it's probably immaculate: no dust or dirt anywhere, 3) the rustic surfaces have a patina, but no physical degradation (rust/rot), and 4) it's well lit.
Some of this I believe is possible because of rent price. Especially in places like Kyoto where I believe the population is slowly going down.
That said, there are small places all over. this one might be relatively famous. It's next to a train track so not "quiet" but it's also in busy Tokyo.
Another thing there are lots of are small restaurants that hold 5-12 people. There are of course the famous bars in Golden Gai and a few other places but there really are 1000s of these places if you know where to look if you're language skills are up for it. Often there is person running the "bar" but they have a menu of food they'll cook for you. Things like grilled fish, pork salad, omelette rice, etc... Basically Japanese home cooking. Lots of people become regulars at a place and it's like their 2nd home.
If you watched Odd Taxi, they hang out at a place like this.
There's one I was introduced to recently right here (https://maps.app.goo.gl/Tgsfou4HMbKiiD3L8). It's not going to be around much longer because it's run by a 96yr old lady who lives there. She doesn't speak any English. She ran it with her husband until he passed away. IIRC she's been there 57yrs
Another, I was introduced to bar recently, not far from the coffee place above. I found it interesting in particular because it was only open weekdays from 5pm to 10:30 on weekdays. Not open on weekends. I haven't asked if that brings in enough or if the person has other sources of income. I'll ask next time I visit. But 5.5 hours a day, 5 days a week + prep sound nice.
Another thing I find appealing about these small bar/restaurants/snacks, they seem like not a bad life. Working a USA style sports bar in the USA or beer restaurant like in Germany or regular restaurant with 10+ tables seems like a not so interesting job. Just running from table to table taking orders, carrying orders, being "busy". These Japanese places are a place to socialize and in particular to socialize with the owner so the owner generally has a nice time as well.
The motion of the speaker feeds signal back to the needle/input device. It matters even more in Jazz/syncopated music. The needle tracks with a force of only 1.5 grams or so, and any motion is greatly amplified. Also if you listen to jazz with the volume low you are doing it wrong. Do you link the volume was low in the club when Sun Ra was recording?
But besides that, those speakers are placed terribly for stereo imaging. Even tucked in the cubby, why place them with the drivers together rather than apart? And those speakers appear to be dreadful anyway. A single 12" driver in a vented / untuned baffle with no midrange or tweeter elements?
So this is definitely set up for aesthetic, not sound quality.
I've got Genelec studio monitors in my kitchen. I care very much about sound. I would never set foot in your anechoic, soffit mounted cafe blasting jazz at 100dB.
That's a complete, total waste of studio monitors. Monitors are for nearfield positioned listening. Sound great when you are in the (small) sweet spot, but generic and flat off axis, which you will be most of the time in a workspace like a kitchen. And a kitchen is a terrible place to seriously listen to music, with all of the hard tile surfaces and tinny sheet metal appliances reverberating. You may care very much about sound, but you don't know very much about sound. If you did, and you wanted good sound while working in the kitchen, you'd be wearing some nice open back headphones, not some fairly cheap, very small monitors.
Depends how well the turntable is decoupled from its plinth. Think in terms of a lumped systems model with a mass on a spring being driven by (probably lower frequency) vibrations from the speakers.
"Now that I think about it, there was nothing in this shop that would tell you it isn’t still, say, 1960."
I'd go for 1980s based on the amplifier, turntable and speakers. It would be a radiogram, probably valve based, in actual 1960s. Nice though.
Speaking as someone that professionally played vinyl for around 5 years back in the 90s, here's my tip:
If you sum the stereo channels into mono then feeback present but inverted on each channel is cancelled out and the problem goes away like magic.
This seems to be lost knowledge but it's how old school sound systems[1] were able to have their turntables basically on top of a collection of speakers without feedback.
Many mixers back in the day, from people like Pioneer, used to have a mono/stereo switch for this purpose.
It's very easy to demonstrate this by placing a stylus on a stopped record, then tapping the record surface directly
The speakers are right next to each other so it's not like you're loosing stereo image.
I'm going to venture to guess the pair of subwoofers cabinets on their side are being used as a table and aren't otherwise connected. The only amplifier in the photos doesn't have nearly enough power to drive them and it appears to be connected to a small pair of bookshelf speakers above it.
during our visit to Kyoto last year we noticed dozens of unmarked restaurants/bars while walking to our hotel at night. we saw packed bars through the blinds of houses indistinguishable from any other around them. we wondered if maybe they are coop bars or something? we never intruded because all were unmarked and at capacity
mostly forgot about it until reading this article because there is a lot to take in while visiting Japan from the US
That comes with zoning regulations. That coffee shop is illegal in most of North America due to being a commercial place-of-sale (outlawed in many residential areas), too small, and not having off-street parking.
When you're able to operate a place like that, your fixed costs (i.e. rent) are drastically lower and you are able to sell at lower prices because of it. With more housing, your employees don't need high wages to afford a basic apartment.
Yes. Also you can look at falling rates of entrepreneurship in the United States and connect the dots with the article. We have some neighbors who wanted to run a flower shop out of their garage. Can't get business insurance because it's not a separate location - i.e. your home and business cannot be the same place for physical goods.
Issues like that, while perhaps sensible to someone, are barriers toward economic prosperity.
But a new oil change location? Approved, insured, permitted in 5 minutes. Construction done in 2 months.
We're really hellbent on making anything but the new highway to the new Wal-Mart and $60 Starbucks dinner (paid over time of course) for the kids on the way to soccer practice in the Jeep Wagoner illegal.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. It would not pass a health inspection because it doesn't have sanitizable surfaces. The restrooms (if any) are likely not accessible, nor is seating nor is the entrance. Would not pass fire code for a commercial establishment. And probably 50 other things.
The one country that seems to do housing right and not consider it an investment vehicle. Unlike our depressing situation that is tearing society apart.
That it's considered an investment vehicle is downstream from the rising markets due to tight regulation which limit supply. In Japan what zones exist is standardized across the country and what zone applies to a given area is defined by the government in Tokyo. This prevents local homeowners to lobby for tighter regulation to strangle supply.
>That it's considered an investment vehicle is downstream from the rising markets
That's not what its downstream from, that's restating the same thing in financial terms. What it's actually downstream from is that Japan is a fully urbanized society. The reason why Americans cannot implement this is because houses are their little homesteads and castles, Fukuyama used the term "suburban villager" for this attitude (also prevalent in Greece and Eastern Europe etc.)
Housing is absolutely an investment vehicle in Japan. It's just that Japan has been economically stagnant for 30+ years, bordering on deflation, and anywhere outside of a first- or second-tier city is effectively dying. Couple that with the Japanese cultural distaste for pre-owned housing, and this is the outcome.
If you operate a rental in any area outside of the core of the major cities, you are in the business of charging a huge monthly premium over a property value that is rapidly depreciating to zero. This is fundamentally different than the US.
If you don't have to worry about work requirements for life's necessities along with zoning laws to support them, the economic viability of operating unique, niche establishments goes up.
That said, there are probably 0 employees and long hours involved.
Many small business like this are also run by retirees who want to meet people and bring some value to their community. It's legal to run a small business from a certain percentage of your ground floor in any location in Japan.
It also doesn't have to be your primary source of income. If you can run it from a structure like this you could just operate a cocktail bar on the weekends. Even in the US I know of a small pizza place that offers takeout only on a few days each month and it's operated out of the owners mom's kitchen. Not sure how legal that is and turning that inti a sit-down place would certainly be an issue.
Yes! Every zoning and housing regulation commission should evaluate every proposal by the question if it enables our cities to be as quirky and wonderful as Japanese cities. If not, it's out!
I generally agree with the sentiment behind this, but like many other things, underneath the zoning issues what it actuallyactually goes back to is cultural issues. For a large number of other countries you could loosen zoning up and ultimately someone would start operating an abattoir next to an elementary school and it would make the 5 o'clock news and then the city council would throw a bunch of new regulations in and the whole thing would be over.
I hate to even sound like this, I hate the cynicism in my comment, and maybe the answer is to actually just do it and not declare premature defeat, but having watched how other initiatives in my own local area have gone I can't help but feel that we don't have the real secret weapon that works for places like Japan, and makes stuff like Star Trek work outside of all the fancy tech, and that's sufficiently advanced culture to not immediately race this all to the bottom.
The Japanese deal with this by zoning policies being set at a national level. Localities pretty much can decide what part of town the smelly/industrial businesses go, and the rest scales based on population.
The locality will plan where their high-rise/commercial district is, houses on side-streets are can all be triplexes with an option for a low-impact business as in the article, and secondary streets have dedicated businesses.
As an area's population grows the federal zoning allows that bigger buildings can be built - small apartment buildings instead of houses, etc. The locals can't pull-up the ladder behind them and say "no new houses", locking out young people and renters and transplants.
I assume that the problem in the US is more regulatory capture than culture. Starbucks doesn't want you to be able to sell coffee to your neighbors. And your neighbors don't want more housing to be built, because it might affect their home values. I've seen how home owners adamantly oppose these things.
And for decades we've been left with most new housing being built by developers as cheap as possible - clear cutting some space on the outskirts of town and throwing together cookie cutter houses, car dependent and without much of anywhere nearby to socialize. It's a shame that in a country of 330+ million people there's not more variance.
Nuisance-based zoning exists as a solution to this. E.g. you can operate a flower shop but not a noisy arcade. Yet somehow this concept doesn't seem to be able to get a hold.
It doesn't get a hold, because, again, culturally it is very hard for it to take hold. Just like your other response that says "well we should just start enforcing existing laws", the problem is that by the time you get into defining a nuisance in the face of some profit-oriented rules lawyer, or getting bylaw enforcement some breathing room in their workload from the 10000x other calls they have regarding bylaw infractions, you're downstream of the underlying cause and just trying to bandaid things up as best you can. You don't need nuisance based bylaws if people are starting out from a mindset of not wanting to be a nuisance to their neighbors, and Japan probably has bylaw enforcement and its probably really great, but it doesn't just get enforced by magic it gets enforced because they likely have a much smaller workload than exists for bylaw enforcement in my area, and that smaller workload is serviced by a number of people that is probably more sustainable as people generally don't constantly try to oppose any sort of taxes collected and so the department has sufficient funding that isn't at risk of being continually cut every civic election cycle.
On and on up the chain I could go, turning this comment into a wall of text as we work our way up the cause and effect ladder until we ultimately arrive at the things a society values, aka its culture. Its ultimately all downstream of a society and culture that either is constantly looking for a loophole to grab whatever profit there is in a desperate race to the bottom, winner-takes-all struggle, or a society that prizes something different.
Sadly, I think the lack of care for the other, and for social cohesion in Western nations preclude this.
Several years ago our next door neighbor applied for a zoning variance to allow their home to be used as an AirBNB. All was fine for the first month or two, then a graduation party booked it, 20 vehicles show up and parked on all the neighbors yards, loud party late into the night, etc.
All of this was reported for noise violations, parking violations, etc. to both the police and to AirBNB. Neither took any action.
Months later a college fraternity booked this AirBNB for the entire summer. All of the above plus nightly backyard ragers going until 2 AM. Neither the police nor AirBNB did a damn thing about it. We reached out to zoning to see if we could protest the variance after the fact and told no, the only way for the variance to be revoked would be for the police to make so many calls to the house that it is deemed a public nuisance. Except the
police won’t show for nuisance calls and even if they did it would take years of this for a hearing to be held which may or
may not decide on our favor.
So… as much as I love the idea of the Japanese civic style. I would never give up strict zoning in America for it. People suck.
The home businesses in Japan are supposed to be low-impact. It sounds like the airbnb you mentioned was not.
Japan has a set of regulations for airbnb rentals [0], depending on the size of the living space, whether it is owner-occupied, or is listed for more than half a year. There are sometimes inspections. Neighbors are notified and their complaints are taken seriously. Enforcement has been much more strict since 2018. Something like you mentioned would result in the airbnb license being revoked.
Airbnb spends a lot of money lobbying politicians in the US not to do such things, millions just at the federal level [0].
The sad artifact of my experience is that I learned first hand the benefit of a stereotypical mafia organization and its extralegal services and their benefits to the otherwise law abiding public.
Hah, hilarious. I used to live not far from this place. [1]
I don't know the story behind the structure, but it was a re-purposed storage shed [2] that someone was either subletting or owned outright. Probably the former -- the area is not remote, and is surrounded by new housing. Most likely is that some landowner is making a little bit of cash by renting out the space, and the business owner is exploiting the niche of having a cheap property so near to Nijo castle (a tourist black zone in Kyoto).
Setting aside the aesthetics, the most "Japan" thing about this is that it's possible at all to get a license to run a food establishment, electricity service, etc. in such a marginal space. It would never be allowed in the US.
