Japan only appears cheap if you earn in USD, GBP, and Euros. For most Japanese households, costs have risen higher than salaries [1][2] and they are now facing inflation due to tourist spending [7][8][9].
It also doesn't help that the median household income in Japan is around $25,000 [3] compared to $83,000 [4] in the US. Even Koreans (who used to be Japan's "Mexicans") now earn more in Korea than in Japan, which is a massive psychological shock in JP.
This is why you've starting seeing the rise of populist far right parties like 参政党 in Japan campaigning on an anti-tourist and anti-foreigner plank - it's overwhelmingly young Japanese (18-34) who are facing the brunt of tourism-induced inflation and a bad job market, and have as such shifted right [5][6]. And mainstream Japanese parties like the LDP have had to shift further right as a result.
[0] - https://www.nippon.com/ja/japan-topics/c14023/
[1] - https://privatebank.jpmorgan.com/apac/en/insights/markets-an...
[2] - https://www.iima.or.jp/docs/newsletter/2025/nl2025.48.pdf
[3] - https://newsdig.tbs.co.jp/articles/mro/2029703?display=1
[4] - https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2025/demo/p60-28...
[5] - https://asia.nikkei.com/opinion/sanseito-brings-far-right-po...
[6] - https://asia.nikkei.com/politics/japan-election/nostalgia-an...
[7] - https://asia.nikkei.com/business/travel-leisure/japan-s-tour...
[8] - https://therobinreport.com/japans-backlash-on-luxury-tourism...
[9] - https://www.princetonpoliticalreview.org/international-news/...
2. The median household income in Japan is significantly below the US ($25,000 [1] versus $83k [2]), let alone other OECD members.
[0] - https://www.ncsl.org/labor-and-employment/state-minimum-wage...
[1] - https://newsdig.tbs.co.jp/articles/mro/2029703?display=1
[2] - https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2025/demo/p60-28...
That's the federal minimum wage. The actual minimum wage, factoring in state and local rates is actually around $12, 65% higher.
https://www.economist.com/content-assets/images/20251122_FNC...
there would be more supply if not for restrictive zoning laws. and more supply = lower prices
How many are homeless?
What does the median worker spend in money and time commuting from somewhere further?
(See what I did there?)
we've built a ton of structures with existing zoning laws when the economy is good, more than we've built during this deregulation paradigm. we stop when the economy or market is bad. very simple concept.
There's also the other turd in California real estate policy: Prop 13.
The annoying part is that we lived 4 houses down from the building. We would never drive there ofc. The other thing is that the parking lot was so small, all spaces could be seen as Handicap accessible.
Instead we rented in a different area and the handicap spaces are significantly further from the building.
Maybe it ended up working out since our company grew and I know that space would not have been big enough.
Germany has the Döner Kebab, it's now about 5-9€, but the have cheaper options available too. Again, hugely popular.
I'm sure most European cities have these.
In Seattle I've seen a ton of smaller spaces become vacant and stay vacant for years because landlords aren't interested in lowering rent prices; they're holding onto the building/land itself because it'll appreciate over time and there's little to no cost to them to hold onto empty space. Roosevelt Square here is a great example of what I'm referring to, because you've got prime restaurant and retail space located right next to public transit that's increasingly going empty.
That might help a little, but you won't notice. Beating such taxes is done with low value businesses. A mattress store is a typical case, good for holding larger spaces with almost no capital cost: a low overhead business used to hold a retail property until values appreciate. Smaller spaces are held with little clothing stores nobody shops at, or wire transfer shops and such. There is a plethora of such operations holding real estate everywhere, barely breaking even or losing modest amounts of money.
It's compelling to imagine there is some brilliant tax fix for every ill, but investors are a lot more agile than tax authorities; they make their living solving these impediments. Handling food is one the costliest ways to hold a commercial property, so that's rarely how its done.
The business model works because when a buyer appears looking for numerous sites for expansion, they can deal with a professional investor group that can close deals in a cinch. This greatly lowers costs, because otherwise said buyer has to employ a small army of expensive people and acquire or develop properties themselves. The buyer pays a premium for the value of foregoing all that. The price covers all the years of expenses; minimum wage labor, taxes, upkeep, and a good deal of profit, after years or even decades of squatting.
