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Tokyo: A big city that is also pleasant to live in

economist.com

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Re: Tokyo: A big city that is also pleasant to live in

#221

Post by lotsofpulp »

scruple wrote: post #209
ripe wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forget about the emissions issue, I just hate driving and having to depend on its supporting infrastructure (repair shops, gas stations, insurance...) for my day-to-day needs. I live in a US suburb. Can't even get a sandwich or buy milk or see someone without strapping myself into my fucking car. This is no way to live. If I could, I'd give up ever having to drive again in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, here we have few…

> I live in a US suburb. Can't even get a sandwich or buy milk or see someone without strapping myself into my fucking car. This is no way to live. Where I live has walkability by accident but the car infrastructure is so massive here, to support as many (probably more, TBH) employees who commute to our area for work as there are people who live here, that it destroys your ability to walk anywhere quickly . The stree…

I consider an area unwalkable once an intersection 5 or more lanes wide appears.

Re: Tokyo: A big city that is also pleasant to live in

#222

Post by MarkSweep »

deltaonefour wrote: post #4

I thought about getting a job there as a dev. However certain things like culture, low pay, the language, and making new friends has held me back. I really loved the city when I visited a couple years back. Does anyone live in Japan as a dev and not really know how to speak japanese? How has the experience been?

Just as an existence proof, I interviewed for a team at Apple in Tokyo. The job was all in English and the team members had varying levels of Japanese language ability. I did not get far enough in the interview process to discuss comp.

Re: Tokyo: A big city that is also pleasant to live in

#223

Post by ghaff »

brabel wrote: post #183
bedobi wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Often, trains and subways will straight up not run because "there were leaves or snow on the tracks" or whatever. Like, OK? No other city I've ever lived has had that problem, lol? (let alone that often! it happens all the time) Punctuality is pretty bad, which wouldn't be a problem if frequency was good, but it's not, so... It can be pretty unsafe and unpleasant. Basically, it's "OK" in inner city and immediate surr…

Almost every big city has problems with trains running late or being cancelled, I think it's more common than you might think. I live in Stockholm and before the pandemic (when I commuted daily on the pendeltåg and before that, with the roslagsbana) I agree with you it could be pretty bad (there were several days where they simply closed off the trains and everyone had to squeeze into much smaller replacement buses,…

There are almost certainly very few cities in the world (if any) where residents who need to use public transit day in and day out think it's a consistently great experience.

Re: Tokyo: A big city that is also pleasant to live in

#224

Post by tsunamifury »

VeninVidiaVicii wrote: post #215
cpursley wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After moving to Europe (and Eastern Europe), I can't really consider those places in the US "cities" and get an uneasy feeling that something is off when I'm back stateside.

Concur totally after living in Sevilla (Spain). US cities - with the exception of New York - are just cookie-cutter strip malls. There’s a fundamental lack of coherence that’s hard to explain.

It’s pretty easy to understand when you realize Americans don’t like eachother. If we liked living together we wouldn’t be so car centric, it’s not like the cars built the cities for us. And we keep getting worse. Small towns I drive through now are full of angry people who seem to want to be left alone. It’s incredibly sad.

We are a selfish and community-less people that enjoy the frontier and adventure more than quaint small towns where people have to get along.

There are advantages but in the long run I hate it. And yes I’ve lived everywhere in America. The few that like the more euro model have to pay a 10x premium to live in SF or NYC.

Re: Tokyo: A big city that is also pleasant to live in

#225

Post by smcl »

MomoXenosaga wrote: post #129
smcl wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These US vs EU cities discussions appear a lot on HN and when I see people lamenting that their European city is too car-centric I always wonder if they mean a) their city is not the public transport utopia people want to believe it is b) their city is completely unlivable without a car Because this is quite important distinction - I suspect that many Europeans want to convey point a) but are potentially being unders…

Public transport is not utopia, yes you can go everywhere but you'll be squeezed in with 50 other people (or worse) in a can.

I regularly go "in a can" (tram) with more than 50 other people and it's really quite comfortable and pleasant.

Re: Tokyo: A big city that is also pleasant to live in

#226

Post by luma »

mrkentutbabi wrote: post #133
88840-8855 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the thing. It's a super great place when you are a tourist. I lived there and I saw the bad sides, too. To keep this amazing tidyness, order, extremely high quality of service, people go to their limits - with low pay and low perspectives. We have these "bad" jobs also here, people in those jobs are half-assing them, are rude or just quit. In Japan, at least from my experience, it's the conservative conformity…

Most of the things you mentioned here is why I like Japan more han the Western world. To be fair, Japan isn’t perfect. But a lot of things make sense for us. Are you a westerner? It seems that your way of thinking is just different than ours. We value things differently. For example, have you ever stopped to consider that maybe Japanese woman prefer to be in traditional role? The western world has a lot of problems t…

> maybe Japanese woman prefer to be in traditional role?