Secondarily, leaseholder rights in Japan are pretty different than in other parts of the world. It's fairly common, even in major cities, to find underdeveloped, tiny little plots of land where there's a lessee who has a ~perpetual right to the space, independent of the "owner". Landowners will buy and sell the underlying rights to the rental cashflow, almost like a long-term bond, with no hope for redevelopment, and the lessee can independently sell the rental rights [3]. Again, I don't know if that's what is going on here, but it wouldn't surprise me. These kind of situations make it feasible for a business owner to invest in creating a business in what is essentially a potting shed -- one of the major risks would be that no one rationally would want to keep that old building in place in an area of Kyoto that could be more fully developed. But as you can see, this building is completely surrounded by new construction, and has been for many years.
[2] I could be wrong about this part. The roof is tiled, which is pretty fancy for a shed. My recollection was that it was far too small to ever have been a house, but it's possible that it was originally a section of a larger machiya, which would make sense for the area and the geometry of the lot.
[3] This is sort of like mineral rights or air rights in the US. It's not a totally foreign concept to us, we just don't do it for houses or...shacks.
This streetview gives a better perspective on exactly what is around it -- you have new development in front and behind, and the area immediately to the front of the shop is a dedicated parking area for a nearby business. I suspect that the shop and the parking area are part of the same parcel, owned by the business.
I went to such a small pasta restaurant somewhere in the Gunma Prefecture's countryside. Record player, vacuum tube amplifier, jazz.
I'm down the rabbit hole of trying to find it now. Searching, in Japanese, for restaurants specifically in the Gunma country side that feature jazz, I found instead something else: "Cafe Front Load":
As someone who loves coffee as well as the culture around locally owned coffee shops, visiting Tokyo (and to a lesser extent Seoul) this past April was like a dream come true.
When my partner and I travel, we don't do a ton of planning for specifics so if we're in a big city we'll usually pick a neighborhood or 2 for the day and bebop around until we're tired. The start to any day is almost always finding a coffee shop and doing the crossword during our first cup. In Europe depending on the city this can be difficult because a lot of coffee shops just pump out overextracted espresso and then give the option to add water for an americano. There's still tons of amazing cafes in the European cities I've visited. Some really memorable ones are Café Tacuba in Lucerne, Faro in Rome, and Monks Coffee Roasters. in Amsterdam.
In Tokyo, we actually started off with a pretty mediocre coffee because nothing opened before 10 besides a cafe chain, but after we got adjusted we couldn't stop finding great spots. The first day we were going to the national museum and found AOYAMA COFFEE ROASTER in Yanaka. At first the owner was a bit standoffish because we were 2 Americans coming in at the very beginning of the day and I assume she has a lot of bad experiences with tourists, but we started talking after she noticed my portafilter/coffee plant tattoo and had a really great time. For the rest of the week, we walked into shop after shop that had at most 4 or 5 seats with one barista making drinks and each one felt special.
The one that connected me most to this post was the one from our day in Sumida City when we were going to a bunch of small museums (highly recommend the Hokusai museum). We stopped into CHILL OUT COFFEE &...RECORDS and it was one of the coziest coffee experiences I've ever had. The shop is a coffee bar with a couch and a couple of chairs. I forget what kind of cup I had but I remember it being just a really balanced cup with a little bit of berry and chocolate notes. I wish we could've stayed longer but after about 15 minutes a family of tourists with 2 toddlers came in and we figured it was time to go after we finished our drinks.
In Seoul, the shops we visited were all a lot bigger but one thing I couldn't help noticing was that all of the baristas were so deliberate in their movements. This is something that was probably true of folks in shops in general in Tokyo and Seoul, but I noticed it with baristas because I tend to think about it a lot when I'm making drinks at home. You could show me a silhouette of baristas making drinks in Tokyo and some western city and it would be night and day. I feel like that goes a long way in illustrating the differences between eastern and western culture even though we're all making and enjoying the same hot bean water.
Love it. I would have loved to stumble across that on my trip. I also googled for coffee but the only place open early enough near me was 7-11. Most seem to open ar 12pm for some reason. I was slightly out of downtown to the north. But had a similar experience with a restaurant. It didn't look like this and was more conventional but it did feel like we were guests at someone's home rather than a restaurant and the food was fantastic. It felt different to the normal! I've had that experience in London too but it is very uncommon there. I think the true quirk exists in every city but you have to hunt it down more in western cities.
Craft coffee is a luxury item that isn't part of Japanese culture in the same way that it is in the west. In the early morning, when you're a salaryman trying to get to work as fast as possible, you get coffee from a vending machine or convenience store. Craft coffee is something to enjoy leisurely, which is why most specialty coffee shops don't open until much later than we're used to
Thanks. I guessed that. I got downvoted so I assume people think I am complaining. I am not. Just observing and curious as to why they open later I assume there are different rituals and I never found out. Thanks for replying!
This was one of my favorite attributes while visiting Japan. I loved seeing all the small coffee shops and other small businesses, several which were seemingly attached to the owners' homes.
I went to a cafe in Niseko that looked straight out of a ghibli movie. Stacks of older records in the corner, pothos vines draped over window sills. If you know Niseko, you know this is not the vibe at all since the whole town is mostly Australians (who are louder and more boisterous than Americans). I went in there and it was only a few Asian tourists. So peaceful. Then one American came in, and the entire vibe shifted for the worse as he tried talking over me and shouting across the room to the other table. Sigh.
One of my best experiences in life has been walking the back streets of Kyoto in cold winter nights and just checking into a tiny noodle shop for some warm noodles. The whole experience is just so peaceful. Highly recommend just walking the streets behind Nishiki Market.
Tangential, but this is an interesting contrast with the book I am currently reading, The Trouble With Passion: How Searching for Fulfillment at Work Fosters Inequality by Erin A. Cech, which goes on in detail and at length about the downsides of matching passion with work.
Surprised no one's mentioned misuyabari yet... For all your tiny kawaii miniature animal topped needle needs, hidden in a rustic shack in a courtyard in a mall.
It reminded me of the last time I walked into a random little cafe in a strange city and heard some live jazz music. The whole atmosphere was quiet and relaxing. When you are not in a hurry, not thinking about taking pictures or posting on social media, you will really start to "see" the place.
Biggest thing I miss from Osaka is the vinyl record izakaya that I frequented (I do not remember the name but there are a bunch in the area). Just a little hole in the wall where the owner/baretender/chef/dj would spin whatever the heck he wanted.
read it twice. woww it linked a casual café moment to local policy and space constraints without making a big bluff out of it. op tells you both what to think and also leaves enough there to connect your own dots, writing is awesome
How are you finding Kyoto so far? Hope you're enjoying it! I live here and absolutely love the city. Happy to help with recommendations if you're staying a while.
Love it, leaving for Beijing in two more days. We are vegan so our dining options are limited, and my wife and kids haven't been before so we are doing the typical tourist things. My friend is a Buddhist monk that lives here and we have been visiting his sangha the last couple days.
Did you have a recommendation or two for less visited but unique areas we could walk around? Thank you!
Very nice, glad you're having a good time! Have you stumbled upon https://kyotovegan.jp/ yet? Lots of good restaurants on there to check out in your last couple of days.
I really love Shimogamo Shrine and the whole Demachiyanagi Area including over to Ichijoji. It doesn't get too busy and the Demachiyanagi Shotengai shopping street is wonderful to walk up and down and see the interesting stores inside, it's covered too so great for the rainy season! There's a cool cinema in there as well as some fascinating book shops. Queue up for Futaba if you want some traditional Japanese sweets but it might be a long wait.
Also the walk up to Shimogamo Shrine from Demachiyanagi Station is so peaceful, especially during the week. I do sound tours around that area capturing interesting sound with field recorders that I provide. It's a very interesting place to find soundscapes and 'hear' Kyoto instead of just see it! If that sounds interesting: https://ohayo.substack.com/p/kyoto-sound-walks
And if you're into sake there's the Fushimi Sake village which doesn't get too busy and is really nice to just stroll around and visit the shops and museums. There's also a river tour. There's another interesting old school undercover shopping street there as well.
That's really kind, thank you! Hope you enjoyed your last couple of days here. Next time you're in Kyoto I recommend Farmoon as a nice place to get some vegan treats, unfortunately they're only open Friday~Sun. Take care!
There's a pair of bookshelf speakers above the Luxman that are probably what it's driving. Very generic looking, those speakers could be almost anything. Maybe Tannoy Revolution R1 based on what appears to be an oval badge below the grill cloth?
The two speakers on their side are subwoofers, likely with JBL drivers, possibly in DIY cabinets. The Luxman can't possibly be driving them (not nearly enough power). The subs may not be functional and the cabinets are just being used as a table?
Here's a similar DIY subwoofer cabinet and drivers for sale:
When are you visiting? I live here and love this city. If you need recommendations of anything to see or do whilst here I'd be more than happy to help.
Beautiful. I think a lot of what makes Japan wonderful in this respect is:
* Poor economic mobility
* Individual compliance with the social contract
* Liberty to run small businesses
* Good land use laws
Perfect mobility is awful because all the capable people get to maximize earnings. The better The Sort (as patio11 calls it) the more capable people move out of doing things with high positive externalities.
Maybe you mean poor job mobility for office work. Economic mobility as a whole is high enough for whole towns and villages to become desolate as former residents decamp for the cities.
That's not what economic mobility means - it's the ability to move upward (or being forced to move downward) through different income brackets, or more simply from working to middle or middle to upper class. It's not associated with geographic moves; indeed lack of economic mobility is a reason people move, in search of economic opportunity, but often find their increased income consumed by increased living expenses.
I'm not romanticizing it. I'm saying that it's optimal for me that lots of smart conscientious people get limited job opportunities because then they will do small things to excellence rather than pursue personal gain. This is good for me because I get to experience the results of these. The guy who would be a great engineer, quant, or business leader will end up making rice wine and so I get great rice wine. I don't want to be limited like that, though. I want to be sorted into my zone of excellence and then enjoy the positive externalities from the smart and unfairly limited.
i think it is romanticizing poverty. most poor people don't get the opportunity to do anything to excellence. survival takes precedence
I think it is also an inaccurate view of the world that most capable people drop their passions in pursuit of a career and monetary gain. not only that, but talent is multidimensional, and being a great engineer does not imply making great rice wine under different circumstances
poverty, and lack of social mobility, is largely a curse of wasted potential, not a silver lining of talent molded into artisanal goods
That's true. If you're African, your talent goes wasted. If you're British, the smartest guy ends up working on gov.uk for £40k/year. If you're American, the smartest guy ends up a billionaire.
The "more meaning" business is cope because as societies add more ability to excel, people of ability switch into economically rewarding activities at a high rate.
There's a nice middle where you can exploit them for positive externalities. In the past, through religion (many monks were undoubtedly great researchers) and today through a mediocre (but not awful) society.
I am using the conversation about a cafe to discuss something that I've known for three decades. This is often the case with people. My father can diagnose a bone and joint injury in minutes and often he can guess at history. "What kind of conclusion are you drawing from five minutes of palpation?"
Who are "capable" people? Do you think if the cafe owner was born in the US they would be working at Google?
Lots of people in North America work in jobs with positive externalities (teachers, nurses, etc) and they're generally treated like shit compared to 9-5 office workers. I don't think the issue is that the former is group is less capable, they're just not sociopathic resource-collecting robots.
> on the vibrant business and street culture in Japanese cities and the seemingly very, very low barriers to entry for regular people to participate.
An astute observation that allowing markets to operate without onerous licensing schemes and regulations often has wonderful upsides, allowing quirky and niche interests to survive and even flourish.
A similar situation was true of Melbourne's small bar scene vs Sydney's. Sydney's more expensive/onerous licensing requirements were prohibitive for tiny bars. Whereas Melbourne's licensing was more permissive and less expensive, resulting in an abundance of quirky and interesting venues. Possibly my favourite example was a tiny indy video game bar (it shut down during covid, I think). https://barsk.com.au/skgames/?p=done
A similar situation in the US can be seen in Boston. Historically terrible nightlife and for easily explained reasons. Liquor licenses are distributed by the state at a capped amount that can potentially be increased each year, meaning the majority of new businesses wanting to have alcohol sales will need to purchase an existing liquor license from another business, often at an exorbitant price (over 500k USD on average I believe)
This makes it extremely difficult for any new businesses to start, and massively advantages large chain businesses that have the ability to make the initial investment in securing a license, versus small or quirky businesses which just have no chance getting started.
Unfortunately most people don't seem to understand that over regulation can end up benefitting bigger more established businesses, simply because it raises the barrier to entry.
This makes so much sense to me. I've always thought Boston's nightlife was terrible when compared to places in Texas. You go to Austin and there are the most random bars, clubs, and restaurants. Most have their own quirks and personality, making it so no one place is exactly like the other.
There are some pretty awesome small, unique bars in Boston, but there could be so, so many more if the liquor license laws and rent prices were more reasonable, though.