Nowhere in any of this is there someone with dreams of $4 lunch bowl shops.
So you, the property owner, end up in a situation where if you lower rent to attract a new tenant, the bank will recalculate your loan, potentially ending in a margin call.
Because you are a heavily leveraged house of cards, a rug pull on a few of these loans could cause a cascade liquidating your commercial inventory. Your business is buy a property, take a loan against it, use that loan to buy a property, etc etc.
Therefore it becomes worth it to carry vacant properties, because they are acting as the stilts holding up your money making properties. The vacancy becomes a cost of doing business, and gets factored into the rent of places that are getting leased.
The current location my office is in, was vacant for 12 years before we signed a lease, owned by a big name commercial real estate firm.
But no, we can't have wealthy people lose some money or the banks take a loss, that'd be terrible. We'll just continue crushing the middle class and poor with high rent costs and empty properties.
Anyway, the main issue here is population density, not labor availability. If there tens or hundreds of thousands of people working and living in a quarter mile radius and average foot traffic was in hundreds or thousands per hour rather than dozens or less it would likely be easy to sell $4 bowls and make a profit - most of the US is vastly less dense and walkable than that though, even in cities.
In the US, few people participate or care about local laws, zoning, and elections, or even understand why participation may be important. In a citizen ballot to determine if we should cap housing construction, 10% of the population voted. 5.1% were in favor of a limit on housing construction, and it passed before later being made illegal by the state. Among those voters, most have rose tinted glasses of better economic times from the past, and want to recreate the past instead of learning from it and using it to make the future better for future residents and businesses.
Most people do not realize how zoning impacts the daily life of everyone in an area, and how it impacts personal finances, which businesses will thrive, and public finances. Where I live, we have an absurd number of chains, and local businesses struggle. Part of this is out of our control, but the part that is (minimum parking requirements, single use zoning, etc) continuously gets upheld against changes that would help local businesses.
I think we need to figure out how to get young people engaged locally. Many young people will protest national or state policies and be engaged at those levels, which is great, but very little time/energy is spent where they could directly see meaningful impact on their lives.
Who is "everyone" in this case?
No, I was not able to vote.
Do you have any clue how privileged you sound here? This is peak "have you tried not being poor" attitude.
Even most long term residents legally entitled to vote don't make the effort.
To your point that so few people actually vote, it doesn’t take much to sway a local election.
I would never to ask to vote at a remote place where I do not live permanently, yet where I even not a citizen?
I'd wager that's a small proportion of almost every city. Most cities will have tourists who are visiting for a few days or weeks, and long term residents who have a permanent address there. The percentage of people living full time in hotels or airbnbs must be tiny. Perhaps in high cost of living cities there's more "hidden homeless" living on couches, but even then it's not going to be "a large part" of a city.
City, not country.
I live in a college town. Why shouldn't student voices be represented, when they are a huge chunk of our community?
Maybe I'm too US focused, and have been accused of that a lot recently, but your views are fundamentally at odds with basic democracy as I see it as a US citizen.
It's pretty debatable if these temporary residents should have the same voting rights as permanent residents, since their interests are going to be at odds with long-term residents. I would not be happy if schools got defunded because university students who are only going to be there for a few years wanted to lower alcohol taxes.
Permanent residency/citizenship being a prerequisite for voting is used as a (very imperfect) screening for this.
Anything less becomes extremely easy to game.
I saw your other comment with regards to the Netherlands. If that’s where you’re located, you only need to have a stable location once. Then you can register. Another person can’t unregister you from there, so you can vote even if you then move to a hotel.
Only question remains is how you want to deal with mail, but there are workarounds for that.
Not serious debate.
This comes directly from a historical British restriction on voting rights that in turn is an artifact of feudalism. https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_2_1s3....
Ancient democracies, including those of Greek city states like Athens, restricted voting to landowners because prior to the invention of the printing press, only aristocrats could understand the issues being voted on.
Eh, a growing set of cranks. The diversity of political opinion in America seems to have exploded over the last decade. Cranks are now serious contenders for power and influence.
