Agreed - a beautiful part of living in Tokyo is that if you're a single young person, you can rent a <$500/mo, 20m2 or smaller apartment in the heart of the cit

Agreed - a beautiful part of living in Tokyo is that if you're a single young person, you can rent a <$500/mo, 20m2 or smaller apartment in the heart of the city; and if you need more house you can rent/buy more house. People typically live in small living spaces, so public spaces become that much more vibrant, since people are mostly out of the home. The USA has next to no choice for those sorts of tradeoffs.