I actually disagree to an extent. Many smaller towns I've visited in Japan actually are walkable: they have a single train station, and the town around the sta

I actually disagree to an extent. Many smaller towns I've visited in Japan actually are walkable: they have a single train station, and the town around the station can be mostly walked, and easily biked. If you need to go farther out, like to some warehouse or onsen not close to the town, this might be too much, but for most of the locals, they can do most of their trips without a car. But the key here is that the town, while not an urban metropolis with a subway system of course, is still somewhat dense compared to a North American suburb. If we go back in time to North America in the late 1800s, for comparison, it's much the same. People didn't have cars, and while some people had horses, they were expensive and not everyone did. The towns had a railroad station and otherwise were very walkable. There were no parking lots forcing low density because there were no cars. Edit: note that I don't mean to imply that all smaller towns or cities in Japan are like this. The boring towns that are copies of suburban America are places I simply wouldn't visit, because there's absolutely nothing interesting there for a visitor (just like suburban America); the towns I've visited are interesting, cute towns in the mountains that actually attract tourists for some reason (onsen, access to mountain trails, etc.).