I have started to believe it is about more than traditional or pop culture, more than the exchange rate, more than the charm of city and countryside. It's because Japan offers a different and more comforting take on what a modern society can be. You touch on this at the end, but let me go into a little more detail.
Consider that Japan missed many major consumer-facing tech trends of the 21st century -- it failed to lead in the social media, freemium gaming, alogrithmic curation, or AI spaces. In many ways, it feels like a place time stopped. Yet it doesn't feel backwards. Quite the contrary: it feels in many ways a sane, calm alternative to the West, and America in particular, where "disruption" might as well be on the dollar bill at this point. I write about this at more length here: https://blog.pureinventionbook.com/p/super-galapagos
Japan *seems* like a rich, modern country that froze in the year 2000 - before the world went crazy after 9/11 with terrorism, wars, recessions, totally out of control oligarchy, and social media madness. No wonder people love it so much.
Great article. One more thing for me personally -- Japan is also extremely affordable, especially for the quality of goods or services received. This is of course major function of the depreciation of the Japanese yen, but it still has the effect of making Japan accessible to a huge swathe of the global population in a way that New York, London etc is not (especially in terms of the quality of amenities received -- just compare a $300/night hotel in New York with a hotel half the price in Tokyo)
Not only hotels, but restaurants and supermarkets are very affordable. You can go to a ramen restaurant and get a tonkotsu ramen, draft beer and gyoza set for ¥1000 (under $7) with tax and (no) tip and it will be better than what you get in expensive American ramen shops. In supermarkets, the sashimi and sushi packs are fresher and more varied than you could get in most US Japanese restaurants at less than a quarter the price. And if you show up in the evening, most will be on sale for half price, because unlike US groceries they wouldn’t dare sell day old sushi. And at convenience stores, an onigiri 🍙 or tamago sando (egg salad sandwich) are always good and less than $3. I hear Seven Eleven is trying this out in some NYC locations, but at double the price.
I visited Japan, NZ and SK within a year and although Japan is cheaper than NYC, it’s definitely the most expensive place among the three. I stayed in similar starred hotels.
“…tourism is rapidly dispelling the previously common stereotype of Japan as a closed-off, xenophobic country. Foreigners can now see for themselves how open, free, friendly, and welcoming of a country Japan actually is”. Sadly I think this is increasingly being challenged. I’ve spent much of the past two decades in Japan and in the past couple of years I constantly overhear xenophobic comments and complaints about the number of foreigners in the country. Perhaps surprisingly, and consistent with voting patterns in the recent election (particularly support for the anti-foreigner Sanseito party) these comments are more likely to come from people in their 20s and 30s than from older people. Declines in various measures, including the number of people studying abroad, learning English or holding a current passport also suggest that interest in the outside world is declining.
Where are you noticing this? I have lived in Tokyo for the last 20 years, have a pretty even split between Japanese and foreign friends, and I have not felt any uptick in negativity towards foreign workers or even tourists, except in the broadest possible terms.
I’m not doubting it exists. Sanseito is proof of that (though at the last rally of theirs I saw in front of Shinjuku Station, I saw many Japanese counter protesters as well.)
I’m just curious where you are picking this sort of thing up, and from what sorts of people (online friends? Office workers? Izakaya pals? Fellow hobbyists? Etc)
It comes up in conversation at the office, in the gym, at bars etc. More often when I am the only foreign person there. More likely to happen outside Tokyo, particularly in Kyoto and around Osaka. Increasingly the ire seems to be directed broadly at foreigners (外人 - I try not to wince but I wish people would use 外国人!) and not distinguishing between tourists and foreign residents.
Jeez, sorry to hear that. I have not been called, or even really heard, “gaijin” in some time. I hear “inbound” (tourist) way more frequently. I wonder if this is a city versus countryside thing.
In my personal (admittedly urban) experience locals really seem to differentiate between foreigners who are visiting as tourists versus those who have embedded in society, whether linguistically, culturally, or whatever. I think Japanese ability is particularly key to acceptance as it is such a high context language you can’t really speak it without understanding the society and culture to a certain degree.
Yeah I mean people aren’t referring to me as a gaijin, rather it’s complaining that - for example - Kyoto is infested with foreigners (外人だらけ). Using the term インバウンドspecifically is sophisticated! Must be a level above the people I am hanging out with haha. There is definitely an urban / countryside divide I think.
