Honestly, even though I love the idea of Japan and the idealized vision of Japan that's often presented in the media, I can't help thinking that a lot of this stuff can be found much closer to home in Europe. The BBC didn't need to go all the way to Tokyo - they could find this in pretty much any Spanish city.
I can leave my house at 6 AM and go get fresh bread or baked goods and go sit by the water, or I can leave the house at 7 AM to get groceries if I'm out of something and be back by 7:10.
American cities don't want this because having a huge empty house with a huge empty yard and having to drive 90 minutes to get to work or 30 minutes to get groceries is the American Dream and no one who's been sold this dream wants to believe that there are so many better and more efficient ways to live.
But you can get that in the states, you just need to pay for it, although the prices are something Vancouverites can surely emphasize with. And frankly, Vancouver area has some wicked unhappy commute opportunities as well.
The nice thing about living in China was that it was easy and cheap to live urban.
If we limit this to downtowns, there are several cities in America that are similar (Boston, Seattle, SF, SanDiego, Austin, NYC to name a few).
Worth noting the US does not have a single city in the top 20 worlds most livable. Honolulu is #25, Atlanta gets #35
That tells you something.
Never mind this has been around for decades.
It actually makes perfect sense. In every metric that impacts a persons everyday life the us is almost always dead last among OECD countries. So of course the cites are too.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
Its more likely that they simply value all the convenience they listed over having their own backyard, larger living space, living in a quiet safe neighborhood for kids to run around in, and being surrounded by nature.
I will admit my ignorance here however and acknowledge there are likely myriad other variables at play here that I'm not considering.
You can definitely see affects of the poor economy lately (lots of pawn shops popping up, replacing expensive cafes/restaurants), but housing is still reasonable for now.
Vancouver is great, just wanted to call out the bias and massive overgeneralization in your statement.
Yeah this is precisely the exact opposite of what the article is talking about.
The US does not have a single city in the top 20 worlds most livable for a reason. (Many, actually)
I have a nature area, gym, pharmacy, grocery store, numerous restaurants, bar, and a bunch of other amenities you just listed. I live basically on the rail line so I can get to the rest of the city in 30 minutes (with more of said amenities) and am at the intersection of two major highways which means I have even more travel options. I'm 2 train stops from a smaller downtown which has every botique shop you can imagine.
I do live in a place that was specifically designed for this but these places are designed and aren't that unheard of in US cities. When I lived in the suburbs I had similar options a few minutes walk from my house.
One of the insane aspects of this is it's genuinely easier to deal with foreign countries than other parts of the same country . . . but I digress.
In the last ~20 years Vancouver has almost always been the number one or number two worlds most livable city, so this makes perfect sense.
I’ve spent considerable time in both - seen something around 46 states and all but two provinces and territories. I’m actually an immigrant from a different OECD county.
On the surface, the US and Canada are fairly similar. Once you live and go to work everyday, the differences are stark.
Every single person in Canada has healthcare. Medical bankruptcy does not exist. People are much kinder, much less prone to anger and violence, and happier. There is vastly less crime. People care about the collective good, not just themselves.
The US is a dog eat dog world. Canada is a work together world.
I’d been living and working in the US for 6 months, and came to Canada for the first time. After 30 minutes I felt more at home and happier than I did at any time during six months in the US.
They are NOT the same. Anyone that thinks they are should live in Canada for a few years and see how they feel.
If you're ok waiting 6-18 months for basically everything that's not life threatening.
The reality is that people either suffer in our system or go abroad for medical treatment.
> I’d been living and working in the US for 6 months, and came to Canada for the first time. After 30 minutes I felt more at home and happier than I did at any time during six months in the US.
Of course, you were on vacation. Wait until you find out that the median Canadian income is ~$33k USD and s typical apartment is ~$2500 per month for 2 bedrooms.
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=111002...
I’ve had surgeries, my wife gave birth, plenty of friends have been through the ER and doctors (we mountain bike, ski, snowboard, etc)
Please, please stop making stuff up.
https://thehub.ca/2026/01/21/over-105000-patients-left-canad...
https://www.ctvnews.ca/atlantic/article/4600-atlantic-canadi...
https://www.maplemedglobal.ca/destinations/mexico
https://www.benefitsandpensionsmonitor.com/news/industry-new...
