kebosabi

If anything, the laws are usually correlated to "lack of land" and "lack of natural resources."

It's kind of hard to imagine this in the US where we're used to big open spaces, huge parking lots, wide streets, and "drill baby drill" but once you realize that for every question why the Japanese does that, it's usually because "lack of land" and "lack of natural resources."

i.e.: Those garbage trucks are so small!! Answer: Well, you can't really run around huge garbage trucks like we have in those small and narrow streets can you? Lack of land.

i.e.: Well build wider streets then! Answer: Easy enough to say when every bit of scarce land needs to be utilized efficiently for residences and business which tries to fit 1/3 of the US population around the size of California. What are they going to do, force every homeowners and business owners out at gun point to pave wider roads? Again, lack of land.


It may seem uptight, but for a country that has the disadvantage of land and natural resources (the last time they tried to expand their land to gain natural resources, we went to war with them) you have to praise them for doing what they could do within the bounds of those restrictions to become an economic superpower.