Four simple rules behind Japan's most liveable cities • Hacker News Board

Re: Four simple rules behind Japan's most liveable cities

#191

Post by alephnan » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 5:04 AM UTC

enaaem wrote: post #87

f13f1f1f1 wrote: post #8

Rule 1: be filled with Japanese people 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 ow…

Singapore is a multi-culturial society and it is also known to be very safe and clean like Japan. You can definitely make people behave with top down rules, and eventually it just becomes 'culture'.

They commonality is authoritarianism.

Authoritarianism has a bad connotation in Western societies based on individualism.

In Japan, the authority is the group and social norms. In Singapore, it’s the BDFL. This involve restricting individual freedoms for the greater good. This would never work in America.

Re: Four simple rules behind Japan's most liveable cities

#192

Post by testing22321 » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 2:55 PM UTC

dismalaf wrote: post #185

testing22321 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That certainly isn’t the reason I moved here. This whole comment chain exists because way up someone said Canada IS the US, just with metric and people that talk funny. I’m glad we agree that is not the case.

Hopefully you moved here for the nature because that's legit the best part and the only thing we have over other countries IMO.

Canadians pay less for healthcare and get better outcomes than Americans [1]. That’s one of the reasons I live here.

They also have a higher life expectancy. Better maternity leave (my wife recently took 18 months). Better paid time off. Better labor protections (wtf is “at will employment”?). Canada has lower rates of obesity, deaths from treatable conditions, lower rate of mental health disorders, rate of drug abuse, rate of prescription drug use, incarceration rate, rate of assaults, rate of homicides, income inequality, and wealth inequality.

These are all known facts from OECD data, and in my experience, these are the things that shape my quality of life day to day in any given country.

So there are a lot of reasons I continue to choose to live in Canada while holding three passports.

[1] https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2...

Re: Four simple rules behind Japan's most liveable cities

#193

Post by simukappu » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 9:34 AM UTC

inatreecrown2 wrote: post #104

mikhael wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

on tokyo train and subway stations specifically: maybe in the past they weren't accessible, but at least since the olympics, they've become so. i believe they're closing in on 100% now.

Nowhere close to 100%. Even on the Yamanote Line (Tokyo's central loop) you will find stations with stairs only exit A, and one elevator that goes to exit B, leaving you in a part of town where you can't get to A without using stairs outside the station.

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