I haven’t heard any grumbling about foreign workers, although you will hear lots of complaints about tourists crowding out locals, or not following norms (like queuing up for buses or restaurants, or being quiet on trains). Support for the Sansei party has declined and current LDP PM Sanae Takaichi has over 90% approval with under-30 yearolds, and she hasn’t been very harsh against immigrants (especially not like Trump is).
Do you think that if you are in Japan without legal permission they won’t arrest and deport you? If you just mean rhetorically, I can assure you that most Japanese people’s views on things like an ethnically non-Japanese person born in the country who has lived their whole life there still being fundamentally a foreigner, or the difficultly of outsiders properly assimilating to Japanese culture, would put them on the extreme right wing in Europe or America.
Immigration enforcement in Japan is strictly and harshly enforced, but there are not masked and flak vested groups of armed guys in camo chasing people in the streets or raiding factories. And the rhetoric is way toned down, the worst thing anyone complained about Takaichi saying is when she said she heard some tourists were sacred deer in Nara.
I think the Takaichi government is tapping into anti-foreigner sentiment in a way that we haven’t seen from a LDP (自民党) leader for decades. See for example this excellent article from Tobias Harris, biographer of Abe, contrasting Takaichi with her mentor:
Except maybe retail payments. Many shops only take cash, even some grocery stores are cash only but have a machine at each counter that you put coins and bills into. Others only take cash and PayPay which is fine as long as you have a Japanese bank account and phone number. Japan was early with stored payment cards (Suica, although there are many varieties, they are interchangeable) for transit, vending machines as well as stores, and even a few years ago you could just use a credit card at touch gates for the Fukuoka subway, and NYC is just starting that now. But you never know which payment method will be accepted, except at busy metro Seven-Eleven stores whose payment checkout machines handle all types (cash, credit, PayPay, Suica, bank transfer, Apple/Google Pay, and at least some of the Chinese payment apps).
While being highly regarded in terms of soft power is fundamentally gratifying and something no one would object to, I remain skeptical about how much it translates into tangible benefits. After all, anime fans won't pick up guns and fight for us. The economic value of the content industry is not that large compared to manufacturing and finance, is it?
What concerns me, on the other hand, is that the perception of Japan, whether positive or negative, is very often not an analysis of us in reality, but merely a projection of the observer's biases. Having observed the English-speaking internet for the past couple of years, I've noticed that we are idolized among a peculiar (though not hostile, I can't find another adjective) right-wing in the West. I worry that this could provoke a negative backlash. Ultimately, direct contact through tourism might resolve misunderstandings, which has positive potential, but it's also true that overtourism is leading to increased anti-foreigner sentiment (much of what is said about the Sanseito party is comical exaggeration, yet they are still a cause for concern, as a political force to the right of the LDP could establish a foothold in the Diet for the first time).
We are an island nation with no resources and require connection with the world. I hope that the current pro-Japan boom will bring about positive long-term results.
Well, there is at least one anime fan (and cosplayer) from America who is willing to help Japan defend itself, and that is Palmer Luckey who just opened a branch of Anduril in Japan to help establish factories (or modify automobile factories) for building 100% Japanese drones and other advanced AI defense technology so that Japan can defend itself. He was in Tokyo recently showing off the products.
Yes, while I am unsure what the US would do if China invaded Taiwan - and the “strategic ambiguity,” has been a feature, not a bug, in US foreign policy, it is very clear that the United States would defend Japan, if it was attacked.
Frankly, no military can attack Japan without attacking US military assets, in any event, which is a direct attack on the United States.
People buy food products, clothes, electronics, and all kinds of other goods from Japan because they appreciate the culture. It’s not just media and tourism!
I have never been to Japan, but it has always fascinated me, and I too love Japan and want to visit. It's number one on my list. I think the alternative modernity makes a lot of sense. I am also a history buff and have read about Japan. I think one thing that is very appealing is the high level of trust, courtesy, safety, politeness, deference, order and self-discipline that Japanese society seems to exhibit. This is something many Americans seem to long for and would find very refreshing. I think these qualities and the aesthetic beauty of the country, the fastidious gardens and sense of symmetry, spirituality and balance both outwards and inwards with the tea ceremonies and Buddhist/Shinto mentality coupled with the high technology of the nation and in the cities and the tech/sci-fi popular culture is just something that nowhere else on earth offers.