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/article/i-had-started-saying-g...
Yes, it's fine if you fall into a category where care absolutely can't be delayed or it's life threatening.
And before you accuse me of lying, here's the literal fucking CMA saying wait times are too long and worse than peer countries: https://www.cma.ca/healthcare-for-real/why-do-canadians-wait...
For example, both myself and my 2 year old son had to get surgeries considered "elective" in Canada. Both quoted over a year wait time. I went to an EU country got it done in 3 days, got his surgery done in a couple weeks. He's been recovered for half a year and no one even called back yet to schedule his surgery in Canada.
But yes, I guess when he was born they made space for us in the hospital. Of course he ended up getting most of his yearly checkups and vaccines in the EU as well since over there you can get an appointment in a day here you have to book months out.
And before you call me a liar why don't you check one of the thousand sources that corroborate what I say, or at least a couple I put in this comment.
Also, the thing with medical care, it's fine until it's not. I never needed any medical care until I was 39 so of course I thought it was fine.
Edit - let's also not forget that 23,000 patients die waiting for surgery in Canada per year. That's more than the amount of people murdered in the US per year and not per capita (would be equivalent of 200,000+ Americans dying waiting for surgery).
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/article/more-than-23000-canadi...
Is it the best on the world? Clearly not.
Is there lots of room for improvement? You bet, and people like my wife are working hard at it. The Canadian system is vastly better than the us system for the vast majority of people. A system where everyone is covered and there is no concept of medical bankruptcy is obviously better out of the gate.
Also really odd you’ve gone so hard on healthcare when that was just one of the many points that differentiates Canada from the us.
It probably has a lower homicide rate (and a vastly lower vehicular homicide rate) per capita than your 'nice US suburb'.
That same 'nice US suburb' is also, for some reason, packed to the gills with terrified people who have an inexplicable desire to own guns for 'self-defense'. Self-defense from what..?
Having been to quite a number of what I would call 'nice US suburbs', and knowing people from them, a significant fraction of them act like they are living in some lawless Mad Max hellscape. How do you square this circle?
That's a horseload of bullcrap. For a start there are plenty of pickpockets in many spanish cities (not just Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia). Then there are people visiting houses: don't tell me it doesn't happen for I had my house visited by thieves the one time I forgot to put the alarm on (because I had to run to the ER for my daughter was between life and death).
I happen to know both Spain and Japan very well (I've got family in Japan): there's not anywhere near the level of safety you have in Tokyo in spanish cities.
Not even close.
Sometimes our infrastructure and zoning are awkward, and we're too reliant on cars, but I still think there's hope.
They are all in a rush to get home or work or school.
I feel sorry how little time they actually get to do things they want to do on their own schedule.
> The smell of fried croquettes
But yeah, this description matches the city I live in here in France.
The genius of the BBC is to gloss over that in a culture that isn't Japanese these things all easily become negatives.
Who wants the smell of other people's food, maybe from a cuisine you hate? Or new local businesses cannot start because they can't buy property limiting options for consumers? And public transit stops become noise and litter parties.
> Or new local businesses cannot start because they can't buy property limiting options for consumers?
Are a lot of new local businesses starting up in America's suburbs? Is it a problem to have the same shops operating in the community for decades if they serve the community's needs?
Even in Manhattan I saw 'shops' which seemed to have a similar square footage to my bathtub; if there's an opportunity people will find a way.
> And public transit stops become noise and litter parties.
If you have garbage cans at your transit stops and your populace are respectful towards each other then this is also not a problem. If your idea of a transit stop is somehow also some kind of rowdy social event then the problem is not urban planning.
Fundamentally though this is a common American attitude. Look at something that's new and different and say "This would be bad for these reasons", ignoring the fact that dozens of other Western and Eastern countries with dozens of different cultures and behaviors all do these things and it all works out fine.
It's the same as the argument about health care. Socialized medicine would be bad for reasons X, Y, Z, even though if you look at countries which have socialized medicine and a similar standard of living you'll see that not only do those countries not have those problems but also those countries have better health outcomes, longer life expectancy, and more efficient healthcare.