Why do you need a liquor license for nightlife. There is more to life than just drinking alcohol.
"Night life" tends to refer to bars and clubs, and regardless of your personal stance on drinking the majority of people going to bars and clubs expect to be able to drink alcohol.
Because the economics of it are such that there's where you get your money. How much cover charge are you willing to pay to go out to a club playing local talent on a random weeknight? A cover charge that would actually cover costs at a venue with no bar would be exorbitantly expensive. This is why many places with cheap cover have a drink minimum.
Yeah, this is actually a problem for venues now that younger generations drink less alcohol.
People will drink a beer every set in a show, but they’re less likely to do that with coffee, soda, THC drink, or any other beverage except water, which most bar venues offer for free.
You can sell other drinks, food, entertainment, services, games, etc. Alcohol isn't the only thing people are able to do at night. There are plenty of activities that are possible.
I've thought the same thing. Would love if other people were into that.
I'd ask you to consider the following thought experiment. If the regulatory barriers are lower to establish a nightlife business establishment without alcohol as an option, and a large number of people want to do activities without alcohol, why do these businesses not exist in significant numbers?
It's certainly not a novel concept to open a cafe or a late night board game location. If they were sustainable businesses economically, which barriers currently exist that prevent them from being present in cities to the same extent as bars?
Alcohol doesn't just make more money because it has huge margins. It has decent margin, high profit per unit, and a magic trick: it makes people less cautious about spending more.
I have no interest in a second coke or a third coffee. I can drink tea for days, but if it feels pricey I probably only have one or two. Real estate is expensive if that's your customer profile
Alcohol is famously super high margin, though. People will pay like $5-10 for a 54¢ shot of Costco vodka or rum at a comedy club and another $5 if you mix 10¢ of cola into it, you simply can't get the same margins out of even very expensive feeling food which usually needs more labor and prep.
In addition, alcohol lowers the bar for entertainment. Comedy, music, dancing, none of it has to be as good to satisfy if people are at least a bit tipsy, which makes the performers happier, and the customers happier.
Businesses that sell alcohol make a lot of money, businesses that don't tend to go out of business.
Wish it weren't so (I don't drink alcohol, personally), but that's the economics of it.
Sure, and offering gambling is another good way to make a lot of money. Yet, we don't see every business offer gambling to its patrons.
Yes, because you won't go out of business if you don't offer gambling, whereas you will if you don't offer alcohol.
Fruit machines aren’t uncommon in pubs and late night takeaway places in the UK.
Because you can't drink caffeine at night and we don't have any competing depressants.
You certainly can drink caffeine at night. But maybe that's just a sign I am too habituated to caffeine, because I can drink it and have no ill effects on my sleep schedule.
Japan is full of licenses and regulations, it is almost the exact opposite of the free market utopia you're imagining. You're not even allowed to buy a car without a permit that proves you have a parking space for it.
What Japan does different is that it has sensible zoning laws that are designed around foot traffic rather than car traffic. Why don't you have small shops like this in the U.S.? Because of minimum parking space requirements for cars.
> You're not even allowed to buy a car without a permit that proves you have a parking space for it.
I would cross out "even" in that sentence, and then step back and admire it. This is one of the best things about Japan. For some bizarre reason there is an implicit assumption (at least in many places in Europe, especially Central Europe) that 12m2 of public shared city space should be reserved for your metal box on wheels and that it's somehow a right.
It is insanity. In Amsterdam, houses go for €9,000 per square meter. So a parking space should cost around ~ €9,000 × 12m2 = €108,000. Meanwhile parking permits for inhabitants go for €500-€750 per year. It's the cheapest real estate available.
It also helps that apparently in general street parking is banned (possibly at least in big cities) due to disaster considerations - eq. for easy access for rescue personnel after a major earthquake or Typhoon. Not to mention tightly parkiong cars potentially being a fire spreading hazard in such a scenario.
In comparison, even here in Europe there are tight rows of cars in almost every street, reducing space for greenery, eating up sidewalks, making street crossing dangerous and sometimes even making the street hard to navigate for the cars themselves, not to mention making quick stops for taxi drivers or food & grocery delivery cars almost impossible.
It would help if traveling into the city for work would take also 45m, instead of 2h jumping across train, tram and bus connections, and this on a good day, when they aren't missed by "pick random DB excuse of the day".
Ah, yes, DB: I am aware of their reputation and, sadly, they also run some services in the UK where reliability and timeliness of service is also already shaky enough without their further assistance.
You have my sympathy.
I favour public transport when possible, but until goverments create reliable infrastructures that go beyond the lucky ones able to afford rents in city centers within the radius of good transport connections, or not having to go by bycicle to work while collecting km/miles as training for The Tour, most folks will go with the car option.
Do houses and land cost more, or less, there than the US?
Full of licenses and regulations doesn't mean that the licensing requirements for bars in particular are onerous.
An example is where I'm from, in Canada. Licensing for cars is easy. Business licenses are easy enough, if they're non-physical.
But opening a bar means at least $50k of licenses/compliance costs. To have a bar, you need to serve food. To serve food, there's minimum requirements for all sorts of things from electrical to ventilation to plumbing. So you need to apply to the city to do a study and plebiscite in the neighborhood to determine no one objects to your bar. You need to have an engineer sign off on your design and the fire department to sign off on that. Liquor license is $$$.
And that's before even bringing up the cost of the lease (1 year rent as deposit) or the actual construction costs (last I checked, over $400 per square foot).
Requiring proof that you have a parking spot should not be an issue. If you have a car, you need to put it somewhere right? Parking is generally private in Japan, so it comes at a premium. In western countries people expect that the government provide sufficient parking spots, but that's not necessary the most efficient allocation of valuable land.
It's the difference between drivers paying for their own parking or having it subsidised by non-drivers, along with the various issues caused by motornormativity (when you design around cars, you exclude walking/cycling etc).
Texas alone is twice the size of Japan with 1/4 of the population.
There’s little need for efficient allocation of essentially infinite space outside of urban areas constrained by geological features. And in those places parking comes at a premium too even in Western countries.
> There’s little need for efficient allocation of essentially infinite space outside of urban areas constrained by geological features.
Is that why highways that are 26 lanes wide are needed?
* https://roadstotravel.net/usa-katy-freeway/
They might not be saying it's perfect in all cases, maybe just giving the line of thinking that landed us at Katy highway :-)
> You're not even allowed to buy a car without a permit that proves you have a parking space for it.
And this is how you end up with excellent public transport, no SUVs, and like the lowest traffic death rate in the world.
> Because of minimum parking space requirements for cars.
This is not true. In a big city there are plenty of locations without parking or rely on public street parking. The issues are the onerous zoning, licensing and insurance requirements.
Land rights conversion. I believe if 2/3 of homeowners (living in a low-density area) agree to a proposed readjustment, then the rights of the land belonging to all homeowners are thusly converted. Oddly makes sense as the end-product, in turn, allows for greater density whilst retaining much of the aesthetic of said-land.
And that running businesses out of homes is frequently illegal, another casualty of zoning.
That’s the whole point of zoning
But why?
(semi-rhetorical, but that's exactly the discussion we're having here, whether people should be allowed a backyard coffee shop)
>> on the vibrant business and street culture in Japanese cities and the seemingly very, very low barriers to entry for regular people to participate.
> An astute observation that allowing markets to operate without onerous licensing schemes and regulations often has wonderful upsides
I suspect you are reading too much into this line from the article. Japan is a country full of bureaucratic regulations to the extent that it's often stifling -- especially compared to the US.
The overall lowered barrier to entry is largely a result of zoning laws differences between Japan and the US. In the US, zoning laws are largely permissive (you CAN build this here) where zoning laws in Japan are restrictive (you CANNOT build this here). This leads to huge differences in urban planning where Japan favours mixed-used development whereas the US has huge swaths of contiguous blocks separating residential and commercial zones.
Add to that, the cost of visibility is higher in the US because transportation is already car-centric. Small shops thrive on pedestrian traffic, which there is little of in the US outside core urban environments. NIMBY culture has killed much of urban diversity in America.
North Americans: the city planners are ruining your life in ways you didn't even know could exist.
I'm all for reducing permit requirements, but realisitically these would be used by McDo and Starbux to externalize more costs while increasing their quarterly profit. Really, you need to have something that is trusted and rational without corporate corruption, which Japan nominally is. The US is going the opposite direction from that.
It's my understanding that houses in Japan are zoned to allow a percentage of the space to be used for a low-impact business, like the coffee shop in the article, and that bigger businesses are allowed on the bigger roads and in dedicated commercial/industrial districts. Also most houses can be converted to triplexes, too. This helps with density, encouraging more businesses nearby, less need for cars, better quality of social life, etc.
I see what you mean about the potential for abuse - maybe Big Money would buy all the houses and run small businesses from them? But regulations or taxes could be used to dissuade them. Theoretically, anyways.
I wondered if Japan does anything along those lines to avoid the problems you mentioned, but google ain't what it used to be and I wasn't able to find specifics.
Some more context for Japan's land use (it does not differ prefecturally; some local regulations like kyoto and building colors)
The basics of Japan's Land use rules in english (only 8 pages; mostly tables/pictures and very straightforward): https://www.mlit.go.jp/common/001050453.pdf
- In the "Control of Building Use by Land Use Zones" you can see how even the most exclusive of zoning enables "Houses with other small scale function", Clinics, Schools or stores with very small footprints.
- Structures are restricted by the shape, shadow, and floor area.
- No mention of "single-family" housing.
A map (of Tokyo) overlaying the gradient of zoning from least to most permissive. You can see how the up-zoning follows the major roads: https://tokyochizu.github.io/zoning.html
Your last link of zoning density is incredibly cool. Did you create it?
Yes, it just uses the shapefile from the tokyo open data site.
https://catalog.data.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/dataset/t000008d00000...
It's a quarto site so if you navigate to the repository of the github page you can see the python code used to generate the map/choropleth.
> I see what you mean about the potential for abuse - maybe Big Money would buy all the houses and run small businesses from them? But regulations or taxes could be used to dissuade them. Theoretically, anyways.
This isn't actually possible because owning a lot of houses is not a good business. That's why almost all landlords are small-time and not corporate. Houses are depreciating assets, so if you own more of them it's just more chances you'll have to pay for a roof replacement.
In particular in Japan, houses are worth less than nothing and you may have to pay to demolish yours if you sell it! (Less true than it used to be because construction quality has gotten a lot better.)
I am not here to nit pick about this post, but this made me think:
Generally, I agree. What do you think makes commercial (office) buildings different? Probably 90% are owned by insurance companies, private equity, and pension funds. My guess: Scale matters. Also, maybe I am blinded by big cities, but second tier cities and below might have lots of small fry landlords that own one or two small commercial buildingsI'm not sure, but I know everything about CRE is totally different from residential.
Office buildings are generally larger, and the tenants are more professional and more likely to pay for maintenance themselves.
Office buildings are different because companies have more money and lower standards (for acceptable density) than residents.
> Houses are depreciating assets
.. which sit on top of the ultimate appreciating asset: land.
> That's why almost all landlords are small-time and not corporate.
https://wustllawreview.org/2023/12/27/corporate-consolidatio...
"Ownership of the nation’s rental housing stock is in transition. The approximately twenty million rental properties in the United States, and fifty million rental units within those properties, have been steadily shifting from individual to corporate hands".
Rent is profitable and the housing shortage is difficult to solve.
Almost no single-family houses in the US are rental properties. That's talking about apartments.
> Rent is profitable and the housing shortage is difficult to solve.
If a home is being rented out it's not contributing to the housing shortage though.
Missing the point. As long as an area has a shortage of housing rentals will likely remain a good investment.
That said I have to disagree that the housing shortage is difficult to solve, at least in a technical sense. It's due almost entirely to poor urban planning and infrastructure management. The problem is entirely political.
Then again, political issues can be some of the most difficult to make progress on so perhaps I agree after all.
I understand that to be one of the differences in approach to zoning, zones and buildings are considered on a spectrum of "impact". A high impact building like an industrial plant shouldn't be too close to low impact buildings like a single dwelling. But because it's a spectrum you get a natural mix of low, medium, and high impact buildings. A large residential complex might be considered medium impact and so can go next to a shopping complex that is also medium to high impact etc.
I would imagine that a great deal of Tokyo's megalopolis fits nicely in the medium impact zone, allowing housing, small scale manufacturing and commerce to mingle in an organic way.
It's kind of the other way around: McDonalds will find a way to operate in pretty much any kind of environment. They have the deep pockets and knowledge to do so. They have restaurants across the world, including in very tricky places like Venice, Italy.
It's the small, local guy who with low margins who is not going to thrive in an environment where it's very difficult to get past all the hurdles to even start up.
Vietnam has so much street food and coffee shops that McD and Starbucks cannot compete. That being said, Vietnamese zoning is pure anarchy and it would be too much for any Western country.
