Tokyo: A big city that is also pleasant to live in • Hacker News Board

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

#431

Post by post_from_work » Mon, Jan 03, 2022, 1:39 AM UTC

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…

>>>People love to respond that that's too expensive or unworkable or unrealistic or whatever, ignoring that it's actually the status quo that is too expensive, unworkable and unrealisitc

I'd want to see some numbers to support that. What does it cost to provide round-the-clock availability of secure, climate-controlled public transport to every possible location, urban or rural? Bullet trains on standby at 0100hrs to take 1 guy from Osaka to Kanagawa would cost a fortune. In comparison, while PARKING and roads definitely have costs associated with them, the hardware/infrastructure is largely concrete, and inexpensive to maintain when operating below capacity. So 1-2 people can hop in a car and take a road trip at a far lower net/civilization-wide resource expenditure.

Japan has great public transport. Japan also has great cars and a very healthy car community. What part of Japan's transportation approach classifies it as "unworkable and unrealistic" to such an extent that completely banning cars is the optimal solution?

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

#432

Post by post_from_work » Mon, Jan 03, 2022, 1:50 AM UTC

BishopOfTurkey wrote: post #62

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…

I think that there much better approaches to your problem than to just wack a great big car park on the outskirts. For instance if you don’t have a car, the money save from not having a large piece of machinery sitting around most of the time would probably more than make up for a few train tickets. Another option is car share fleets which allow you to split costs and avoid a cost of owning a car. Even with electric…

>>>For instance if you don’t have a car, the money save from not having a large piece of machinery sitting around most of the time would probably more than make up for a few train tickets. Another option is car share fleets which allow you to split costs and avoid a cost of owning a car.

But cars are not only transportation. They are also secure, climate-controlled semi-private spaces. If I leave a nightclub with a woman at 1am, too far from my home to walk there, trains shut down for the night, no taxis available.....

Having extra pocket money to buy train tickets is useless in such scenarios. If I have my own privately-owned vehicle (POV), I can bang the woman in the back seat, in the club parking lot. And I sure as shit don't want to "car share" with anybody ELSE inclined to do so as well!

POV ownership is like having insurance: it's often underutilized but when you REALLY need it for those rare edge cases, it's worth its weight in gold.

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

#433

Post by WaffleIronMaker » Mon, Jan 03, 2022, 4:23 AM UTC

xvilka wrote: post #389

thruway516 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to hear more from people with experience living in Moscow. All of my impressions so far are negative: brutal winters, lawless driving, organized crime - but I think this is due to my relative ignorance. I'm genuinely interested as it's one of the top cities on my travel list

Well, winters are cold, indeed. Normally between -20C and -30C. I wouldn't call that brutal, though. With central heating it's not a big deal, in my opinion. Lawless driving? For sure not true. Organized crime? I don't think it's significantly higher than in other countries/cities. At least the last 10-20 years.

Interesting! Thanks for sharing.

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

#434

Post by supertrope » Mon, Jan 03, 2022, 6:18 AM UTC

voidfunc wrote: post #430

supertrope wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A market with federal intervention in the form of implicitly guaranteed 30 year mortgages and toll free highways.

And that government was created by the same people… your point is?

I understand your point that citizens in a democracy get the government they deserve. Choices are not made in a vacuum. Path dependence can lock us into local maxima. A series of rational reactions can sometimes lead to an irrational result. People complain about energy price volatility, traffic jams, and climate change but are unwilling to plan meaningful change. Short term concerns and lack of easy solutions tilt us into the same old ways of car dependency, restrictive zoning, tax funded and congested highways, parking minimums, and ever higher housing prices.

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

#435

Post by 88840-8855 » Mon, Jan 03, 2022, 6:37 AM UTC

ipiz0618 wrote: post #201

tomp wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All this is clearly against the western values that i often hear quoted when I hear the same people talking about "China". But Japan seems to be ok for them. I think you're jumping to conclusions here. Are people in Japan disappeared for criticizing the government? Do they have their organs harvested / altered for believing the wrong religion? I'm OK with a society with very different defaults than my own. In fact,…

Let me add that Japan also doesn't claim an independent country (Taiwan) as their own territory. And they don't raid new agencies for reporting the truth. These are the things people complain about China, not the traditional culture.