I have always liked their sense of respect - the formal exchange of business cards, the small gifts to honour your visit, the whole concept of manners in your meetings and business relationship, the visit to their favourite Japanese restaurant and then the slow devolution of the formal persona as the sake and Suntory kick in and you hear about how they feel about the long commute and the long hours.
Noah: you didn’t mention that LA is a big weeb city; especially with all of the Dodgers’ Japanese players. I guess you’re upset that the Dodgers are so much better than the Giant’s; I get it…😀
Noah THIS ONE MADE ME SUBSCRIBE due to our shared mystery of why Japanese still do not fully realize how liked Japan is (and how this can change on a dime//priceless)
I was also amused that I told Yomiuri newspaper that they should interview you (when they interviewed me) and Kobayashi san responded “we already did!!” 今後ともよろしくお願い致します。
If you liked this, you’ll love this (Noah reviewed it a while back as well!) I think Japan’s obliviousness to its charm is actually a big part of its charm! It’s authentic. https://www.pureinventionbook.com/
Japan is a homogenous high trust society which has, unlike the west, refrained from sacrificing standards, efficacy and its self-respect on the altar of egalitarianism.
It is a place where modernity has -so far- not meant the State turning against the native core population and pursuing its humiliation and dispossession through anarcho-tyranny, globalism and mass immigration.
I dearly hope that nobody with power and influence in the country listens to you about further opening the country to immigration. It would be a worse mistake than Pearl Habror.
I agree wholeheartedly. We took our first trip to Japan this spring, meeting my cousin and her Japanese husband in Yokohama. All of what you write I found true. One amazing thing for an American is the affordability. Decades of slight deflation and a weak yen make Japan a bargain. Yes, they should make more effort as to multilingual signage but this may come with more tourism. And yes the cities are dense but they are clean and easily manuverable on foot, the flow of a crowded street was amazing, zen? Visit Japan now, it is a gem.
One of your best, Noah! I was travelling to Japan on business 2-3 times a year for 20 years until Feb 2020 and I sadly haven’t been back since. My daughter complains that I don’t get her tshirts from Harajuku anymore. I absolutely love the place and would add days to my trips to walk around and buy synthesizers & audio gear. Too much. Also my Japanese colleagues loved taking me to some of the best restaurants I have ever experienced in Kobe & Osaka - tiny little places with amazing service and stratospheric beef & local delicacies. I love the idea of specialized & focused FDI that can bring tech like software that Japan isn’t strong in to compliment Japanese machining, optics and materials science that they excel in. And of course they have the Toyota Kanban system which creates an incredible and sustainable supply chain with everyone fully participating and profiting. This is something the Chinese have never been able to master because somebody always tries to defect and drive margins to zero. Their birthrate is still an indictment of their treatment of women, but they still have a chance to correct (especially if they can attract female managers & workers from elsewhere).
I lived in Hokkaido in the 90s and fell hard for all the incredible ramen joints, usually holes in the wall seating maybe five or six customers.
Agree that there are many over-hyped ramen restaurants in the US these days that are pretty unremarkable, but Santa Ramen, an unassuming restaurant in a San Mateo strip mall, is pretty fantastic.
I have started to believe it is about more than traditional or pop culture, more than the exchange rate, more than the charm of city and countryside. It's because Japan offers a different and more comforting take on what a modern society can be. You touch on this at the end, but let me go into a little more detail.
Consider that Japan missed many major consumer-facing tech trends of the 21st century -- it failed to lead in the social media, freemium gaming, alogrithmic curation, or AI spaces. In many ways, it feels like a place time stopped. Yet it doesn't feel backwards. Quite the contrary: it feels in many ways a sane, calm alternative to the West, and America in particular, where "disruption" might as well be on the dollar bill at this point. I write about this at more length here: https://blog.pureinventionbook.com/p/super-galapagos
Japan *seems* like a rich, modern country that froze in the year 2000 - before the world went crazy after 9/11 with terrorism, wars, recessions, totally out of control oligarchy, and social media madness. No wonder people love it so much.