You say that none of this stuff would work in "a culture that isn't Japanese", but what you really mean is that it wouldn't work "in a culture which is American", so maybe that's a good place to start looking for things to change.
Among the other bits of wrongness in your comment this is spectacular. Americans are utterly addicted to novelty.
Japan being a well functioning society is not "new and different".
Get to the bottom of why that is and you'll probably have a good understanding where the problems to address are.
The only people in the background that I could see were people, young and old, travelling to and from school, offices, workplaces and so on.
The video was long and if i were to travel one day to Tokyo i would definitely follow the same route. Fresh air, nature, backstreets, all sorts of engineering and views.
How is it possible that a city of 35M in the heart of Tokyo, he barely passed a few bicycles and people outdoors enjoying life during a trip that went all over the place for hours ?
Is that living ?
As western tourists always seem to find out when they land with their gigantic suitcases, many Tokyo train stations require stairs to enter or exit.
...and we haven't even discussed the fact that riding the train with a wheelchair typically involves reservation of a staff member on each end of the journey, to help you get on and off.
I live here and have eyes. But tell me more about "disinformation."
Tokyo metro's standard for accessibility is to have one route that is accessible from street level to the platform. That's fine, but it's a far cry from every entrance being accessible, or even just ensuring that you don't require staff support to make it through that route. Consider Takadanobaba [1] -- a major transit point that I know well. Yes, it's technically "one route", but just taking into account subway station exits (and not Seibu or JR line transfers, which are harder), it qualifies only because it has a single elevator that goes to ground. Literally every other exit is inaccessible.
[1] https://www.tokyometro.jp/lang_en/station/takadanobaba/index...
(i use a wheelchair.)
Well, first, I'm talking not just about the subway, but all rail lines, which is a higher bar.
Setting that aside, what I meant was what you've inferred -- there's typically one elevator path that will get you out of an "accessible" station. Yes, that (usually) requires one elevator per platform to work at all, but it still leaves most exits inaccessible in the average case.
I started this subthread only by saying that Tokyo is not particularly wheelchair friendly. If you use one, I don't know how you could possibly dispute this. It's a land of staircases, and I've been repeatedly foiled just trying to move heavy luggage.
I grant you that in Japan they will usually bend over backwards to make something work, but I really feel for disabled folks here.
tokyo more broadly: it's improving, but yeah, it's nowhere close to 100%. obviously i won't disagree with you there.
and i didn't mean to come off as too harsh. but i imagined someone reading your comment and being deeply discouraged (as i might have been, many years younger) when in reality tokyo has possibly one of the best and most accessible subway systems in the world.
it's not all roses, but outside of the US, most of the world is not so wheelchair-friendly (in my experience and talking to disabled folks, at least). (and don't get me started on NYC, which is just wheelchair-hostile.)
Fair point. And I should apologize for being a bit snarky in response -- I get prickly when accused of "disinformation".
I admit that I'm used to the US ADA version of things, and that colors my views. But yeah, by the standards of the rest of the world, that's probably a pretty high bar.
> (and don't get me started on NYC, which is just wheelchair-hostile.)
Oh, definitely.
on the staff support: i don't really see any problem here at all. in fact, i think the service that the staff provides is truly excellent. most lines have nearly level train-to-platform gaps, but if i feel like i need a ramp, i can ask the attendant at the gate, and they will arrange for someone to quickly unfold a portable ramp when the train arrives, and for someone to do the same at the destination, exactly where i arrive. (coming from the US, can i imagine this level of service at any US city? uh, yeah, no.)
I get that, and I also don't think they need to plop an elevator at every staircase, but there are so many stations where they could have ramps or some other minor improvement to make more exits accessible. And if the one path drops you on the wrong side of the tracks from your destination, that's often more than a five-minute problem -- my own home station has one elevator on the north side of the tracks, but if your destination is on the south, you must exit, cross a busy intersection, and cross the tracks at grade.
> on the staff support: i don't really see any problem here at all. in fact, i think the service that the staff provides is truly excellent.
I agree. I just made a similar comment on your other response. Compared to many places in the world, they're at least trying.
Before reading the article, I guessed that it would ultimately be about human cooperation. Most discussions about human activities seem to come back to how people work together and respect shared spaces.
