> As someone who moved to Japan it's always funny. I think people literally get their impression from Japan solely from neo-Tokyo sci-fi from the 80s.
Yes, I have visited Japan several times, multiple cities. My wife is Japanese.
But don't let that stop you. Please, continue.
I’m sure the total absence of zero emissions vehicle options has absolutely nothing to do with the political influence of the Japanese automotive lobby.
It’s not NA-focused, by the way. The guy lives in the Netherlands. The reason NA cities come up for pillorying so often is because he’s originally from London, Canada, and because of the special historical circumstances that led to cleansheet design-by-car for a huge number of NA towns and cities.
Didn’t seem off-topic to me.
I love aerial photos of megacities like this. But I would say "a sort of denser LA" is understating it a little; each of the small buildings in the Tokyo aerial that are too tiny to make out are probably 5-6 stories at least.
Whereas, an aerial of LA (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/Los_Ange...) shows that very quickly out of the downtown area, the small buildings are in fact single-story single family homes.
As someone who moved to Japan it's always funny. I think people literally get their impression from Japan solely from neo-Tokyo sci-fi from the 80s. The country has taken some of the worst cues from the US.
Many cities like Tokyo are 75% suburban, single home, it's in fact the largest suburban region on the planet. The number of cars in the country is much higher than in the rest of Asia and many cities are extraordinarily sprawlish. From the air Tokyo literally just looks like a sort of denser LA (https://i.redd.it/mghcpc5xvt761.jpg)