Great article. One more thing for me personally -- Japan is also extremely affordable, especially for the quality of goods or services received. This is of course major function of the depreciation of the Japanese yen, but it still has the effect of making Japan accessible to a huge swathe of the global population in a way that New York, London etc is not (especially in terms of the quality of amenities received -- just compare a $300/night hotel in New York with a hotel half the price in Tokyo)
Not only hotels, but restaurants and supermarkets are very affordable. You can go to a ramen restaurant and get a tonkotsu ramen, draft beer and gyoza set for ¥1000 (under $7) with tax and (no) tip and it will be better than what you get in expensive American ramen shops. In supermarkets, the sashimi and sushi packs are fresher and more varied than you could get in most US Japanese restaurants at less than a quarter the price. And if you show up in the evening, most will be on sale for half price, because unlike US groceries they wouldn’t dare sell day old sushi. And at convenience stores, an onigiri 🍙 or tamago sando (egg salad sandwich) are always good and less than $3. I hear Seven Eleven is trying this out in some NYC locations, but at double the price.
I visited Japan, NZ and SK within a year and although Japan is cheaper than NYC, it’s definitely the most expensive place among the three. I stayed in similar starred hotels.
“…tourism is rapidly dispelling the previously common stereotype of Japan as a closed-off, xenophobic country. Foreigners can now see for themselves how open, free, friendly, and welcoming of a country Japan actually is”. Sadly I think this is increasingly being challenged. I’ve spent much of the past two decades in Japan and in the past couple of years I constantly overhear xenophobic comments and complaints about the number of foreigners in the country. Perhaps surprisingly, and consistent with voting patterns in the recent election (particularly support for the anti-foreigner Sanseito party) these comments are more likely to come from people in their 20s and 30s than from older people. Declines in various measures, including the number of people studying abroad, learning English or holding a current passport also suggest that interest in the outside world is declining.
Where are you noticing this? I have lived in Tokyo for the last 20 years, have a pretty even split between Japanese and foreign friends, and I have not felt any uptick in negativity towards foreign workers or even tourists, except in the broadest possible terms.
I’m not doubting it exists. Sanseito is proof of that (though at the last rally of theirs I saw in front of Shinjuku Station, I saw many Japanese counter protesters as well.)
I’m just curious where you are picking this sort of thing up, and from what sorts of people (online friends? Office workers? Izakaya pals? Fellow hobbyists? Etc)
It comes up in conversation at the office, in the gym, at bars etc. More often when I am the only foreign person there. More likely to happen outside Tokyo, particularly in Kyoto and around Osaka. Increasingly the ire seems to be directed broadly at foreigners (外人 - I try not to wince but I wish people would use 外国人!) and not distinguishing between tourists and foreign residents.
Not to mention large family gatherings involving my wife’s family! 😅
Jeez, sorry to hear that. I have not been called, or even really heard, “gaijin” in some time. I hear “inbound” (tourist) way more frequently. I wonder if this is a city versus countryside thing.
In my personal (admittedly urban) experience locals really seem to differentiate between foreigners who are visiting as tourists versus those who have embedded in society, whether linguistically, culturally, or whatever. I think Japanese ability is particularly key to acceptance as it is such a high context language you can’t really speak it without understanding the society and culture to a certain degree.
Yeah I mean people aren’t referring to me as a gaijin, rather it’s complaining that - for example - Kyoto is infested with foreigners (外人だらけ). Using the term インバウンドspecifically is sophisticated! Must be a level above the people I am hanging out with haha. There is definitely an urban / countryside divide I think.
I haven’t heard any grumbling about foreign workers, although you will hear lots of complaints about tourists crowding out locals, or not following norms (like queuing up for buses or restaurants, or being quiet on trains). Support for the Sansei party has declined and current LDP PM Sanae Takaichi has over 90% approval with under-30 yearolds, and she hasn’t been very harsh against immigrants (especially not like Trump is).
> especially not like Trump is
Do you think that if you are in Japan without legal permission they won’t arrest and deport you? If you just mean rhetorically, I can assure you that most Japanese people’s views on things like an ethnically non-Japanese person born in the country who has lived their whole life there still being fundamentally a foreigner, or the difficultly of outsiders properly assimilating to Japanese culture, would put them on the extreme right wing in Europe or America.
Immigration enforcement in Japan is strictly and harshly enforced, but there are not masked and flak vested groups of armed guys in camo chasing people in the streets or raiding factories. And the rhetoric is way toned down, the worst thing anyone complained about Takaichi saying is when she said she heard some tourists were sacred deer in Nara.
https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/don-t-believe-everything-you-read-media-about-japan-s-strong-anti-immigrant
I think the Takaichi government is tapping into anti-foreigner sentiment in a way that we haven’t seen from a LDP (自民党) leader for decades. See for example this excellent article from Tobias Harris, biographer of Abe, contrasting Takaichi with her mentor:
https://asia.nikkei.com/opinion/takaichi-s-japan-first-is-a-retreat-from-abe-s-vision-of-openness
My son described Japan as "everything works the way it's supposed to."