Japan has both McDonalds and Starbucks. Also, McDonalds is a franchise so "they" are not making most of the decisions here.
(Btw, I like US McDonalds better than Japan's, but maybe I'm the only one that thinks this.)
It’s weird, I’ve travelled for work and pleasure more than pretty much anyone I meet (I’ve visited 90 countries, worked in 21, lived longer term in 5. Currently settled West Coast US) and I’m somewhat of a fast food connoisseur lol - KFC, Domino’s, BK, Pizza Hut, etc are all without exception better in Europe and Asia with the exception of ,in my opinion , McDonalds. Maccies is better here as a rule. Sure you get the shitty franchisees sometimes but generally speaking!
This is a semi controversial opinion so, it’s interesting you feel the same way!
Can I ask you about the use of Maccies, is it a term you've used for a while? Do you remember where you first picked it up?
It is a somewhat hot topic in Australia, where we've always called it Maccas, but somehow Maccies has entered the lexicon here too.
I've heard it called Maccie or Macky D in the UK for at least 15 years
I know McD's has a mix of company-owned and franchise stores in the US. Is it the same in Japan? I don't know anything about how Starbucks works.
Can you say what makes USA McDs better? Definitely curious!
It's not a big difference but Japanese burgers are smaller (of course) but the buns aren't small enough. So there's just way too much bread in my experience.
Also, US has a mango pineapple smoothie that's really good. I refuse to look up how much sugar is in it.
‘Free’ refills?
American city planners influenced the construction of an elevated highway through the middle of Seoul in South Korea. Years later, that monstrosity was demolished. https://youtu.be/wqGxqxePihE
It's not really the planners given that planners have no real power and just do what they're told. The problem is that the elected decision makers are beaten down by established rich homeowners and shy away from and all conflict. So we have a cascade of shy conflict aversion as lazy and uninterested elected officials defer endlessly to planners, and planners who don't want to cause drama for their elected bosses and get themselves fired capitulate and do the safe thing that the wealthy established homeowner class pushes for.
One of the most known examples happened in Germany after WWII.
After the war Germany had lost quite a lot of businesses, infrastructure, industry and farming. Also obviously lots of manpower. Produce was scarce and inflation was extremely high, so it was actually quite difficult to purchase anything even though people had money. the Allied Forces introduced price control on almost all essential good in order to stop inflation. That obviously did not work at all and most goods were actually traded in the black market, so you could actually buy bread by paying with cigarettes.
A German economist, Ludwig Erhardt advised to remove all price and legal controls and to replace the old mark by a new one, but the Allied Forces only agreed to the latest, so a new currency was introduced, the Deutsche Mark, replacing the old Reichsmark. That had no effect whatsoever. However, Mr. Erhardt, from his position as Director of Economic Administration, decided unilaterally to remove of the price fixing and other regulations. And literally overnight, German streets filled with sudden and unplanned pop up markets, everyone started to sell anything they didn't need, just by the street or from their front yard.
In 1949 Erhardt became Minister of Economy for 14 years, and later, in 1963, Chancellor.
I think another factor is real estate: a population shrinking by more than half a million people per year eases some of the pressure on rent and land value...
When I lived in New York City (before COVID), I saw many local businesses get priced out of my neighborhood, only to be replaced by high-margin chains like Starbucks/H&M/etc. They were the only ones who could afford the rent!
Looks like https://maps.app.goo.gl/sa5JdGPMoZKiUiUP7 in Osaka is still going, though I remembered it being called "spacebar", a fantastic male for a retro gaming bar.
It's Space Station. Still a great vibe and going strong (thankfully), I visited it half a year ago.
Thank you - I rushed to the comments section to mention Melbourne's bars.
Re 'more permissive and less expensive' - I think there was a time (20 years ago?) when Melbourne city would give a license basically anyone. There were bars in old convenience stores, out the back of record stores & barbers. Just so much fun.
> without onerous licensing schemes and regulations often has wonderful upsides
If anything Japan is the opposite.
I entered a jazz izakaya in Kanazawa with only two stools and no room for anyone else. There was an old man on one stool and a bartender in his 70s or 80s. It is rude to tip and they will not except it but offering to buy a drink for the bartender is encouraged. I ordered a Japanese whiskey and offered the old man and bartender one. There were piles of knickknacks and maybe $15,000 worth of stereo equipment including a record player, planar magnetic speakers and a vacuum tube amplifier in this little room. I heard the distinctive sound of Sonny Rollins saxophone and used the translation app to say I saw Sonny Rollins play live at the Monterey Jazz Festival and he played an encore of La Cucaracha for close to two hours where his band eventually left the stage and he kept playing and playing. The bartender pulled out a Sonny Rollins record from his stack of vinyl and put it on the record player. The three of us sat there for 40 minutes not saying a word listening.
If you are in Kyoto, I recommend a similar style bar called Brown Sugar. They tend to have these types of names, for example, in Sapporo there is one called Jim Crow. [0] However, if in Sapporo, I recommend the half note. [1] Most bars and restaurants for that matter will not serve me because I do not speak Japanese, so they say. If I wanted a drink I would stick to Karaoke and jazz bars. I made some friends in Kyoto who were finishing their 4th year studying engineering at University of Kyoto who were from Africa -- these kids are African royalty. They spoke perfect fluent Japanese and they couldn't get access into bars that would let me in. So the names are fitting and likely they know exactly what they mean.
[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=sapporo+japan+bar+jim+crow
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=sapporo+japan+piano+ba+half+...
I recently heard Craig Mod[1] in an interview. He has walked thousands of miles in Japan and has produced books that document some of what he has seen. The photographs he has published online are beautiful, but I've never seen any of his books so I can't comment on those.
Anyway, in the interview, he talked about places that sound like what you are describing in the first paragraph but he called them kissas.
[1]:https://craigmod.com/
I'm working on this[0] 2 hr 52 minute interview with Craig about his new book. He makes the point national health care is a big part of what makes this work. There is a safety net, so people are empowered to take more financial risks.
[0] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-rich-roll-podcast/...
Cheap housing surely also contributes. Iirc, apartments in most of Japan are incredibly cheap as a result of a diminishing population and National government level zoning reform.
Here in Australia, we have an incredibly robust system of Public Healthcare, just like japan, but taking financial risks is downright suicidal with our house prices.
Exactly this.
On kissaten - 店 ten is the kanji for "store", though you might also learn 屋 (ya, lit. roof). kissa means consume tea (喫茶), more or less. I didn't notice them on my first visit, I wasn't into coffee then, but they're everywhere and a really nice way to get breakfast (egg toast + siphon filter for a few hundred yen). Not necessarily the best coffee in Japan if you don't like dark roast, but it's often made to order and not out of an urn.
Izakaya I would associate more with drinking and small plates of food, but not necessarily a catch-all for bars.
YMMV I guess, but I found the best coffee at kissatens, and I hate dark roasts. Lots of great, sometimes super tiny, third-wave pourover types, too. But I guess Japanese coffee culture is more about evening consumption since there were many that were open at 10PM or later, but very few open before 10AM.
I can see espresso cafe culture spreading a bit through Japan, with australian style cafes offering great espresso and mixed cuisine on the menu. I think japan/australian cafe culture colliding has been an incredible thing. It's happening in Australia too, where the Japenese aspects of small inexpensive foods are mixing into Japan influenced cafes here.
I think Australia and Japan have a surprisingly symbiotic cafe culture that's betting blurred together.
I recommend Glitch in Tokyo Jinbocho.
I think it's the only place I've been in my life where the coffee actually tastes like the tasting notes say it does. Even when they say "mojito", which was surprising.
I agree about Glitch, though it gets super busy. There are cafes which also serve their beans if you don't want the wait. I would also recommend Fuglen's tasting experience in Sangubashi. It's a bit theatrical, but great if you want to try something a bit different.
Ah, I heard about it, but the timing never worked out to try it. Good to have some confirmation!
For reference, I’m fairly certain that kissa a shortened version of 喫茶店 (kissaten).
That said, I’m guessing the “jazz izakaya” that gp mentioned would probably just be called a bar or izakaya, possibly with a thematic adjective added.
Yeah "jazz kissa" is an established term. A dying trend, of course, as with all kissas.
Oh, my. I'm scratching my head wondering how this is the first time I have ever heard the word kissas. [0]
[0] https://xkcd.com/1053/
I was aware of Manga Kissas[0], which are a bit more famous in general, I assummed it was a generic extension of the term
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manga_cafe
"Kissa" just means café, but when you'd use the word is complex.
Basically in Japan Japanese words feel retro or else appropriate for personal and family life, while English words feel clean and modern/corporate/business-y.
So a Japanese word like kissaten gives the impression of somewhere from the 60s that's full of old people and you can't breathe because of all the cigarette smoke. But it also specifically means a coffee shop and not a bar I think, so there wouldn't be alcohol.
I’m fairly certain that it’s a shortened version of 喫茶店 (kissaten).
> these kids are African royalty. They spoke perfect fluent Japanese and they couldn't get access into bars that would let me in
Let's imagine we discuss a tiny bar in New-York or Paris that wouldn't let asian or black people in. I doubt the discussion would be only about how this place is nice and cosy and everyone that could possibly get in should just try it.
It's like Japanese people have a free pass to be a*holes, but only them, because you know, Japan ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
[dead]
> I suppose, religion aside, that that feeling is wonder. That is not a feeling I often feel running errands and going out in America. But it’s a feeling that the Japanese business landscape and built environment is able to spark frequently.
On our Friday stand-ups we generally chat for a few minutes about what we're up to for the weekend, and my update is usually something along the lines of "I'm going to go outside and let New York happen to me". I'm feeling that wonder less and less here in the city as all the quirky, niche things have been driven out due to rent increases and are being replaced by their private equity owned, multi-national versions. But the ability of the city to spark wonder certainly exists in our environment here more than in most in the US since we navigate by foot and not typically by car.
I'd prefer optimizing for wonder than most other things.
Edit: Actually there used to be a Japanese cafe in my neighborhood called "House of Small Wonder", which was attached to an omakase spot. They had a big tree growing out of the middle of it, going up out the roof, with space for maybe 15 or less. It's now a Glossier makeup store.
NYC is the only "real city" in the US (that I have visited; Chicago seems similar) and yet NYC is not an easy place to live unless you make a lot of money. I have traveled abroad extensively (including to places like Japan) and think the state of American cities is a genuine shame. We are missing out on so much.
Absolutely. And whenever you bring up wanting to build cities more like NYC the discussion inevitably devolves into people clutching their cars and complaining it would be tyrannical to make people walk and take public transit. It'd be great if we had more options here, rather than everyone that wants to live in a big city piling into just NYC (which is still a small city in the global scheme of things).
There's something irreplaceable about those odd little spaces that surprise you, especially in a walkable city
These small cafés/bars are called kissa (kee-sah). Unlike a regular café, the kissa is designed to create an atmosphere allowing for a quiet appreciation of the music while drinks are served as an accompaniment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_kissa
For the interested, Chris Broad (Abroad in Japan) interviewed the owner of such an establishment (Basie) located in Ichinoseki: https://youtube.com/watch?v=1-9RMSbl_Uo
> (There’s one that’s chock-full of Star Wars memorabilia, for example.)
I'd definitely like to know where this one is.
Nijo Koya, at 382-3 Mogamicho, Nakagyo-ku, Kyoto.
That's the subject of the article. Not the other place with Star Wars memorabilia the author parenthetically referred to.
Welp, better one than neither, anyways!
Thank you anyways.
> (There’s one that’s chock-full of Star Wars memorabilia, for example.)
Tavern Pachimon Wars in Osaka seems like it fits the description
Chris Broad is an inspiration.
It doesn't feel run down because it isn't run down. No dust in the corners, no dents in the wall - this is the difference between patina and "old crap": a lifetime of care.
> this obviously aging little structure doesn’t feel ugly or rundown.
That made me cringe a bit. The whole look of the place is deliberate. I mean, somebody put in a lot of effort to make it look just that way. Notice how every inch of it is spotless and nothing could be said to be out of place.
Agreed. And this, too:
>And the coffee was pretty good, too.
it feels a little mean to describe this as cringe, it's just an honest opinion from someone who feels differently from you
i wouldn't describe it as deliberate, but rather accepted and embraced. yes they're choosing to not update it and modernize and they like they way it looks, but its not like they took a clean modern space and deliberately aged it to look this way
> I’m not sure why it is that this obviously aging little structure doesn’t feel ugly or rundown.
as an aside, i feel it doesnt look ugly and rundown because it's largely natural materials and colors. it's normal for things in nature to look this way.
This is a really excellent observation. In addition:
> It’s such a curious, almost uncanny, feeling to enter one of these places. The inside feels much bigger and grander than the outside.
It makes sense for people to have an innate desire to be in places that are, you know, good for people to be in. The most obvious way to tell if a place is good for you is if it carries evidence that it has historically been good to other people.