Someone renting an apartment and working a job in a community definitely has skin in the game in regards to local tax rates, building regulations, public amenities, etc.
I don't ever find it useful for one side in an argument to say that it's their own truth, and that the other side can't ever understand it.
Don't complain about people not being engaged with local politics if you don't allow them to vote.
With your thinking you are creating a class of subhumans where you enjoy the benefits of their labour but you are not allowing them to vote. Like African Americans in the US not that long ago.
Black Americans are not nomads. We're forced out by them.
Who is going to speak for the people who aren't allowed to vote?
I’m also not expecting to fly to country X, book an airbnb for 6 months or get a summer job, and then just somehow be entitled to vote there.
Allowing popular referendum for everything just invites a particular and usually really dumb level of politics. You can influence a board’s decision and get some or all of what you want.
IMO one of the biggest problems with society is that you have this view that politics is this idea that it’s some sort of magical thing that is done to you. I can get my city councilman on the phone easily. Probably would get a meeting with my state senator in a few days if need be. Just show up and work with people.
People like me go to places with fairly free zoning. The jack boot lickers go to places with restricted zoning. Once one has a majority it just snowballs and pushes harder and harder in the direction it is going, because no one wants to buy/build a house in a place that will flip from the one strategy to the other.
Imagine buying a meal from a restaurant which prides themselves by not meeting the standards of the nearby town's health department.
If there were regulations house would have cost at least double. Because I have a day job and no time for inspectors, nor any trade license.
>Imagine buying a meal from a restaurant which prides themselves by not meeting the standards of the nearby town's health department.
Lol having lived in the third world I've eaten from probably a hundred of these. Very tasty. Not much different than the US where inspector is basically never there so you still must apply all the food sanitation rules in deciding regarding buying food from a vendor.
If you make a 5-seat japaneese-style neighborhood micro-eatery conform to the same cross-contamination standards as a 800-people-per-hour mcdonalds, you're making one of these unprofitable and de-facto illegal.
Yes, lets have health codes. But lets also recognize different risk profiles and encourage all sorts of entrepreneurship. If it's 1-size-fits-all, then the only size is going to be XXL.
Its been a while since I went through a food safety course, but I don't really recall any that would make it impossible for a small shop to achieve. I follow most of the rules I learned in my own kitchen at home. Stuff like don't use the same cutting board and knife between meat and veggies without cleaning in between, don't wear jewelry while prepping, keep things in safe time/temperature constraints, etc.
You're also misreading my comment. I'm not saying they definitely will do a sub-par job, but that its now an option, that they can do it. And given its the cheaper option (up front at least), it probably will happen more often. And especially when it comes to stuff like wiring, where once the walls are all sealed it can be expensive to inspect later, and yet if done improperly may kill your family and destroy most of what you own.
Just like that restaurant I give as an example, its not necessary they definitely will ignore food safety rules, but they sure make an effort and pride them selves to the ability to ignore them whenever they want.
So zoning can turn de jure code requirements into de facto nulled or altered.
In reality building code is how a huge amount of back handed regulation is done. When the powers that be can't make a particular rule, because of other laws, or because of precedent to the contrary, or because the peasants wouldn't stand for it, what they do is they adopt a ridiculous code and then slap a "can be waived at the discretion of board X" on it. This way they can make the thing they don't like a non-starter economically for most people.
In my city you can park a semi trailer as storage. But it counts as a "structure" and because it's not a commercially manufactured shed, car port, stick framed garage or litany of other exemptions you have to go through the "everything else" process which includes all the "normal code shit" that any other non-exempt structure would hav to go through like an engineered foundation and snow loads and all sorts of other stuff that's just inappropriate. They have a similar set of BS they use to prevent DIYers from erecting kit buildings.
Idk exactly what you mean by `major landowner(s)`, but where I live, zoning and permitting is controlled by retired people who own homes and have all the time to show up to 2pm meetings on Tuesdays and demand nothing new get built to "preserve character". They are landowners, but they're certainly not billionaires. The young people who need housing are working and thus can't show up, thus nothing gets built, creating a flywheel of stagnation and price increases.
https://www.denverpost.com/2020/04/21/glendale-election-coro...