Great, good for them, everything should work out. It's not the women who want to be subservient to men that I'm worried about, it's the ones who don't. Japanese society doesn't leave a lot of room for them and I don't think that's OK.

Re: Tokyo: A big city that is also pleasant to live in

#227

Post by jen20 »

tsunamifury wrote: post #224
VeninVidiaVicii wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Concur totally after living in Sevilla (Spain). US cities - with the exception of New York - are just cookie-cutter strip malls. There’s a fundamental lack of coherence that’s hard to explain.

It’s pretty easy to understand when you realize Americans don’t like eachother. If we liked living together we wouldn’t be so car centric, it’s not like the cars built the cities for us. And we keep getting worse. Small towns I drive through now are full of angry people who seem to want to be left alone. It’s incredibly sad. We are a selfish and community-less people that enjoy the frontier and adventure more than qu…

The north east (unsurprisingly) has many nice small towns, with moderately OK rail connections to big cities, and decent communities. Northern NJ (for example) is full of them. They’re obviously less common as you go west.

Re: Tokyo: A big city that is also pleasant to live in

#228

Post by pakitan »

tsunamifury wrote: post #224
VeninVidiaVicii wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Concur totally after living in Sevilla (Spain). US cities - with the exception of New York - are just cookie-cutter strip malls. There’s a fundamental lack of coherence that’s hard to explain.

It’s pretty easy to understand when you realize Americans don’t like eachother. If we liked living together we wouldn’t be so car centric, it’s not like the cars built the cities for us. And we keep getting worse. Small towns I drive through now are full of angry people who seem to want to be left alone. It’s incredibly sad. We are a selfish and community-less people that enjoy the frontier and adventure more than qu…

> It’s pretty easy to understand when you realize Americans don’t like eachother.

As a general rule, people don't like each other. In places where people live close to one another it's not because they like it but out of some kind of combination between inertia and necessity.

Re: Tokyo: A big city that is also pleasant to live in

#229

Post by eyelidlessness »

mdp2021 wrote: post #110
eyelidlessness wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m gonna laugh my way into the new year with downvotes because I dared to think my city is also pleasant to live in and say so.

You seem to (inexplicably) entail from «Tokyo [is a] big city that is also pleasant to live in» a number of assumed ideas and unduly conclusions. TFA: > [...] Tokyo is now the world’s largest city, with 37m residents in the metropolitan area and 14m in the city proper. It is also one of the world’s most liveable, with punctual public transport, safe neighbourhoods, clean streets and more restaurants and Michelin star…

The title is The big city that is also pleasant to live in, which seems to pretty clearly imply that others are not. The title on HN last night was Tokio: the big city that is also pleasant to live in, which seems like a moderately reasonable edit by OP, but certainly emphasized my perception of that implication. The title has since been edited to be less accurate but, hey yeah, maybe more representative of the article’s content.

There is a lot of anti-urban content out there and I’m fairly used to people who don’t live in mine maligning it anyhow. So yeah, I saw the title and took it to be that with a twist. And I read far too much of that already so I didn’t read further.

Re: Tokyo: A big city that is also pleasant to live in

#230

Post by ausbah »

mrkentutbabi wrote: post #133
88840-8855 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the thing. It's a super great place when you are a tourist. I lived there and I saw the bad sides, too. To keep this amazing tidyness, order, extremely high quality of service, people go to their limits - with low pay and low perspectives. We have these "bad" jobs also here, people in those jobs are half-assing them, are rude or just quit. In Japan, at least from my experience, it's the conservative conformity…

Most of the things you mentioned here is why I like Japan more han the Western world. To be fair, Japan isn’t perfect. But a lot of things make sense for us. Are you a westerner? It seems that your way of thinking is just different than ours. We value things differently. For example, have you ever stopped to consider that maybe Japanese woman prefer to be in traditional role? The western world has a lot of problems t…

>For example, have you ever stopped to consider that maybe Japanese woman prefer to be in traditional role?

how can you know this for certain?

if Japanese culture writ large is "woman should be homemakers", and most Japanese women become homemakers due to societal pressures of cultural conformity - not ever having the opportunity to freely consider alternatives - is that really a "preference"?

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