Except maybe retail payments. Many shops only take cash, even some grocery stores are cash only but have a machine at each counter that you put coins and bills into. Others only take cash and PayPay which is fine as long as you have a Japanese bank account and phone number. Japan was early with stored payment cards (Suica, although there are many varieties, they are interchangeable) for transit, vending machines as well as stores, and even a few years ago you could just use a credit card at touch gates for the Fukuoka subway, and NYC is just starting that now. But you never know which payment method will be accepted, except at busy metro Seven-Eleven stores whose payment checkout machines handle all types (cash, credit, PayPay, Suica, bank transfer, Apple/Google Pay, and at least some of the Chinese payment apps).
ソフトパワーの面で高く評価されることは基本的に喜ばしいことで、誰もそれには反対しないでしょうけど、それが現実的な利益にどれくらい繋がるのか依然として懐疑的です。アニメを好きな人たちが我々のために銃を取って戦ってくれるわけではないでしょうから。それにコンテンツ産業の経済的価値は製造業や金融業と比較してそれほど大きくないですよね？
While being highly regarded in terms of soft power is fundamentally gratifying and something no one would object to, I remain skeptical about how much it translates into tangible benefits. After all, anime fans won't pick up guns and fight for us. The economic value of the content industry is not that large compared to manufacturing and finance, is it?
一方で私が懸念しているのは、日本に対する評価は好意的なものであれそうでない場合であれ、結局のところ現実の私たちを分析した結果ではなく、評者のバイアスの投影に過ぎないことが非常に多いことです。ここ二年ほどの間に英語圏のインターネットを観察するようになって、欧米の奇妙な（彼らに敵意はないが、他に形容の仕方がない）右派の間で我々が偶像化されていることに気づきました。このことがよくない反動を引き起こすのではないかと懸念しています。最終的には観光による直接的な接触が誤解を解消する可能性があり、そのことにはポジティブな可能性がありますが、オーバーツーリズムが反外国人感情の高まりを招いていることも事実です（参政党について語られていることはほとんどが滑稽な誇張ですが、それでも彼らは危惧すべき存在です。自民党より右側の政治勢力が国会に初めて定着する可能性がありますから）
What concerns me, on the other hand, is that the perception of Japan, whether positive or negative, is very often not an analysis of us in reality, but merely a projection of the observer's biases. Having observed the English-speaking internet for the past couple of years, I've noticed that we are idolized among a peculiar (though not hostile, I can't find another adjective) right-wing in the West. I worry that this could provoke a negative backlash. Ultimately, direct contact through tourism might resolve misunderstandings, which has positive potential, but it's also true that overtourism is leading to increased anti-foreigner sentiment (much of what is said about the Sanseito party is comical exaggeration, yet they are still a cause for concern, as a political force to the right of the LDP could establish a foothold in the Diet for the first time).
我々は資源のない島国であり、世界との接点を必要としています。今起きている親日ブームが長期的にいい結果をもたらしてくれるといいんですが。
We are an island nation with no resources and require connection with the world. I hope that the current pro-Japan boom will bring about positive long-term results.
Well, there is at least one anime fan (and cosplayer) from America who is willing to help Japan defend itself, and that is Palmer Luckey who just opened a branch of Anduril in Japan to help establish factories (or modify automobile factories) for building 100% Japanese drones and other advanced AI defense technology so that Japan can defend itself. He was in Tokyo recently showing off the products.
https://x.com/tweet_tokyo_web/status/2004200471754654117?s=61
Yes, while I am unsure what the US would do if China invaded Taiwan - and the “strategic ambiguity,” has been a feature, not a bug, in US foreign policy, it is very clear that the United States would defend Japan, if it was attacked.
Frankly, no military can attack Japan without attacking US military assets, in any event, which is a direct attack on the United States.
People buy food products, clothes, electronics, and all kinds of other goods from Japan because they appreciate the culture. It’s not just media and tourism!
Yes, the Japan as "a projection of the observer's biases" goes back to Gilbert & Sullivan's "Mikado". Also, Sondheim's "Pacific Overtures."
And Oscar Wilde, who called Japan a “land of pure invention,”meaning in the minds of his fellow westerners.