I also think this idea extends to environmental problems. In the end, they still boil down to human cooperation. If we want to solve environmental problems, we first have to solve problems of human cooperation. Simply put, to reduce conflict between humans and nature, we must first reduce conflict among humans.
Is that respect ?
If you read through the description, what they talk about is that the culture is built around the idea of the individual being part of something bigger, and that consideration and respect for that something bigger (other people), is core to your own identity.
That's not hard for a lot of cultures, but it's almost impossible for most cultures in the Western hemisphere, and to change it would require a cultural reset that would run against the grain of many things that make those cultures what they are.
If it were possible though - and there are times when certain subcultures had standards of etiquette different to those widely accepted today in the West - it wouldn't need 100% of people to "sign up", just enough to make it ostracising to not conform. And then the outliers would conform.
We do this already: it's OK (albeit illegal), to cycle through a red light where I live, because lots of people do it, but if you were to try and get served ahead of your turn in a pub, you might get into an argument, because nobody does that without expecting a problem.
I feel like half your post is dancing around not saying this.
I'm saying that culture spreads through fear of being ostracized and the cost of not conforming to that culture. This is true in any country. It seems Japan has a "broader" and "firmer" culture that is rooted in respect to others, but it would take some serious effort for a similar culture to take hold in Europe or the US, I think.
A sense of "non conformity" leading to issues is not unique to Japan though, in Europe it is described as a problem with "multiculturalism".
The British (of which I am one), have spent thousands of years stealing the best bits of immigrant culture but seem to have forgotten that (or have been unable to absorb, for whatever reason), for the last ~60 years. That's leading to a rise in far-right sentiment and a growing desire for mono-culturalism. I can see evidence of that in Germany, France and other European nations. I could easily imagine it appearing more in Japan.
Enforcment is a matter of encoding the rules and then applying a carrot and/or stick -- same as any other rule.
It takes humans years to learn how to do this. Entire books are written on the subject. A major medical disorder affecting millions of people includes a persistent difficulty doing this specific thing. Even normal people have to put serious effort into this if they visit a place where societal norms are different from what they're used to.
If it's not complicated, then I'm sure you can write down the rules for some specific situation real quick. Go ahead....
"Put trash in a trashcan and not on the ground"
That wasn't complicated. And took 30seconds. Are there a lot of rules? Of course. Is knowing them all in advance possible? Of course not. Don't confuse that with 'complicated'.
Fine people who litter. Have an ai voice chide people who stand on the wrong side of an escalator. Both simple.
https://myjrpass.com/ja/blog/Escalator_Rules_Japan
> However, each region in Japan has a different side to stand. In Tokyo, people stand on the left side and in Osaka, people stand on the right side.
I'm surprised to find this sentiment on a site filled with computer programmers. The most important and difficult lesson of computer programming is that simple-sounding rules have a lot of details that we take for granted.
I think this way of thinking, being obtuse on purpose to try to win an internet argument (without a prize, no less), is the more unnecessary thing. What point does that argumentation try to prove other than that a hypothetical version of you, as opposed to most humans who live in large cities, are an inflexible idiot?
Most people are not 100% unaware of the context in which they are engaging. We know to apply escalator rules when we're at an escalator. We know to put things in bins when we have things to put in bins. What we don't know, we can learn through observation, reading the atmosphere, and making at least a minimal effort not to showboat our individualism and, apparently, any obtuse refusal to engage with our context.
(By the way, I don't actually think you are an inflexible idiot.)
There are some less obtuse issues with your universal pronouncement. There are escalators where it's too narrow to pass. There's no need nor expectation to stand to one side on these. The same goes for escalators that are so long that nobody's walking up them to accelerate their progress, or when nobody is around, or when it's so crowded nobody's able to pass anyway. And, at least in the places I'm familiar with, it doesn't apply in places where people aren't going to be in a big hurry. Stand right, pass left applies to subway stations but not malls.
Maybe this all seems obvious. Well, go to a tourist-heavy place with escalators and observe how much of this is learned behavior that takes repeated long-term exposure to understand.
Manners are really complicated. The escalator thing is a relatively simple example compared to something like, say, paying for a meal in a restaurant with a group, and it's already pretty deep when you dig into it.
