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This doesn't match my experience. In fact one thing I noticed living in Japan is how much more willing people are to spend money to meet up. Lots of events cost
by socalgal2 1y ago
This doesn't match my experience. In fact one thing I noticed living in Japan is how much more willing people are to spend money to meet up. Lots of events costs 3000-7000 yen. Clubs and bar have a cover charge. People will organize parties where they rent a bar and tell their friends it's 4000 yen each (about $27 currently but was closer to $40) in the past. They'll even have house parties and tell everyone to pitch in 1000-2000 yen. In the states, my experience is even a $5 and people will complain.
The point being it's culture not economics. In fact Japanese generally make less money. IT salaries are in the $50k range. Minimum wage is $7.5 Yet they still go out.
- bapak 1y ago> they still go out It's vastly cheaper to go out in Japan, even if there are more expensive options. Not many cheap hangout options in a lot of places.
- dfxm12 1y agoThis is more a function of dense population centers. Having lived in many places, I went out more in the denser areas. There are more options and they are all up and down the price spectrum. In sparse areas, going to the same few options over and over again isn't fun, and they tend to be more expensive, maybe due to lack of competition.
- armada651 1y agoIt's a result of mix-use neighborhoods. In Tokyo your house is usually in the middle of a neighborhood that includes restaurants, shops and other businesses rather than a suburb completely devoid of everything except single-family homes.
- Den_VR 1y agoThis is a big part of it. Or more generally, zoning and the cost of housing (now investments) is behind many socioeconomic issues in 2025.
- Gud 1y agoDon't underestimate the lack of functioning public transport. I always considered trains, tram slow teleporters. A functional rail network allow the public to move with much less restraint. Think about it. A highly car dependent society which much of the world unfortunately still is, will make going to 3rd places much less attractive. Easier to sit at home, doom scroll and watch Netflix. Inter city trains should run at least every half hour, reliably.
- fxtentacle 1y agoFully agree. The MRT in Singapore means you can invite people for a drinking party pretty much anywhere and you know that they'll all be able to attend both cheaply and safely.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- immibis 1y agoVery importantly, with public transport, you don't have to lug this huge metal box around with you, remember where it is, and be sober enough to safely operate it. You can just go where you like, and if you want to go somewhere else, sure it might not be the strictly fastest option, but it sure is convenient. You can go from A to B to C to D to A without having to go back to B to grab your elephant box and bring it to D.
- Ccline21 1y ago[dead]
- Barrin92 1y ago>Not many cheap hangout options in a lot of places. When I stayed in the US for a while, I'm from Germany, what I noticed was is that there's an extreme "upward striverism" when it comes to going out. In most places I stayed you could find dirt cheap bars and clubs (although maybe clubbing overall in the US is worse), but people in their 20s and 30s just seemed to be reluctant to go in a way they're not in Europe or Japan. I noticed it more with Gen Z than with American millennials, there seems to be an extreme Great Gatsby-ish fake richness.
- tokioyoyo 1y agoA bartender in Copenhagen had a long rant about “nowadays, kids look at themselves as brands”, and it’s been stuck in my head. I’m not even that old, but noticed more people think how everything is “cringe”, and wouldn’t want to be seen while doing that activity. It’s an eventual conclusion of everything having cameras, and thinking of being caught in a TikTok drama. This also tracks how most of the kids nowadays want to become a YouTuber. Which is, basically, being their own brands.
- nkrisc 1y agoI’m painting with a broad brush here, and there are certainly exceptions, but in my experience what you described has resulted in the only people left patronizing those dirt cheap bars being people who don’t make for good company and not always very pleasant to be around. Which then feeds back into the original issue. On the other hand those kinds of bars tend to be pretty enjoyable in neighborhoods that are above poverty-stricken but not yet gentrified. Basically a working class neighborhood of old, which rarely exist anymore - or not for long.
- dv_dt 1y agoJapan averages shorter working hours than the US though - so they literally have more time to go out.
- jama211 1y agoThis is NOT true in practice, unpaid overtime is insane and people’s actual work hours are way longer in Japan
- dv_dt 1y agoSo all the statistics are wrong?
- decimalenough 1y agoTo some degree yes, since they don't reflect unpaid overtime, much less de facto overtime (the boss is going out drinking until 1AM, so we're all going out drinking until 1 AM).
- b112 1y agoI was aware of this particular hidden data, but this thread made me think. How much is missing from our own historical data? Things understood in the day, but not now, rendering stats less translateable.
- LightBug1 1y agoSarariman say yes.
- idiotsecant 1y agoWow that is possibly the most wildly inaccurate thing I've read in a while.
- rcarr 1y agoOut of all developed nations, Japan is probably the one least affected by housing pricing in the world seeing as though Japanese housing depreciates rather than appreciates over time. Rent prices in America are a staggering 177.4% more expensive than Japan[1]. Ever increasing house prices, caused by the underlying power imbalance between capital and labour, is the root of all evil in the Anglosphere. It will not stop until wages are restored to pre financial crisis levels and assets and wealth are taxed at a level equal to or higher than work. Until that happens, the wealthy will continue to squeeze everybody else out of a life. [1]: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_result.jsp?country1=Japan&country2=United+States https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_resu...