Pure whatabouttism. Japan does have a fair share of territory disputes with Korea, Russia, the Philippines, China.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_disputes_of_Japa...

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

#436

Post by 88840-8855 » Mon, Jan 03, 2022, 6:41 AM UTC

Seb-C wrote: post #315

bigthymer wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pedophilia was normalized for a very long time Care to explain more to a foreigner? How/when did it stop being normalized?

I often read people mentioning this ridiculous affirmation about pedophilia in Japan, but I'm still not sure where it comes from.

There’s a street in Tokyo known as "JK alley", or "schoolgirl alley", from the Japanese Joshi Kosei, meaning high school girl. There, teenagers in school uniform sell their time to passers-by, while their minders hover in the background. Men pay to hold hands, go for a walk or have a cup of coffee with the girls. Some even pay to sleep on a girl's lap. This is all legitimate, above board and legal. Japan is also home to 300 "JK cafes", where adult men pay to hang out with underage girls (the age of consent in Japan is 18).

Until 2014 child pornography was legal to own in Japan. The law has changed, but the sexualisation of minors continues. "Chaku Ero", which means "erotically clothed" is a kind of soft porn - it doesn’t involve nudity, but it can get very, very close and is often overtly sexual.

Questions?

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

#437

Post by hattori31 » Mon, Jan 03, 2022, 7:39 AM UTC

rootsudo wrote: post #71

kstenerud wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't speak Japanese when I first moved there. In larger cities (especially Tokyo), there are plenty of people who speak English, so it's generally not a huge problem (although you'll find things easier if you do speak the language). The biggest issues are crowding and racism. Don't expect to get into any role of importance, and don't freak out when you hear "gaijin dame" (no foreigners allowed) in some places, or…

100% AGree don't learn Japanese from another gender, you will sound effeminate - if you have some standing in the langauge, then it is totally okay - but then there's another side of the stigma/gaijin hunter that use langauge exchange for dating/making kids. But, yeah, using emi (笑） or ww as a guy is a very huge social gaffe if not used sarcastically. You can use it it, but better with close relationships, like reall…

ww or 笑 is absolutely 100% acceptable as a guy. It has never even crossed my mind and a hundred of people I worked with use it. Dont know where did you get this info.

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

#438

Post by hattori31 » Mon, Jan 03, 2022, 7:42 AM UTC

VRay wrote: post #19

deltaonefour wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I don't mind being an outsider too much. Thanks, this is a good answer.

A lot of the foreigners living in Tokyo misinterpret tiny bits of nothing as hostility and racism I'm a big guy, sometimes people make space for me on the train or whatever. It isn't racism. I'm a scary and weird looking guy too by local standards, it isn't racism when people gawk a little sometimes. People talk to me like a kid after I completely botch some basic phrase The only racist thing that ever happened to me…

Exactly. If you are looking for racism you will find it. If you are looking to get offended you will get offended.

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

#439

Post by bart_spoon » Mon, Jan 03, 2022, 3:05 PM UTC

wffurr wrote: post #115

LAC-Tech wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this is a chicken and egg problem. In many western cities - and I won't name names - the downtown area is not pleasant due to anti-social behaviour. So even when they do make it walkable, I don't want to walk there, I'd rather drive to a suburban mall and reduce my chances of an altercation. Until that's fixed it's a non-starter.

Cities with shittier weather, e.g. in the Northeast or upper Midwest, don’t seem to have this problem as much. Much less antisocial behavior than in California cities, which seem uniquely bad in this respect.

There is far less, yes, but still enough to make walking around the city an unpleasant experience

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

#440

Post by pempem » Mon, Jan 03, 2022, 3:16 PM UTC

tsunamifury wrote: post #399

pempem wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm... fair enough. I have studied this for years and come to the opposite conclusion. Specifically in Geography and Urban and city planning courses. What studies or books lead you to your conclusion?

That people ultimately do what they want. They aren’t brainwashed. Car companies or lobbies don’t build our cities. We build them they way we want them. If we wanted them some other way we would. And most people live in suburban sprawl where they distance themselves from their fellow American — who they don’t particularly like very much.

Womp.