Maybe we have some subsconcious processing that picks up on signs of human activity. That means wear and tear, built things, modifications. The way humans leave their mark on an environment when they spent time on it. All of that spent time is like accumulated votes that "yup, this is a good human place."
At the same time, we don't want to find ourselves hanging out in a dumping ground, slag heap, or other environment that humans have left their mark in by expoiting it. That's not a good place to be, because it's not just used, it's used up. So what we want to look for is not just signs of human activity (which a landfill has in spades), but a certain kind of caring activity. Marks in the space that seem to have been done to leave it more appealing to be in.
I think that's what the author is picking up on here. These tiny, aged spaces have a deep accumulation of caring attention. They feel bigger than they are because we pick up on that huge information density of all of the past people that have left their mark on a place. The place isn't large spatially, but it's large in time.
It's the exact opposite of how walking into a giant mall or corporate office can still feel claustrophobic because there's nothing—no things—there, no sense of history or connection to any lived experience.
It's also large in usability. That's hard to do with a small space; you have to think different. To think like that, you first need to live in a small space, and organically develop solutions around it.
Now, you could do that with any space, like a machine shop. But the "good human place"-ness of the shop will depend on the forces that shape that shop. If all the forces are purely commercial, you're going to end up with something that works commercially, but might not be so human-friendly. I think the disconnect between bland American commercial spaces and more intimate Japanese ones is the relationship of the owner-proprietor to commercialism.
In the US, I have been in a few cafes where I had to step back outside to check if I had accidentally walked into someone's living room. Same for hostels; the best ones feel like you're in someone's home. Their layout was not driven by commercial interest, but by a person just wanting to feel cozy. The space is them.
Whereas a Starbucks isn't a person, it's a chemical factory. If the music is too loud, it doesn't matter if I complain; the factory workers (supposedly) can't control the music. If the air is too cold, it doesn't matter if I'm shivering; the factory workers are paid to make coffee, not care about my discomfort. Our human connection to the space is irrelevant to the manufacturing and selling of chemical stimulants.
> I think the disconnect between bland American commercial spaces and more intimate Japanese ones is the relationship of the owner-proprietor to commercialism.
Much of this is building codes. There are simply many things you can't do in an American business even if you want to, and not for bad reasons either, but eg electric, fire safety, ADA, employee safety rules are totally different than Japan and force you to have much larger and plainer spaces.
The big one that kills everything is parking minimums.
Thought similarly. It looks very clean, is well lit, the decisions look purposeful (no random crap on the shelves), and the materials wear well (wood vs e.g. cheap plastic chairs).
I went to a cafe in kyoto near the bamboo forest where it was literally an old ladies house and in the moment, being there conjured deep resentment within me towards urban planners and zoning.
Japan has zoning but its done very sensibly.
In the US our zoning is done very restrictively: in this place you can build a detached single family home with this kind of set back and up to this height. In this spot you can build low density commercial. Etc you can ONLY build what the zoning board says. Then there are also complications from HUD, like they dont give FHA loans for condos or if developments have straight roads.
In japan the national government has a zoning policy. The most common zoning is “light industrial”. But if you have a zoning policy, you can build anything at that level or below. So in light industrial you can build a coffee shop, or a house or an apartment or a machine shop.
Hey what. Near the bamboo forest they didn't build high rises. So. Kyoto has excellent density in general. The transit is excellent too.
There's just something about Japan that makes its simplicity so beautiful. Yes, we all know Japan has dealt with economic problems, lost decades, declining fertility, etc.
But they still manage to keep the beautiful simplicity of life that makes their culture one of the world's richest.
It’s a great place but what’s on the surface is a total illusion to the complexity and rules Japanese people have to deal with to make it seem this way. I’ve always believed that the beauty of Japanese society comes at the cost of the Japanese themselves. They have to sacrifice a lot to make it what it is.
Conformity is huge, there was even a row a few years ago when a school demanded to inspect girls underwear and make sure they're wearing the correct colored panties. Asking children to dye their hair black or straighten it is also not unheard of.
Shukumōkyosei literally means “to shrink and correct hair”. It’s a permanent straightening treatment that removes 70 to 90% of curls, volume, and frizz by chemically restructuring hair bonds.
My theory is, the level of rules, bureaucracy, and society pressure is why innovation and having children is just too hard. It's very hard to find the space live, but the rules based high pressure society is all they know since the end of WW2.
If you're interested, have a read about the Zen period, and the way it sort of liberated society. It's faced challenges since the Kamakura period (it's golden age) but it was a fascinating period of brilliant art, innovation and reform.
I hope what I said doesn't come across as negative either. Like I said, it's a wonderful place and fascinating culture, it truly is, but it's as I said, not free nor is it at all simple.
I live in Sweden (as an expat), and I often struggle to explain to outsiders why I think it’s one of the least interesting places I’ve ever been to. There is something missing that I can’t usually grasp with words. This article has made it crystal clear; this kind of thing is non-existent here. Everything is impersonal, distant, matter-of-fact. Next time someone asks me I’ll link this article.
(The next obvious question is always “why are you still there?” and the answer is because it’s a great place to work.)
It is literally impossible to open a small "hole-in-the-wall"-kind of bar in Sweden. In order to sell alcohol you have to also serve warm food which means you have to open a restaurant, and following this means you have to have a kitchen that is approved by very strict hygiene controls. Like having a sink only for kitchen staff to wash their hands.
In the early 20th century the trick in the "Ölcafé" (Beer Café) was to have a sandwich that _no one_ ate that you ordered with your beer and this then gets sent back and forth between customers and the cafe :)
I live in Thailand as an expat and I have the inverse of your experience and more a kin to this article.
There just so many examples like the ones mentioned in the article. When I lived in Chiang Mai I'd just take my bike to any direction and always find something - be it a small noodle cart or a cafe someone opened up in their back yard or a small bar right under an abandoned hotel.
It's incredible how many invisible effects viability of small businesses have on a society.
You can have all the infrastructure, safety, and efficiency in the world, but if everything is polished and impersonal, it can start to feel kind of sterile
I left for Germany for this reason
Man, I know it is a meme but Japan simply have mastered "aesthetics". It is especially incredible given that they achieved this in an urban area.
For example, consider the vines that are growing on that shed. Is that dirty? Should we clean them to get a pristine shed? Yes, you have to sweep the floor everyday to clean the dust, but should you cut down that small plant growing between the cracks of your building? Or the vines overtaking the roof? I think if you answers no to this, then you understand that sense of aesthetics.
For some people tho, they think its a bad thing (1), which I simply don't understand? I don't understand how people can willingly spend every couple of hours every week to trim their lawn to a pristine, perfect cube of grass. Is this beautiful? I think not. In my apartment, I have trees growing from the cracks of the building, and I think that's beautiful.
I don't know how they do it, it is not simply just being clean. I think parts of it is "allowing nature to take its course" which gives a typical structure depth and age.
1. https://www.reddit.com/r/landscaping/comments/vs1n0n/help_wh...
> Is that dirty?
That’s not what you should be worrying about.
> I have trees growing from the cracks of the building, and I think that's beautiful.
It probably is beautiful. It may also be inconvenient or outright dangerous. As the trees continue to grow and expand the cracks, the building’s structure becomes ever more compromised. Maybe the cracks will expand and more rain will come in, causing mold and making your home less effective at keeping its temperature. Or maybe they’ll expand in a way that a whole wall will fall off.
Seeing plants sprouting from the ground in cities is fun and aesthetically pleasing, I agree. But it is not always safe to let them keep growing.
It's a 1 storey building. Even if the vine means it will only last 50 years instead of 100 years, the risks are low and the cost to replace is low.
If we were talking about public infra where thousands will die if a structure fails prematurely, then sure, let's be careful about vines. But if a private land owner wishes to grow vines (or allow vines to grow) on their private building, I think it's fine.
> It's a 1 storey building.
I’m not talking about the building in the article, or even Japan specifically, but addressing the general point of trees and other growths which cause literal cracks and compromise structural integrity.
> If we were talking about public infra where thousands will die if a structure fails prematurely
That is exactly what I’m talking about. Well, maybe not thousands, even a four story building with a compromised structure can lead to unnecessary deaths.
> I’m not talking about the building in the article, or even Japan specifically, but addressing the general point of trees and other growths which cause literal cracks and compromise structural integrity.
Structural integrity or uniformity (or some other qualitative)? Yes, occasionally there is an actual structural problem (MSME here) but far, far more often things are torn down or discarded when a slight repair would suffice (other than the preference).
> the building’s structure becomes ever more compromised
on what timescale though? and in an invisible way?
I believe buildings are seen as more temporary in japan than in the west; maybe point at which the damage is excessive would outlive the building?
> "on what timescale though?"
Depends on how extensive the growth is and how structurally stable the thing is in the first place. But expect major problems on the decades-timescale.
> "and in an invisible way?"
Yes. This is the main problem with allowing unconstrained plant growth near/in/under structures - the degree of structural compromise is hard to assess (especially without spending a lot of $$$), and failure can be sudden. You're not gonna get as much warning as you'd want.
In the US it's a popular look to have vines growing against brick walls. They're beautiful but often hazardous for structural safety, especially if not proactively maintained and constantly monitored (which is $$$!)
[edit] I think overall the focus on the "pleasantly ramshackle" aesthetics of the shack misses the forest for the trees. There's a lot of daylight between "permit small businesses in possibly unsafe structures" and "western status quo norms for business licensure".
I think something Japan gets done really well is making it easy and inexpensive to run businesses, especially hobby businesses. There are a ton of policies that encourage this outcome, and we can and should adopt entire rafts of them without changing existing regs about the physical structural stability of said businesses ;)
> on what timescale though?
Short enough to kill you or your direct descendants. These things can look fine for years and then collapse in one day.
> and in an invisible way?
Makes no difference how visible it is if you don’t understand the risk and do nothing until something happens. And the longer you wait, the harder it will be to remedy.
> I believe buildings are seen as more temporary in japan than in the west
I’m not talking about Japan, I’m addressing the general point.
This shouldn't really matter, but it matters to insurance. So landlords cut down trees.
I've never been to Japan, but lived in Norway for a couple years and I always felt like they had mastered western "aesthetics". Norwegians seemed to really appreciate Japanese/zen styles as well. One thing I always found interesting is most homes in Norway will have fresh flowers, despite living in a climate not conducive to that at all.
They have this word called koselig that we don't have in English that means cozy plus a lot more things, and these Japanese coffee shops really do embody that word.
It's all of Scandinavia really. Denmark is the same, probably Sweden also (though I have not been there).
We have a word for that: Japandi. "Japandi is an interior design and architecture style that blends Japanese minimalism with Scandinavian functionality."
I remember roaming around the back alleys of Tokyo, as I'm wont to do to get a true feel for any place I'm visiting, and came across bicycles parked on sidewalks, covered with vines. Those bikes must've been there for several years.
Coming from SF, a couple of thoughts came to mind: first: wow these bikes have been sitting here for a long time. And second: this must be a _really_ safe place, because in SF, a bike parked outside won't last a day or two.
Funny thing is: the area didn't look rundown or anything. It was clean and well maintained. Except for the bikes in vines.
> I don't understand how people can willingly spend every couple of hours every week to trim their lawn to a pristine, perfect cube of grass.
I once went out of town for two weeks figuring much the same and came back to a freshly cut lawn and a five-day-old notice from the town posted at my door stating that I had three days to trim the lawn or they'd do it for $300.
The western obsession with lawns is well past due for a paradigm shift.
It's because of setbacks, which are secretly done to make it easier to expand the road. (US traffic engineers only ever want to expand roads, never make them smaller.)
If it takes a couple of hours you're obsessing. I cut my quarter-acre suburban lawn in about 45 minutes, with a cheap push mower.
The time it takes to mow your lawn depends mostly on the size of your property. When I was a teenager up we had a little under 3 acres of grass that needed to be mowed. Even with a small non-commercial tractor-style riding mower, it took several hours to do.
Oh of course. But in a town that's rather unusually large. When I think of a place where anyone would complain about the grass not being cut for two weeks, it's in some kind of little townhome neighborhood with a really uptight HOA board.
There is "no nature taking its course" here. Japanese garden also require good deal of trimming, it's just that the style is difference :)
So true. I once saw a gardener removing weeds from a moss patch with tweezers. Very meticulous.
Oooooh so that's how to deal with the grass sprouts in my Irish Moss.
Pristine lawns were originally a status symbol thing. You would show off how much land and resources you could waste.
> I don't understand how people can willingly spend every couple of hours every week to trim their lawn to a pristine, perfect cube of grass.
I do ours because our lawn is 70% tumbleweeds (kochia) and cutting it before any of it can go to seed increases the chance that one day it will be only 30% kochia.
Yes, the vine being planted ( or let to grow ) is a deliberate choice :). It's not unique to Japan thou.
