So, yeah, Japan, people, politeness, respect, etc... well yeah, it kind of works, but in many situations it's sub-standard.
I'll remind you that this is basically the same attitude that you saw in the entire West up until about ten years ago before smokers became Worse Than Hitler and people stopped caring if they lived in a Nanny State.
Except that most of the facilities are completely inadequate, and you know, when I'm sitting in a non-smoking area and the smoking area is just the table next to me, with no separation whatsoever, well we have a problem. And even when they are vaguely separated, it's through a thin half-sized wall which does not prevent the smoke from moving around. It's THAT ridiculous.
> I'll remind you that this is basically the same attitude that you saw in the entire West up until about ten years ago before smokers became Worse Than Hitler and people stopped caring if they lived in a Nanny State.
Maybe, but in Japan there's no sign of smokers being ostracized at all. They are perfectly tolerated and I don't see many people complaining about them. That's part of the problem.
See second point i.e. "well you're also totally free to not go to that restaurant, you know?"
>That's part of the problem.
I don't think that it is. I don't smoke (aside from the very occasional cigar), but I certainly don't need to ostracize smokers either, and unless they are smoking in a place where it is explicitly forbidden, I don't need to complain about them either.
Yeah, sounds fair and reasonable.
Interesting comparison, given that Hitler was an ardent non-smoker and the Nazis instituted one of the first public anti-tobacco campaigns:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tobacco_movement_in_Nazi_G...
That's probably why there hasn't been that many successful startups in Japan when there's a population of over 100mm ppl.
And just for fun (because I like the story), according to the Wikipedia article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soichiro_Honda, Mr. Honda had a little "startup" going in elementary school:
"Honda was not interested in traditional education, his school handed grade reports to the children, but required that it will be returned stamped with the family seal, to make sure that a parent had seen it. Soichiro created a stamp to forge his family seal out of a used rubber bicycle pedal cover. The fraud was soon discovered when Honda started to make forged stamps for other children. Honda did not realize that the stamp had to be mirror-imaged. His family name 本田 was symmetrical when written vertically, so it did not cause a problem, but some of other children's family names were not."
I'm trying to see whether my hypothesis that "country with successful startups" correlates with "country where the potential startup demographic is likely to be exposed to Silicon Valley ideas" holds up.
The article paints a little bit of a rosy picture regarding people and their trash. I do often take home my trash so that it can be properly disposed of (the city picks up different kinds of trash on different days, for proper disposal or recycling), but I do this somewhat reluctantly. Who wants to carry around trash? And sometimes, if I'm lazy, I put the trash into the outside trash bins of whatever convenience store happens to be nearby. In fact, I think the now ubiquitous presence of convenience stores goes a long way to explain why there are very few public trash cans.
While most people here do not litter, there is a small percentage who do, either regularly or because they're drunk and have lost their sense of social responsibility. But there's always a group of volunteers (often senior citizens) who clean things up every morning. Also, the well-heeled routes are often in front of stores or restaurants, and it's not surprising that someone will be cleaning up in front.
But overall, there is very little littering.