I have never been to Japan, but it has always fascinated me, and I too love Japan and want to visit. It's number one on my list. I think the alternative modernity makes a lot of sense. I am also a history buff and have read about Japan. I think one thing that is very appealing is the high level of trust, courtesy, safety, politeness, deference, order and self-discipline that Japanese society seems to exhibit. This is something many Americans seem to long for and would find very refreshing. I think these qualities and the aesthetic beauty of the country, the fastidious gardens and sense of symmetry, spirituality and balance both outwards and inwards with the tea ceremonies and Buddhist/Shinto mentality coupled with the high technology of the nation and in the cities and the tech/sci-fi popular culture is just something that nowhere else on earth offers.
I have always liked their sense of respect - the formal exchange of business cards, the small gifts to honour your visit, the whole concept of manners in your meetings and business relationship, the visit to their favourite Japanese restaurant and then the slow devolution of the formal persona as the sake and Suntory kick in and you hear about how they feel about the long commute and the long hours.
Noah: you didn’t mention that LA is a big weeb city; especially with all of the Dodgers’ Japanese players. I guess you’re upset that the Dodgers are so much better than the Giant’s; I get it…😀
The Dodgers are going to create a whole Mexican-American-Japanese fusion culture before long. It is an incredibly fun time to be a Dodger fan!
I still remember how exciting Nomo-mania was.
Another excellent analysis, Noah -- thank you, and best wishes for health & joy in the New Year!
Great column. To me, traveling to Japan is traversing the largest possible cultural difference while staying in the developed world.
Noah THIS ONE MADE ME SUBSCRIBE due to our shared mystery of why Japanese still do not fully realize how liked Japan is (and how this can change on a dime//priceless)
I was also amused that I told Yomiuri newspaper that they should interview you (when they interviewed me) and Kobayashi san responded “we already did!!” 今後ともよろしくお願い致します。
If you liked this, you’ll love this (Noah reviewed it a while back as well!) I think Japan’s obliviousness to its charm is actually a big part of its charm! It’s authentic. https://www.pureinventionbook.com/
Japan is a homogenous high trust society which has, unlike the west, refrained from sacrificing standards, efficacy and its self-respect on the altar of egalitarianism.
It is a place where modernity has -so far- not meant the State turning against the native core population and pursuing its humiliation and dispossession through anarcho-tyranny, globalism and mass immigration.
I dearly hope that nobody with power and influence in the country listens to you about further opening the country to immigration. It would be a worse mistake than Pearl Habror.
I agree wholeheartedly. We took our first trip to Japan this spring, meeting my cousin and her Japanese husband in Yokohama. All of what you write I found true. One amazing thing for an American is the affordability. Decades of slight deflation and a weak yen make Japan a bargain. Yes, they should make more effort as to multilingual signage but this may come with more tourism. And yes the cities are dense but they are clean and easily manuverable on foot, the flow of a crowded street was amazing, zen? Visit Japan now, it is a gem.
One of your best, Noah! I was travelling to Japan on business 2-3 times a year for 20 years until Feb 2020 and I sadly haven’t been back since. My daughter complains that I don’t get her tshirts from Harajuku anymore. I absolutely love the place and would add days to my trips to walk around and buy synthesizers & audio gear. Too much. Also my Japanese colleagues loved taking me to some of the best restaurants I have ever experienced in Kobe & Osaka - tiny little places with amazing service and stratospheric beef & local delicacies. I love the idea of specialized & focused FDI that can bring tech like software that Japan isn’t strong in to compliment Japanese machining, optics and materials science that they excel in. And of course they have the Toyota Kanban system which creates an incredible and sustainable supply chain with everyone fully participating and profiting. This is something the Chinese have never been able to master because somebody always tries to defect and drive margins to zero. Their birthrate is still an indictment of their treatment of women, but they still have a chance to correct (especially if they can attract female managers & workers from elsewhere).
I lived in Hokkaido in the 90s and fell hard for all the incredible ramen joints, usually holes in the wall seating maybe five or six customers.
Agree that there are many over-hyped ramen restaurants in the US these days that are pretty unremarkable, but Santa Ramen, an unassuming restaurant in a San Mateo strip mall, is pretty fantastic.
I mean Tokyo might be cheaper than NYC or SF when it comes to food, if you go to the country side, it is Really cheap.
We went to Shikoku, went to their most expensive Wagyu restaurant, and walked out with about $100 (for two)!