> I don't understand how people can willingly spend every couple of hours every week to trim their lawn to a pristine, perfect cube of grass.
The funny thing is that you will fine plenty of Western-style gardens in Japan too: perfectly trimmed, symmetrical, sometime even next to Japanese garden. Japanese aristocrats quite love this back in the day.
> The funny thing is that you will fine plenty of Western-style gardens in Japan too: perfectly trimmed, symmetrical, sometime even next to Japanese garden. Japanese aristocrats quite love this back in the day.
And I dont think that part of Japan is pretty when I visited it. I understand that its not all perfect, of course.
You don't think it's pretty or you just find in uninteresting because it similar to what you already have back home ?
Both are very beautiful to me, because I haven never seen either of them.
Regarding plants, my English influenced yard in the US contains no “tortured little trees”[1], but is also intentional and beautiful. Investing in beauty without ego is difficult and unusual but not exceptional.
[1] The Essential Pruning Companion by John Malins
It's a cultural thing called wabi-sabi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi
> Is that dirty? Should we clean them to get a pristine shed?
What do you mean? Are trees dirty?
Dirty as in it is something to be dealt with.
It's just basic good taste.
Have you never been to Los Angeles?
What's also magical is that businesses like that can exist without being run aground by bureaucracy. In my city it is nearly impossible to even get a permit for a mobile food stand.
This reminds me very much of one of my favourite series on Netflix, Midnight Diner (not Midnight Diner - Tokyo Stories, which is a Netflix remake with many of the same cast, but not as enjoyable as the original in my opinion). Most of the action centres around a group of regulars talking while at a small izakaya in Shinjuku, Tokyo, which is run by someone known only as "Master" and only opens from midnight to 7am. You see a bit of their lives outside, but it always reverts back to the izakaya where they debate on various topics. Given the setting, each episode feels a bit like a theatre play.
I tend to react a bit allergic to the Japan-everything fetishizing so prominent on Hacker News (although I've come to realize that it's mostly Americans holding up an example of everything they feel they lack domestically, and in that sense isn't so much about Japan as it is about America), but perhaps it's an interesting data point that at as a grumpy cynic I still want to second this recommendation. :)
For one reason or another, the Japanese school of story-telling has a pretty prominent streak of this type of low-stakes, downtempo "slice of life" premise like this, that I find very satisfying. The director Hirokazu Koreeda has made many films of this type as well. For a while my wife and I would alternate watching Spanish films by Pedro Almodóvar and Koreeda on movie night, working through both catalogs, which somehow made a lot of sense together.
> Japan-everything fetishizing so prominent on Hacker News
It’s far from exclusive to Hacker News. In fact, it doesn’t seem to be that prevalent here, as when it’s mentioned it at least tends to be in relevant context. Reddit, Tumblr, Imgur, and plenty of other communities both on and offline have an appreciation for Japanese culture.
> although I've come to realize that it's mostly Americans holding up an example of everything they feel they lack domestically, and in that sense isn't so much about Japan as it is about America
Also not related to America at all. It’s just as common in Europe and western countries in general. Generation probably plays a role. Find anyone who had their mind blown by an anime at a formative age, and you’ll find someone who to this day is likely to have some degree of fascination with Japan.
> Also not related to America at all.
I'm honestly convinced it's a bit more prevalent in America, and I've explored this in earnest conversations with American friends. I don't mean to villify it either, as it makes a certain amount of sense. Their take is roughly that Japan is the benchmark case for a sufficiently alternative/different culture from an American POV and thus invites comparison. As in, yes, you could also cite equivalent examples in Europe (say, cozy hole-in-the-wall cafés in 200 year old structures with vines hanging off of them ...), but since the cultural overlap is much larger (or presumed to be), it's less striking. To quote one friend, "if you're going to make the comparison, why not go for the maximum you can?"
Add the surplus in shared history, the far greater exposure to Japanese products (e.g. car brands) inviting more interest, and so on.
Sure, you can find manga/anime fand pining for that Japanese lifestyle also in Europe, and Europeans are certainly no strangers to orientalism through the ages. But the incidence of finding "look at how the Japanese are doing it differently" in random mainstream media is a lot higher in US publications. And it's also largely been US-based consulting companies and/or organizations that have taken the hoishin and the kaizen and what not global in corporate culture and particularly in tech.
It’s far from exclusive to HN, but HN is still a prime example of it.
There’s a ridiculous number of Japan-centric things that make it to the front page compared to any other culture. Tech has always had a Japan obsession.
> There’s a ridiculous number of Japan-centric things that make it to the front page compared to any other culture.
But is there a ridiculous number of Japan-centric things that make it to the front page compared to any other community? Are Japan-centric things discussed on HN more than Reddit, Tumblr, Imgur? Because that was my point; Japan is popular in general, not just popular on HN to the point it’s even worth singling out.
> But is there a ridiculous number of Japan-centric things that make it to the front page compared to any other community?
I do not care about other communities. I am discussing HN and the tech community herein and the phenomenon that occurs with Japan worship here.
They idealize Japan through fetishized objects. If you showed the picture of that same coffee shop in Philippines or some south east asian country, nobody in the West would care.
But attaching the Japan label suddenly makes it more appealing as it invokes many distorted (and misinformed) aspects of Japan.
It's the same annoying vibe that Koreans get when they come across a foreigner who is into Kpop. Most Koreans do not care for Kpop as do most Japanese do not care for Anime.
Yet these exports create a parasocial relationship with a foreign country that when broken turn them into passive aggressive bigots.
The more you covet the harsher the rejection. Japanese and Korean society simply has no place for outsiders. Having a Japanese passport doesn't make you Japanese as it will not change your ancestral history, having your gender changed on your drivers license doesn't change the biological history and so on.
> They idealize Japan through fetishized objects. If you showed the picture of that same coffee shop in Philippines or some south east asian country, nobody in the West would care.
I think you're mostly right on the money on that, but I'll also say it doesn't have to be all fetishization. A lot of US Americans legitimately do live in places where you don't have access to cozy nightlife like that because it's not what the market provides, and if it's to your tastes, I can understand desiring it.
I lived and worked in South Korea for a number of years, and I really enjoyed some of the laid-back wine bars and whiskey bars there, made for working-age couples and small groups in their 20s to lounge around and talk with a drink. That kind of atmosphere is very commonly available there, but fairly hard to find in Berlin (where I live now), where bars more typically are tacky, sticky, and play terrible music so loud you have to yell at each other. I also miss the late-night coffeeshops a lot, where I spent many a night with the laptop doing FOSS stuff - your typical Berlin café closes no later than 7pm. There are exceptions to these rules but the sort of places I like are generally a lot harder to find.
Note I e.g. get the same opinion from Catalan friends in & about Berlin, who really miss their chill bars and street-side places from back home in Barcelona and similar. So this is again more of a "I like this foreign thing I can't have here as much" than it is about Japan.
> Also not related to America at all.
I'm not so sure. Or, rather, reasons can differ. I'm not into anime at all, but every time I visit Japan (was just there in April, after not having visited since 2017), I am constantly finding little things and thinking "it's a shame we can't have that sort of thing in the US".
I'm generally positive on the concept of government regulation, but the US & US state governments tend to over-regulate so many things, like zoning and alcohol licensing (as mentioned in the article). Culture plays a part too, certainly.
I have never seen a Koreeda film but he sounds compelling -- which movie would you recommend for a first-timer?
Shoplifters was a recent international success and is maybe the most accessible. My favorites of his are After the Storm and Maboroshi, though. All of them feature wonderful characters and quiet adult moments.
On the arthouse circuit, I think he's best known for After Life, which is a bit more challenging (honestly: I found it a bit dull) but worth biting into.
Do you know that pang of melancholic joy-and-regret you feel after you've had a wonderful day and you know no matter how much you and the others involved try, you can probably never quite recreate that magic a second time? Grateful for the memory you'll always have, yet at the same time sad? That's how his movies feel to me, where I'm often both happy and sad I've seen them. It's pretty damn great when a movie can do that.
Interesting. I think I've only watched After Life and indeed found it very dull (and for the record: I enjoy slow-paced Japanese movies with "quiet adult moments"). I actually thought the premise of the movie wasn't well explored at all.
So maybe I would enjoy his other movies, if you liked them!
I can second the Shoplifters recommendation.
If you’re in the mood for an almost unbearably moving one, would recommend Nobody Knows.
Saw that (excellent), did not know it was Koreeda.
The show is based on a manga, by the way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shin%27ya_Shokud%C5%8D
TIL - thanks!
As the author and various commenters here note, there are many tiny businesses in Japan. In the big cities, they are often located on the upper floors of multistory buildings. Lately, for no particular reason, I've been taking pictures of the signs for bars in such places:
https://www.gally.net/barsigns/index.html
This is a function of affordability and low regulation. Another place I’ve been to which has so many lovely tiny little coffee shops and boutiques which may also happen to be someone’s home is Lviv, Ukraine.
Regulation is definitely the big stopper in most of the EU. Here in Czech Republic it would be incredibly difficult to open anything like this.
I almost opened a cafe/bar a couple years back, I even had a reservation deposit on a location, had the money to renovate it, had money put aside for it to fully fund the rent and utilities and staff for a year, but in the end I scrapped the idea because of the bureaucracy.
I needed: a hospitality trade license , a certificate from the inspectors for food hygiene and public health, a certificate for fire/gas/electrical safety, registration with the customs office, staff needed to do training for food handling, and I needed to register the kitchen with the regional hygiene office. It's not unreasonable, but it's a lot of bureaucracy for something I wanted to do as a fun side project
> I’m not sure why it is that this obviously aging little structure doesn’t feel ugly or rundown. It doesn’t trigger any negative feelings. It somehow feels atmospheric, like a living time capsule. The music, of course, helped.
Several things help prevent it from feeling run down: 1) the music, 2) the fact that it's probably immaculate: no dust or dirt anywhere, 3) the rustic surfaces have a patina, but no physical degradation (rust/rot), and 4) it's well lit.
Some of this I believe is possible because of rent price. Especially in places like Kyoto where I believe the population is slowly going down.
That said, there are small places all over. this one might be relatively famous. It's next to a train track so not "quiet" but it's also in busy Tokyo.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/FMY9QwWyiibWn9CcA
Another thing there are lots of are small restaurants that hold 5-12 people. There are of course the famous bars in Golden Gai and a few other places but there really are 1000s of these places if you know where to look if you're language skills are up for it. Often there is person running the "bar" but they have a menu of food they'll cook for you. Things like grilled fish, pork salad, omelette rice, etc... Basically Japanese home cooking. Lots of people become regulars at a place and it's like their 2nd home.
If you watched Odd Taxi, they hang out at a place like this.
There's one I was introduced to recently right here (https://maps.app.goo.gl/Tgsfou4HMbKiiD3L8). It's not going to be around much longer because it's run by a 96yr old lady who lives there. She doesn't speak any English. She ran it with her husband until he passed away. IIRC she's been there 57yrs
Another, I was introduced to bar recently, not far from the coffee place above. I found it interesting in particular because it was only open weekdays from 5pm to 10:30 on weekdays. Not open on weekends. I haven't asked if that brings in enough or if the person has other sources of income. I'll ask next time I visit. But 5.5 hours a day, 5 days a week + prep sound nice.
Another thing I find appealing about these small bar/restaurants/snacks, they seem like not a bad life. Working a USA style sports bar in the USA or beer restaurant like in Germany or regular restaurant with 10+ tables seems like a not so interesting job. Just running from table to table taking orders, carrying orders, being "busy". These Japanese places are a place to socialize and in particular to socialize with the owner so the owner generally has a nice time as well.
Jazz—classic jazz, not Kenny G- is common in urban Japan. Very common to hear Miles Davis or Dave Brubeck in a restaurant, coffee shop, etc.
Turntable on a speaker - I thought that was not advised.
Why though? Because vibrations from a speaker can cause the turntable to move and move the arm or cause the needle to move.
In a jazz cafe, I assume the music plays low most of the time and so it probably doesn't matter much.
The motion of the speaker feeds signal back to the needle/input device. It matters even more in Jazz/syncopated music. The needle tracks with a force of only 1.5 grams or so, and any motion is greatly amplified. Also if you listen to jazz with the volume low you are doing it wrong. Do you link the volume was low in the club when Sun Ra was recording?
But besides that, those speakers are placed terribly for stereo imaging. Even tucked in the cubby, why place them with the drivers together rather than apart? And those speakers appear to be dreadful anyway. A single 12" driver in a vented / untuned baffle with no midrange or tweeter elements?
So this is definitely set up for aesthetic, not sound quality.
I've got Genelec studio monitors in my kitchen. I care very much about sound. I would never set foot in your anechoic, soffit mounted cafe blasting jazz at 100dB.
