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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

#411

Post by supertrope »

danielrpa wrote: post #351
syki wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We Americans are a nation of people who spend the vast majority of our waking hours inside. We go from building to building via car isolated from the world and each other. It’s an enormous waste of land and resources since every building has to have its own parking. Most parking lots at stores sit empty most of the time. It’s unhealthy that we walk so little. It’s unhealthy that we interact so little with those aroun…

The ability to walk in quiet, open spaces with low pollution is one of the top advantages of low density suburbia. Low density suburbia can, and usually has, plenty of walking spaces with a ton of nature around. I lived in multiple suburban neighborhoods and I was always either within a short (and easy) drive to a park or had great walking areas in the neighborhood itself. Contrast with high density, where you have t…

A lot of that pollution is due to cars.

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

#412

Post by tkgally »

Dracophoenix wrote: post #401
tkgally wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically mid-twenties wanderlust. I was planning to stay for maybe a year, supporting myself teaching English, before either going on to another country or returning to the U.S. But as soon as I got here I got a strong urge to learn the language, and I spent the next couple of years studying it intensively. I then starting doing freelance translation work and, over the next few years, gradually settled in both caree…

Did any of your translation work involve anime or video game? How did you fare after the bubble economy burst in the 90s?

> Did any of your translation work involve anime or video game?

No. I translated a wide variety of texts for many different clients, but I was never asked to do any anime, manga, or video games. Not being into those things myself, I didn’t seek that kind of work, either.

I knew quite a few other professional Japanese-to-English translators in the 1990s, and only a couple were doing otaku stuff. I wrote a bit more about this at [1].

> How did you fare after the bubble economy burst in the 90s?

No effect. After the bubble burst, I realized that some of the work I had done in the late 1980s had indeed been “bubbly”—fluffy PR materials for purely domestic companies that had no need for PR in English but were spending their borrowed money on things they didn’t need. But when those jobs disappeared, other work arrived to fill their places. I had as much work as I could handle pretty much continuously until 2005, when I took an academic position.

I knew only one freelance translator who left the business because of the burst bubble. He had been working mainly for real estate developers, and real estate was the sector hardest hit by the downturn. Rather than trying to build up a new slate of clients in another field, he changed careers.

If you have any other questions, feel free to contact me privately. My profile page contains the URL of my website; see the About page.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29576575

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

#413

Post by 88840-8855 »

ciphol wrote: post #333
88840-8855 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't misunderstand me. Maybe I wasn't precise enough with my thoughts. My main point was: Western people are often pro Japan but anti China. If people would apply the same norms, this wouldn't be possible as there is clearly a double standard. My wish is that Western people (i am one of then) stop apply their world view, norms and values to everyone else on this planet. We believe that so many things that def…

My experience is that Western people are generally against the Chinese government, not the Chinese culture. The Chinese government is currently authoritarian, expansionist, and genocidal. Japan's government is none of these things (it was all of them back in WW2, and then it received the same hostility that China's does now).

Well, Western people generally dont know ANYTHING about Chinese culture. Ask them to name 3 pop stars, 3 polititians, 3 Chinese brands, 3 cities (excpet Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong), 3 rivers, 3 philosophers and 3 Chinese concepts.

And YET, they have an opinion on China.

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

#414

Post by amrocha »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #396
amrocha wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cities don't "have" pollution. The pollution is brought there by suburbanites driving their cars into the city, and by car-centric city design.

Um, there are other sources of pollution besides cars...

Cars are the main source of noise pollution and air pollution in cities, nothing else comes to mind. Factories and such were either moved to other continents, or zoning was updated to ban them in population centers. I guess fossil fuel combustion contributes as well, but that's on its way to becoming less of a problem.

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

#415

Post by presentation »

Dracophoenix wrote: post #164
presentation wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This 100%, I measured the volume in my neighborhood in Central Tokyo 5 mins from the nearest station (it’s one of the more popular spots in the city) and it clocks in at 30dB or less. Compared to Manhattan where it’s deafeningly loud all the time. Aside, NYC’s train system is, besides being filthy, unreliable, slow, poorly maintained, and a pain to switch between transit agencies, it’s also unfriendly to anyone who i…

>This 100%, I measured the volume in my neighborhood in Central Tokyo 5 mins from the nearest station (it’s one of the more popular spots in the city) and it clocks in at 30dB or less. Compared to Manhattan where it’s deafeningly loud all the time. Shibuya?

No, but even there if you walked 5 mins from the station towards Ebisu (away from the arterial road), Shinsen, Yoyogi Uehara, or even towards Harajuku on Cat Street it would probably be similarly quiet.