Caving on manners to avoid the "struggle", or rather, caving on manners because one benefits from doing so is just a reflection of how much one values the values. This is simply saying that more often than not we can maintain them, it just might not be worth it to us.
My experience living in an incredibly multi-cultural immigrant dense area, is overwhelmingly "No". People like their "home" cultures (generally they believe its the best), and they tend to carry some degree of resentment for their new society for not recognizing that. It creates endless friction at the edges (whereas core values tend to be pretty similar globally).
Japan doesn't really deal with this at all, and what immigrant ingress they have is usually fueled by people trying to live a Japanese like life.
Some cities in Europe have town-centers in every neighborhood within walkable distance. This is extremely valuable for a livable city.
Getting to work without car requires good public transport. Again, some European cities very good at this.
Cities and any polity or group of people cannot be created by some abstract rules or enforced. You need it to be composed of individuals who are disposed to act harmoniously with each other and have a culture (which is basically a bunch of jigging to aid harmonious interactions, you cannot create top down the manners you don't want people to violate). Everyone acting in their own self-interest ends up creating a harmonious organization because all of their self-interest corresponds such that their self interest is reflected in the good of the whole.
Just as a feedback system, if there is something wrong in a city or organization if the person who encounters it sees it as contrary to their own self interest and is capable of dealing with it themselves they will.
If this internal principle does not exist you rely on top down surveillance and enforcement which is basically delusional if it works will only be through violent enforcement against the people. Again in terms of a feedback system, if the polity is constructed out of a bunch of individuals who have a self-interest that corresponds with the good of the whole, there is no need to propagate that information to some manager. The persons directly involved with it are capable of dealing with it mindful of it's impact on the good of the whole because it's good for them. If you do not have that you would need a system of management, evaluation, and enforcement which basically demands the disruption in question is something easy to communicate and form policies around. Anything that cannot be just cannot be dealt with and the system falls under it's own weight. That's why technocracy is a delusion that is always doomed to fail, if the individual units in a system are unable to deal with aberrations on their own it requires the whole mass of bureaucracy to evaluate, construct policies, enforce etc. That is only capable of handling anything which is understandable to that kind of system, which is a small fraction of actual disruptions.
I appreciate the efforts of people trying to emulate the positives of Japanese cities mimicking the externals of it and enforcing it on other people is the opposite of any actual organic system and itself prohibits the more dynamic system that is required for an actually stable polity. If someone sees a wallet on the street they have to see it as their own self-interest not to steal it. If people do not see themselves as having a shared self-interest with those around them there is no enforcement or rules or policies that can make that polity stable or harmonious.
Seems like the hardly arrest the innocent, even if they didn’t do it
https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/11/04/inquiry-needed-japans-fl...
The BBC forgot - or, as is more likely, refused to mention - rule #0: ensure a homogeneous culture with rather stringent rules around public behaviour.
To the person or persons who flagged this comment, please explain. What is it that got you to flag this comment? If there is one thing Japan is known for it is for having a homogeneous culture with rather stringent rules around public behaviour. Is the truth so hard to accept that it needs flagging? Those Japanese cities without Japanese culture would look totally different and in some ways not nearly as 'liveable', in other ways probably more interesting.
If you don't agree with a comment there is the reply link to let us know. This is a discussion site after all. If you just don't like a comment without being able to put into words why just give it some more thought, the words may come.
Well - the article does not talk about the more recent hostility to gaijin in Japan.
Example (article) from a year ago:
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/09/21/j...
You can find similar articles by other media outlets. Japan has changed - and is changing. I've also noticed this on youtube, e. g. Paolo from Tokyo suddenly praising new restrictive laws. That was a strong indicator that Japan really fundamentally changed here. An old chinese stratagem is to hide the dagger behind the smile: https://www.echineselearning.com/blog/chinese-slang-hide-a-d...
I am not in any way applying that this applies to all japanese as such, of course; but I am more referring here to a trend where things are changing to the worse. Also, cost of living is high and there is an overcrowding problem in many of the cities. Even then I think the only city that would interest me is Tokio.
Its like those people have no life, it seems to be a self imposed volunteer prison.
Work, sleep, work, repeat until you die.