That's a complete, total waste of studio monitors. Monitors are for nearfield positioned listening. Sound great when you are in the (small) sweet spot, but generic and flat off axis, which you will be most of the time in a workspace like a kitchen. And a kitchen is a terrible place to seriously listen to music, with all of the hard tile surfaces and tinny sheet metal appliances reverberating. You may care very much about sound, but you don't know very much about sound. If you did, and you wanted good sound while working in the kitchen, you'd be wearing some nice open back headphones, not some fairly cheap, very small monitors.
Depends how well the turntable is decoupled from its plinth. Think in terms of a lumped systems model with a mass on a spring being driven by (probably lower frequency) vibrations from the speakers.
"Now that I think about it, there was nothing in this shop that would tell you it isn’t still, say, 1960."
I'd go for 1980s based on the amplifier, turntable and speakers. It would be a radiogram, probably valve based, in actual 1960s. Nice though.
Feedback
Speaking as someone that professionally played vinyl for around 5 years back in the 90s, here's my tip:
If you sum the stereo channels into mono then feeback present but inverted on each channel is cancelled out and the problem goes away like magic.
This seems to be lost knowledge but it's how old school sound systems[1] were able to have their turntables basically on top of a collection of speakers without feedback.
Many mixers back in the day, from people like Pioneer, used to have a mono/stereo switch for this purpose.
It's very easy to demonstrate this by placing a stylus on a stopped record, then tapping the record surface directly
The speakers are right next to each other so it's not like you're loosing stereo image.
1. I'm talking old school Jamaican and UK Sound Systems here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_system_(Jamaican)
I'm going to venture to guess the pair of subwoofers cabinets on their side are being used as a table and aren't otherwise connected. The only amplifier in the photos doesn't have nearly enough power to drive them and it appears to be connected to a small pair of bookshelf speakers above it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44358442
(There could be another amplifier somewhere out of view.)
during our visit to Kyoto last year we noticed dozens of unmarked restaurants/bars while walking to our hotel at night. we saw packed bars through the blinds of houses indistinguishable from any other around them. we wondered if maybe they are coop bars or something? we never intruded because all were unmarked and at capacity
mostly forgot about it until reading this article because there is a lot to take in while visiting Japan from the US
There are "unmarked", membership-only places, but most likely you just didn't see or understand the sign.
Many restaurants and bars are small mom-and-pop places that gain clientele through neighborhood word-of-mouth, and don't invest in advertising.
It all goes back to zoning laws and regulations.
There are two great videos specifically on Japanese zoning and narrow streets:
Life Where I'm From, on zoning: https://youtu.be/wfm2xCKOCNk
Not Just Bikes, narrow streets: https://youtu.be/jlwQ2Y4By0U
And economic viability; can the owner make a living wage with this setup, or do they have other income sources? What is their total cost of living?
That comes with zoning regulations. That coffee shop is illegal in most of North America due to being a commercial place-of-sale (outlawed in many residential areas), too small, and not having off-street parking.
When you're able to operate a place like that, your fixed costs (i.e. rent) are drastically lower and you are able to sell at lower prices because of it. With more housing, your employees don't need high wages to afford a basic apartment.
Yes. Also you can look at falling rates of entrepreneurship in the United States and connect the dots with the article. We have some neighbors who wanted to run a flower shop out of their garage. Can't get business insurance because it's not a separate location - i.e. your home and business cannot be the same place for physical goods.
Issues like that, while perhaps sensible to someone, are barriers toward economic prosperity.
But a new oil change location? Approved, insured, permitted in 5 minutes. Construction done in 2 months.
We're really hellbent on making anything but the new highway to the new Wal-Mart and $60 Starbucks dinner (paid over time of course) for the kids on the way to soccer practice in the Jeep Wagoner illegal.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. It would not pass a health inspection because it doesn't have sanitizable surfaces. The restrooms (if any) are likely not accessible, nor is seating nor is the entrance. Would not pass fire code for a commercial establishment. And probably 50 other things.
Again, goes back to zoning laws.
Housing is the biggest expenditure for people in America and many parts of the world. Housing is cheap is Japan so people can get by on much less.
That's interesting. So at least in this sense Japan seems like an excellent place for one to sell their home and downsize.
That is indeed what's happening. The countryside is emptying out and people are moving to the big cities.
The one country that seems to do housing right and not consider it an investment vehicle. Unlike our depressing situation that is tearing society apart.
That it's considered an investment vehicle is downstream from the rising markets due to tight regulation which limit supply. In Japan what zones exist is standardized across the country and what zone applies to a given area is defined by the government in Tokyo. This prevents local homeowners to lobby for tighter regulation to strangle supply.
>That it's considered an investment vehicle is downstream from the rising markets
That's not what its downstream from, that's restating the same thing in financial terms. What it's actually downstream from is that Japan is a fully urbanized society. The reason why Americans cannot implement this is because houses are their little homesteads and castles, Fukuyama used the term "suburban villager" for this attitude (also prevalent in Greece and Eastern Europe etc.)
Housing is absolutely an investment vehicle in Japan. It's just that Japan has been economically stagnant for 30+ years, bordering on deflation, and anywhere outside of a first- or second-tier city is effectively dying. Couple that with the Japanese cultural distaste for pre-owned housing, and this is the outcome.
If you operate a rental in any area outside of the core of the major cities, you are in the business of charging a huge monthly premium over a property value that is rapidly depreciating to zero. This is fundamentally different than the US.
If you don't have to worry about work requirements for life's necessities along with zoning laws to support them, the economic viability of operating unique, niche establishments goes up.
That said, there are probably 0 employees and long hours involved.
Many small business like this are also run by retirees who want to meet people and bring some value to their community. It's legal to run a small business from a certain percentage of your ground floor in any location in Japan.
It also doesn't have to be your primary source of income. If you can run it from a structure like this you could just operate a cocktail bar on the weekends. Even in the US I know of a small pizza place that offers takeout only on a few days each month and it's operated out of the owners mom's kitchen. Not sure how legal that is and turning that inti a sit-down place would certainly be an issue.
There are specific zoning allowances and health codes for "home bakeries" and that sort of thing (at least in my area).
Yes! Every zoning and housing regulation commission should evaluate every proposal by the question if it enables our cities to be as quirky and wonderful as Japanese cities. If not, it's out!
I generally agree with the sentiment behind this, but like many other things, underneath the zoning issues what it actually actually goes back to is cultural issues. For a large number of other countries you could loosen zoning up and ultimately someone would start operating an abattoir next to an elementary school and it would make the 5 o'clock news and then the city council would throw a bunch of new regulations in and the whole thing would be over.
I hate to even sound like this, I hate the cynicism in my comment, and maybe the answer is to actually just do it and not declare premature defeat, but having watched how other initiatives in my own local area have gone I can't help but feel that we don't have the real secret weapon that works for places like Japan, and makes stuff like Star Trek work outside of all the fancy tech, and that's sufficiently advanced culture to not immediately race this all to the bottom.
The Japanese deal with this by zoning policies being set at a national level. Localities pretty much can decide what part of town the smelly/industrial businesses go, and the rest scales based on population.
The locality will plan where their high-rise/commercial district is, houses on side-streets are can all be triplexes with an option for a low-impact business as in the article, and secondary streets have dedicated businesses.
As an area's population grows the federal zoning allows that bigger buildings can be built - small apartment buildings instead of houses, etc. The locals can't pull-up the ladder behind them and say "no new houses", locking out young people and renters and transplants.
I assume that the problem in the US is more regulatory capture than culture. Starbucks doesn't want you to be able to sell coffee to your neighbors. And your neighbors don't want more housing to be built, because it might affect their home values. I've seen how home owners adamantly oppose these things.
And for decades we've been left with most new housing being built by developers as cheap as possible - clear cutting some space on the outskirts of town and throwing together cookie cutter houses, car dependent and without much of anywhere nearby to socialize. It's a shame that in a country of 330+ million people there's not more variance.
Nuisance-based zoning exists as a solution to this. E.g. you can operate a flower shop but not a noisy arcade. Yet somehow this concept doesn't seem to be able to get a hold.
It doesn't get a hold, because, again, culturally it is very hard for it to take hold. Just like your other response that says "well we should just start enforcing existing laws", the problem is that by the time you get into defining a nuisance in the face of some profit-oriented rules lawyer, or getting bylaw enforcement some breathing room in their workload from the 10000x other calls they have regarding bylaw infractions, you're downstream of the underlying cause and just trying to bandaid things up as best you can. You don't need nuisance based bylaws if people are starting out from a mindset of not wanting to be a nuisance to their neighbors, and Japan probably has bylaw enforcement and its probably really great, but it doesn't just get enforced by magic it gets enforced because they likely have a much smaller workload than exists for bylaw enforcement in my area, and that smaller workload is serviced by a number of people that is probably more sustainable as people generally don't constantly try to oppose any sort of taxes collected and so the department has sufficient funding that isn't at risk of being continually cut every civic election cycle.
On and on up the chain I could go, turning this comment into a wall of text as we work our way up the cause and effect ladder until we ultimately arrive at the things a society values, aka its culture. Its ultimately all downstream of a society and culture that either is constantly looking for a loophole to grab whatever profit there is in a desperate race to the bottom, winner-takes-all struggle, or a society that prizes something different.
Sadly, I think the lack of care for the other, and for social cohesion in Western nations preclude this.
Several years ago our next door neighbor applied for a zoning variance to allow their home to be used as an AirBNB. All was fine for the first month or two, then a graduation party booked it, 20 vehicles show up and parked on all the neighbors yards, loud party late into the night, etc.
All of this was reported for noise violations, parking violations, etc. to both the police and to AirBNB. Neither took any action.
Months later a college fraternity booked this AirBNB for the entire summer. All of the above plus nightly backyard ragers going until 2 AM. Neither the police nor AirBNB did a damn thing about it. We reached out to zoning to see if we could protest the variance after the fact and told no, the only way for the variance to be revoked would be for the police to make so many calls to the house that it is deemed a public nuisance. Except the police won’t show for nuisance calls and even if they did it would take years of this for a hearing to be held which may or may not decide on our favor.
So… as much as I love the idea of the Japanese civic style. I would never give up strict zoning in America for it. People suck.
The home businesses in Japan are supposed to be low-impact. It sounds like the airbnb you mentioned was not.
Japan has a set of regulations for airbnb rentals [0], depending on the size of the living space, whether it is owner-occupied, or is listed for more than half a year. There are sometimes inspections. Neighbors are notified and their complaints are taken seriously. Enforcement has been much more strict since 2018. Something like you mentioned would result in the airbnb license being revoked.
Airbnb spends a lot of money lobbying politicians in the US not to do such things, millions just at the federal level [0].
[0] https://mailmate.jp/blog/japan-airbnb-law
[1] https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/airbnb-inc/summary?id=D0000...
Mh, the obvious solution seems to be to enforce existing laws rather than invent new ones.
The sad artifact of my experience is that I learned first hand the benefit of a stereotypical mafia organization and its extralegal services and their benefits to the otherwise law abiding public.
Policing might be another issue that has become cultural in the US
I think that is part of the reason. Japanese zoning is very liberal and loose compared to the US.
Wonderful quote. Feels like it could have come straight out of a Pynchon novel.
Hah, hilarious. I used to live not far from this place. [1]
I don't know the story behind the structure, but it was a re-purposed storage shed [2] that someone was either subletting or owned outright. Probably the former -- the area is not remote, and is surrounded by new housing. Most likely is that some landowner is making a little bit of cash by renting out the space, and the business owner is exploiting the niche of having a cheap property so near to Nijo castle (a tourist black zone in Kyoto).
Setting aside the aesthetics, the most "Japan" thing about this is that it's possible at all to get a license to run a food establishment, electricity service, etc. in such a marginal space. It would never be allowed in the US.
Secondarily, leaseholder rights in Japan are pretty different than in other parts of the world. It's fairly common, even in major cities, to find underdeveloped, tiny little plots of land where there's a lessee who has a ~perpetual right to the space, independent of the "owner". Landowners will buy and sell the underlying rights to the rental cashflow, almost like a long-term bond, with no hope for redevelopment, and the lessee can independently sell the rental rights [3]. Again, I don't know if that's what is going on here, but it wouldn't surprise me. These kind of situations make it feasible for a business owner to invest in creating a business in what is essentially a potting shed -- one of the major risks would be that no one rationally would want to keep that old building in place in an area of Kyoto that could be more fully developed. But as you can see, this building is completely surrounded by new construction, and has been for many years.
[1] It's here: https://maps.app.goo.gl/3KtWnTAkmatMqN9b6
[2] I could be wrong about this part. The roof is tiled, which is pretty fancy for a shed. My recollection was that it was far too small to ever have been a house, but it's possible that it was originally a section of a larger machiya, which would make sense for the area and the geometry of the lot.
[3] This is sort of like mineral rights or air rights in the US. It's not a totally foreign concept to us, we just don't do it for houses or...shacks.