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

#416

Post by xwolfi »

bedobi wrote: post #64
xwolfi wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lived in Paris for years but wanted to go to my native Normandy 90 minutes away by car often, with friends (so train is uneconomical, and whatever): I love car free cities just as much as I love cars, but I feel they always miss the massive parking space at the periphery. Those have to be free one day, and truly understood and desired, so we can sort of mix the intra city metro/bike, the intra regional car, and maybe…

Making cars electric doesn't solve any of the problems with cars though. Cars, no matter the technology, are the problem. I'd much rather get rid of more or less all cars, permanently, period.

I don't get that one. Cars are mostly fine if they don't pollute. They'd just be large bicycles. Why do you think the concept of automated personal transport is "the problem" ?

I think for instance we can't possibly build enough railway and bus network to serve every inch of the territory and it's simply to allow fast speed individual transport to distribute the load. It can be even automated with no pilot control, but it's impossible to schedule-base every location in a city without displacing people, rebuilding cities entirely around specific common transport etc. In Europe and Asia, where we build a lot of cities organically, it seems silly. In the US, where cars are even MORE prevalent to the point cities are built for them rather than humans, it will never disappear.

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

#417

Post by xwolfi »

bedobi wrote: post #162
have_faith wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars create opportunities for working class people that wouldn't exist otherwise. You're advocating for removing mid to long range personal transportation entirely? what's the basis for this? I'm all for city neighbourhoods being less car centric.

Of course you can't stop at simply getting rid of cars and calling it a day, there's countless other things that would have to come with that. Obvious ones include improving public and active transport, but really, fundamental transformation of entire cities to be less like Houston and more like Tokyo and Amsterdam is what's needed. People love to respond that that's too expensive or unworkable or unrealistic or what…

But that's silly. Everyone agrees with you but what if you need to go to your grandparents in the country side village of 200 farmers ? You could build a once-a-day bus line or you could just let people take a non polluting car from a lot outside the city.

Cars are not the problem: it's their aggregation in dense city + their pollution. Remove the pollution, people stop dying, we can then discuss your dream of perfect public transport for optimization's sake.

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

#418

Post by syki »

danielrpa wrote: post #351
syki wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We Americans are a nation of people who spend the vast majority of our waking hours inside. We go from building to building via car isolated from the world and each other. It’s an enormous waste of land and resources since every building has to have its own parking. Most parking lots at stores sit empty most of the time. It’s unhealthy that we walk so little. It’s unhealthy that we interact so little with those aroun…

The ability to walk in quiet, open spaces with low pollution is one of the top advantages of low density suburbia. Low density suburbia can, and usually has, plenty of walking spaces with a ton of nature around. I lived in multiple suburban neighborhoods and I was always either within a short (and easy) drive to a park or had great walking areas in the neighborhood itself. Contrast with high density, where you have t…

I lived in a suburb with lots of walking paths and within walking distance of a grocery store. This is a rarity in the U.S. Even on nice days very few people out and about. It was rare for me to encounter more than one person on a hour long walk. While some suburbs have walking paths (and many do not) my experience is that few take advantage of it.

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

#419

Post by syki »

treis wrote: post #279
addicted wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting all preferences aside, American suburban living is fiscally unsustainable and supported by massive borrowing. That’s one major reason American infrastructure is so bad. Towns have to balance their books, and that means they cannot afford to maintain their infrastructure until the federal government, which is not legally required to balance its books, borrows a ton of money to give away for basic infrastructur…

>Putting all preferences aside, American suburban living is fiscally unsustainable and supported by massive borrowing. This is commonly stated but is not backed up by any real world evidence. Infrastructure costs are on the order of 10-15% of government cost. The cost of government is almost all in paying salaries (and pensions) to employees providing services. Governments that have gotten into fiscal trouble are the…

Paying workers for upkeep and construction of infrastructure is part of the cost of having said infrastructure.

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

#420

Post by tsunamifury »

Kavelach wrote: post #361
tsunamifury wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Far before cars, people left those cities for more space and fewer neighbors. It’s the foundation of our narrative.

Are you sure this is what really happened? The US built cities like any other country on this planet, but the influx of immigrants and people's pursuit of wealth pushed them to settle new lands and establish new population centres. What's more, until not so long ago, US cities looked differently. Then a lot of what was already built got destroyed to build motorways and huge parking lots. If you look at aerial photos…

Am I sure that westward expansion in the 1800s really happened? A lot of people seems to quote a lot of stuff in HN while missing the pretty obvious big picture.

And you are making my point. If we wanted to shift back to carless society we could, others have.

We don’t. Because…

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