- danlugo92 1y agoWho would have thought that when you don't artificially limit housing supply people can actually afford it! Lots of examples in Latam as well.
- modo_mario 1y agoNot keeping population increasing for as long as you can with migration helps too People will buffer their prices up often even trough stagnating purchasing power or dips due to construction when land isn't made anymore and the gov will make sure demand keeps growing lest it affect the lines.
- kazinator 1y ago[flagged]
- matheusmoreira 1y agoThey also resist having children so they will not be resisting immigration for long.
- eastbound 1y agoWhy ever would you compare children and immigration? I love my parents and I’d have solidarity for my country fellows (France here). Immigrants don’t generally earn much, let alone work legally and pay taxes. They are not paying our retirement. They require doctors and produce our “medical deserts” (the name we use in France where social security fails because of lack of practicians). They also wouldn’t fight for us if, say, Islam invaded us — in fact they are fighting full-force against us here. Immigrants are not de-facto children. They do not love us, and no-one asks them this question on the path to immigration.
- mlinhares 1y agoI think a lot of this conversation is centered in the US, most other countries haven't been through a suburbanization at the rate and size the US has gone through. It is very easy for you to be disconnected from reality living in the suburbs in florida (where I live, for instance) than it is to do the same in a city like Barcelona or São Paulo. I don't know of any other country were living in the burbs is desirable, everyone wants to be close to where the action and the businesses are.
- bitexploder 1y agoNot to pick nits but what is “reality”? How do suburbs disconnect one from it?
- mlinhares 1y agoYou drive everywhere, so it's optimized for drive-through experiences, so you don't have to interact with people. Third places are hard to find, and when they exist, they're paid (movie theaters, restaurants, bars, museums, gyms) and they're not necessarily good places to make friends. There aren't natural places where you see the same people as the communities are very dispersed, with mostly single-family homes in large lots. So it takes a lot of effort not to be lonely. I've seen many people that moved here from other states/countries and now regret the decision as building community is incredibly hard.
- vel0city 1y ago> Third places are hard to find, and when they exist, they're paid I see this claim a lot but I don't understand it. Can you give me some examples of common third places in other countries that aren't paid that don't exist in US suburbs?
- alwa 1y agoThe front stoop/street/sidewalk where everybody hangs out? The public square? The park? The market—not to buy or sell necessarily, but because everybody’s there? The library? The public pool/baths? The house of worship in walking distance?
- jama211 1y agoJapan is an outlier though
- _qbxi 1y ago> In fact Japanese generally make less money. IT salaries are in the $50k range. Minimum wage is $7.5 Yet they still go out. What's their healthcare like? If something bad happens, do they need to rely on savings to pull through, or does their society have stronger social safety nets that allow them to spend their money with less concern?
- PaulDavisThe1st 1y agoYou know people who regularly say on a weekend evening "Sorry, I can't come, I need to put the $34 I'd have spent into my HSA" ? It's not really about safety nets since most people don't discount (or account) for them (they're in the future). It's about disposable income, and for huge numbers of Americans, that's in short supply due to the exorbitant cost of housing, college education and health insurance & care.
- _qbxi 1y agoI know people who don't want to spend $30 on dinner because they already drained their accounts for minor medical problems, yes.
- PaulDavisThe1st 1y agoThat's precisely what I meant about disposable income. Safety nets in my mind are what kick in after a person has no way to pay for necessary stuff by themselves. Disposable income is what gets cut down by the costs of necessary stuff. Very few people are going to not go to dinner because they are aware that if they become indigent US society will not pay, and thus feel an obligation to save. Lots of people will not go to dinner because they've already had to pay for (... you name it ...)
- _qbxi 1y agoThe first thing I asked about was healthcare. Without the safety net of socialized healthcare, people routinely have to pay for it.
- numpad0 1y ago> Even in a world brimming with easy distractions—TikTok, Pornhub, Candy Crush, Sudoku—people still manage to ... I just don't get this part in the article and GP. Everyone in the developed country has instant access to ice cream. We don't say "people manage to enjoy $ICE_CREAM despite disgusting abundance of cold desserts". More supply only drives consumption and accelerate consumerism. And I'm replying here because I have relevant, though anecdotal, memory. Social media is detoxifying Japanese communication at an unbelievable pace over the past decade or two. Japanese lack of social skills and proficiency in verbal abuse used to be otherworldly. Little Sgt. Hartman was just ubiquitous. Not nearly as much as it used to be. All while mobile televisions, gambling, pornography etc had grown massively, which implies, though not proves, causality. How is that relationship between those supposed to be a "despite"? It just doesn't make any sense. Doing more is learning more.
- CobrastanJorji 1y agoOnly slightly related, but I've just found out about Japanese bars nomihodai, or "all you can drink for 2 hours" pricing scheme, and I'm flabbergasted by it. It sounds like it'd lead to incredibly dangerous behavior. I wonder if there's some Japanese cultural thing that makes it safer than it sounds.
- bccdee 1y agoJapan indeed does have a cultural thing related to that. It's called "binge drinking." Japan has a really bad drinking culture, or so I've been led to believe.