This streetview gives a better perspective on exactly what is around it -- you have new development in front and behind, and the area immediately to the front of the shop is a dedicated parking area for a nearby business. I suspect that the shop and the parking area are part of the same parcel, owned by the business.
https://www.google.com/maps/@35.0112669,135.7504895,3a,89.9y...
I went to such a small pasta restaurant somewhere in the Gunma Prefecture's countryside. Record player, vacuum tube amplifier, jazz.
I'm down the rabbit hole of trying to find it now. Searching, in Japanese, for restaurants specifically in the Gunma country side that feature jazz, I found instead something else: "Cafe Front Load":
https://blog.goo.ne.jp/azuminojv/e/bbfb2695ee73ee9c27c2e4ba6...
Not the same one. But there is a record player with jazz.
The amp is not tube, but it is exotic for the purpose: a Yamaha PC2002M PA thing that requires 3U racks space.
These jazz vinyl -> record player -> exotic amp -> speakers type restaurants seem to be like mushrooms under the rain in Japan or something?
It may be like trying to find a replacement record needle in a haystack.
As someone who loves coffee as well as the culture around locally owned coffee shops, visiting Tokyo (and to a lesser extent Seoul) this past April was like a dream come true.
When my partner and I travel, we don't do a ton of planning for specifics so if we're in a big city we'll usually pick a neighborhood or 2 for the day and bebop around until we're tired. The start to any day is almost always finding a coffee shop and doing the crossword during our first cup. In Europe depending on the city this can be difficult because a lot of coffee shops just pump out overextracted espresso and then give the option to add water for an americano. There's still tons of amazing cafes in the European cities I've visited. Some really memorable ones are Café Tacuba in Lucerne, Faro in Rome, and Monks Coffee Roasters. in Amsterdam.
In Tokyo, we actually started off with a pretty mediocre coffee because nothing opened before 10 besides a cafe chain, but after we got adjusted we couldn't stop finding great spots. The first day we were going to the national museum and found AOYAMA COFFEE ROASTER in Yanaka. At first the owner was a bit standoffish because we were 2 Americans coming in at the very beginning of the day and I assume she has a lot of bad experiences with tourists, but we started talking after she noticed my portafilter/coffee plant tattoo and had a really great time. For the rest of the week, we walked into shop after shop that had at most 4 or 5 seats with one barista making drinks and each one felt special.
The one that connected me most to this post was the one from our day in Sumida City when we were going to a bunch of small museums (highly recommend the Hokusai museum). We stopped into CHILL OUT COFFEE &...RECORDS and it was one of the coziest coffee experiences I've ever had. The shop is a coffee bar with a couch and a couple of chairs. I forget what kind of cup I had but I remember it being just a really balanced cup with a little bit of berry and chocolate notes. I wish we could've stayed longer but after about 15 minutes a family of tourists with 2 toddlers came in and we figured it was time to go after we finished our drinks.
In Seoul, the shops we visited were all a lot bigger but one thing I couldn't help noticing was that all of the baristas were so deliberate in their movements. This is something that was probably true of folks in shops in general in Tokyo and Seoul, but I noticed it with baristas because I tend to think about it a lot when I'm making drinks at home. You could show me a silhouette of baristas making drinks in Tokyo and some western city and it would be night and day. I feel like that goes a long way in illustrating the differences between eastern and western culture even though we're all making and enjoying the same hot bean water.
Love it. I would have loved to stumble across that on my trip. I also googled for coffee but the only place open early enough near me was 7-11. Most seem to open ar 12pm for some reason. I was slightly out of downtown to the north. But had a similar experience with a restaurant. It didn't look like this and was more conventional but it did feel like we were guests at someone's home rather than a restaurant and the food was fantastic. It felt different to the normal! I've had that experience in London too but it is very uncommon there. I think the true quirk exists in every city but you have to hunt it down more in western cities.
Craft coffee is a luxury item that isn't part of Japanese culture in the same way that it is in the west. In the early morning, when you're a salaryman trying to get to work as fast as possible, you get coffee from a vending machine or convenience store. Craft coffee is something to enjoy leisurely, which is why most specialty coffee shops don't open until much later than we're used to
Thanks. I guessed that. I got downvoted so I assume people think I am complaining. I am not. Just observing and curious as to why they open later I assume there are different rituals and I never found out. Thanks for replying!
This was one of my favorite attributes while visiting Japan. I loved seeing all the small coffee shops and other small businesses, several which were seemingly attached to the owners' homes.
I went to a cafe in Niseko that looked straight out of a ghibli movie. Stacks of older records in the corner, pothos vines draped over window sills. If you know Niseko, you know this is not the vibe at all since the whole town is mostly Australians (who are louder and more boisterous than Americans). I went in there and it was only a few Asian tourists. So peaceful. Then one American came in, and the entire vibe shifted for the worse as he tried talking over me and shouting across the room to the other table. Sigh.
One of my best experiences in life has been walking the back streets of Kyoto in cold winter nights and just checking into a tiny noodle shop for some warm noodles. The whole experience is just so peaceful. Highly recommend just walking the streets behind Nishiki Market.
Tangential, but this is an interesting contrast with the book I am currently reading, The Trouble With Passion: How Searching for Fulfillment at Work Fosters Inequality by Erin A. Cech, which goes on in detail and at length about the downsides of matching passion with work.
Surprised no one's mentioned misuyabari yet... For all your tiny kawaii miniature animal topped needle needs, hidden in a rustic shack in a courtyard in a mall.
Ooh they have a website now! https://misuyabari.com/
It reminded me of the last time I walked into a random little cafe in a strange city and heard some live jazz music. The whole atmosphere was quiet and relaxing. When you are not in a hurry, not thinking about taking pictures or posting on social media, you will really start to "see" the place.
I miss SF in the early 2010s.
- gorgeous 3-seat wine bar inside my laundromat
- hidden sushi restaurant in friends garage
- hole-in-the wall coffee shop with only cushion seats on the floor and $1.50 breakfast sandos, frequented almost exclusively by writing clubs
- corner store with half-stocked shelves, still using a cash register that printed receipts with a mechanical typewriter
This ROCKS
Wabi-sabi spaces are awesome regardless where in the world they are. Portals? Even better. Awesome post.
Biggest thing I miss from Osaka is the vinyl record izakaya that I frequented (I do not remember the name but there are a bunch in the area). Just a little hole in the wall where the owner/baretender/chef/dj would spin whatever the heck he wanted.
Not the same place, but definitely the same vibe:
https://archive.thevinylfactory.com/features/kankodori-karao...
read it twice. woww it linked a casual café moment to local policy and space constraints without making a big bluff out of it. op tells you both what to think and also leaves enough there to connect your own dots, writing is awesome
The way small-scale businesses feel personal and meaningful, like an extension of someone's passion rather than just commerce
Nice, I was there last month! Found it completely by accident.
Kyoto’s probably as bad as Barcelona for overtourism. It’s hard to enjoy Kyoto anymore. Japanese people are just too reserved to protest.
I happen to be visiting Kyoto right now. Anyone know the name of this place
Edit: someone else posted the address in this thread.
How are you finding Kyoto so far? Hope you're enjoying it! I live here and absolutely love the city. Happy to help with recommendations if you're staying a while.
Love it, leaving for Beijing in two more days. We are vegan so our dining options are limited, and my wife and kids haven't been before so we are doing the typical tourist things. My friend is a Buddhist monk that lives here and we have been visiting his sangha the last couple days.
Did you have a recommendation or two for less visited but unique areas we could walk around? Thank you!
Very nice, glad you're having a good time! Have you stumbled upon https://kyotovegan.jp/ yet? Lots of good restaurants on there to check out in your last couple of days.
I really love Shimogamo Shrine and the whole Demachiyanagi Area including over to Ichijoji. It doesn't get too busy and the Demachiyanagi Shotengai shopping street is wonderful to walk up and down and see the interesting stores inside, it's covered too so great for the rainy season! There's a cool cinema in there as well as some fascinating book shops. Queue up for Futaba if you want some traditional Japanese sweets but it might be a long wait.
Also the walk up to Shimogamo Shrine from Demachiyanagi Station is so peaceful, especially during the week. I do sound tours around that area capturing interesting sound with field recorders that I provide. It's a very interesting place to find soundscapes and 'hear' Kyoto instead of just see it! If that sounds interesting: https://ohayo.substack.com/p/kyoto-sound-walks
And if you're into sake there's the Fushimi Sake village which doesn't get too busy and is really nice to just stroll around and visit the shops and museums. There's also a river tour. There's another interesting old school undercover shopping street there as well.
Hope you enjoy your last two days here!
Thank you, this is great. We've already picked some things from the Kyoto vegan list.
The sound walks look amazing! We've got a couple kids so can't do it but I'm gonna send that link to my friends.
That's really kind, thank you! Hope you enjoyed your last couple of days here. Next time you're in Kyoto I recommend Farmoon as a nice place to get some vegan treats, unfortunately they're only open Friday~Sun. Take care!
This is a story about zoning.
As a vintage audio lover, I’m legally obligated to ask what the speakers and amplifier are.
The amp is a Luxman SQ-505X:
https://www.hifido.co.jp/sold/10-50554-58488-00.html?LNG=E
https://hifi-wiki.com/index.php/Luxman_SQ_505X
There's a pair of bookshelf speakers above the Luxman that are probably what it's driving. Very generic looking, those speakers could be almost anything. Maybe Tannoy Revolution R1 based on what appears to be an oval badge below the grill cloth?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/177053328835
The two speakers on their side are subwoofers, likely with JBL drivers, possibly in DIY cabinets. The Luxman can't possibly be driving them (not nearly enough power). The subs may not be functional and the cabinets are just being used as a table?
Here's a similar DIY subwoofer cabinet and drivers for sale:
https://www.hifido.co.jp/sold/16-05245-90998-00.html?LNG=E
The turntable should not be set atop the speakers.
I am bookmarking this for my visit! :D
When are you visiting? I live here and love this city. If you need recommendations of anything to see or do whilst here I'd be more than happy to help.
How was the WiFi?
Probably faster than Starbucks in the US
Blog post like this made me back to 2010 lol
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Beautiful. I think a lot of what makes Japan wonderful in this respect is:
* Poor economic mobility
* Individual compliance with the social contract
* Liberty to run small businesses
* Good land use laws
Perfect mobility is awful because all the capable people get to maximize earnings. The better The Sort (as patio11 calls it) the more capable people move out of doing things with high positive externalities.
> Poor economic mobility
Maybe you mean poor job mobility for office work. Economic mobility as a whole is high enough for whole towns and villages to become desolate as former residents decamp for the cities.
That's not what economic mobility means - it's the ability to move upward (or being forced to move downward) through different income brackets, or more simply from working to middle or middle to upper class. It's not associated with geographic moves; indeed lack of economic mobility is a reason people move, in search of economic opportunity, but often find their increased income consumed by increased living expenses.
romanticizing poverty is a privilege that the poor don't have
I'm not romanticizing it. I'm saying that it's optimal for me that lots of smart conscientious people get limited job opportunities because then they will do small things to excellence rather than pursue personal gain. This is good for me because I get to experience the results of these. The guy who would be a great engineer, quant, or business leader will end up making rice wine and so I get great rice wine. I don't want to be limited like that, though. I want to be sorted into my zone of excellence and then enjoy the positive externalities from the smart and unfairly limited.
i think it is romanticizing poverty. most poor people don't get the opportunity to do anything to excellence. survival takes precedence
I think it is also an inaccurate view of the world that most capable people drop their passions in pursuit of a career and monetary gain. not only that, but talent is multidimensional, and being a great engineer does not imply making great rice wine under different circumstances
poverty, and lack of social mobility, is largely a curse of wasted potential, not a silver lining of talent molded into artisanal goods
That's true. If you're African, your talent goes wasted. If you're British, the smartest guy ends up working on gov.uk for £40k/year. If you're American, the smartest guy ends up a billionaire.
The "more meaning" business is cope because as societies add more ability to excel, people of ability switch into economically rewarding activities at a high rate.
There's a nice middle where you can exploit them for positive externalities. In the past, through religion (many monks were undoubtedly great researchers) and today through a mediocre (but not awful) society.
what kind of conclusion are we drawing from a 2 minutes clip of a cafe here ?
I am using the conversation about a cafe to discuss something that I've known for three decades. This is often the case with people. My father can diagnose a bone and joint injury in minutes and often he can guess at history. "What kind of conclusion are you drawing from five minutes of palpation?"
Not five minutes. Fifty years and five minutes.
Who are "capable" people? Do you think if the cafe owner was born in the US they would be working at Google?
Lots of people in North America work in jobs with positive externalities (teachers, nurses, etc) and they're generally treated like shit compared to 9-5 office workers. I don't think the issue is that the former is group is less capable, they're just not sociopathic resource-collecting robots.