Glendale, Colorado is the quintessential example of this. Like 2,000 people live there due to insane gerrymandering, but there are tons of businesses and money moving around. The mayor gives crazy zoning benefits to his wife (strip club and dispensary on the main road, right next to target and chikfila) among other controversy. Dunafon controls the county with the help of other powerful players.
The most powerful weapon the powerful have against the majority of "ordinary people" is to propagate the idea that all this local stuff is boring and ultimately decides nothing. To make people stop caring.
One reason so many local city policies favor the old, is that they're retired and have the time to participate
A smart central planner can act for the shared benefit, they are sensitive to the votes of renters in some other high density area that also can't solve the problem locally etc.
if you want to live there you can pick from more options
developers capture value, but the buildings are there
obviously the usual problem is that the land value goes up, and thus the rent goes up too (because suddenly the neighborhood becomes more desirable - which again is a sign of benefits for those who already live there)
FWIW, it is a learned behavior that voting doesn't change much. It doesn't help when elected officials obviously ignore the will of the people (nationally, see polling data on legalizing, or even at least decriminalizing, marijuana, as one example), or when things just get overturned by someone else. My neighborhood "votes" on zoning, but the vote literally means nothing. The city council has to hear how we voted, but they don't have to take the vote into account.
I get that it's easy to scold people that don't vote, but it is more important that people with power do something to earn our votes. Hold them accountable. They're failing us more than our neighbors who have either been taught that voting doesn't matter especially when sometimes voting laws make it harder than it should be to vote anyway.
So the voters are wrong? You know what's "better" for them, right? Whether they want it or not, right?
> we need to figure out how to get young people engaged locally
Because they are more in line with what you think?
PS
I'm being downvoted - but what is the point of local administrators, except to follow the voters demands? Sure, if you are a local politician, make your case, but local administrators ought to be doing whatever-it-is that people voted for. That's the whole point of voting, as I understand it.
The point is NOT to make people keep voting until they get it right, according to the administratots. That's the wrong way around! The administrators should be enacting whatever the voters want.
It doesn't really matter what I think when 5% of the population are controlling policy that impacts 100% of the population.
> Because they are more in line with what you think?
No, because they will be impacted for a longer period of time, and are less engaged locally.
As much as I'd love to have something like Matsuya in the US, it's just not practical here. I'm surprised it hasn't been talked about yet, but zoning is also a major factor in the spiraling of housing costs.
* optimizations. Some of these restaurants don’t have a counter, or any customer facing staff. Select your meal and pay at a vending machine, get your ticket number, wait for your order to be called. * onsen/community center: it’s entirely feasible to own less things and have fewer sq/ft at home if you can go to your local rec center to shower/spa, watch tv, sit on the couch, eat dinner, hang out with friends, etc. as a tourist my meal+spa+etc was maybe $10? * public transit: a lot of these shops are viable in Tokyo because rails move people en masse quickly
For comparison, even our best-case scenarios for urbanism here in the states (like NYC) have incredibly convoluted zoning rules, which in turn make it impossible to build anything new without intervention from the city/state: https://zola.planninglabs.nyc/about#9.72/40.7125/-73.733
Also, Japan generally has good mass transit throughout their cities, which essentially doesn't exist in the US. Less mass transit -> more cars -> need for parking -> larger buildings with setbacks to include parking -> less density -> less mass transit... Land use and transportation systems in the US have been co-evolved to the present sub-optimal state we have now.
‣ Not Just Bikes: https://youtu.be/jlwQ2Y4By0U
‣ Life Where I'm from: https://youtu.be/wfm2xCKOCNk
It isn’t all zoning laws.
> But the restaurant industry fights to limit food trucks. On average, food trucks must handle 45 separate regulatory procedures and spend $28,276 on associated fees.
Lets napkin-math this. If we assume a food truck has margins at the upper end of the fast-casual industry of 9%, then each $18 burger-and-fries nets 1.62 in profit.
$28,276 / 1.62 = 17,454 burgers-and-fries.
If you were open every day of the year and assume no seasonality, that means your first 49 orders every day go just to regulatory fees.
And that doesn't cover any of the other fees and expenses a food truck might have.
Those are brutal economics. I'm impressed it's only $18!
This looks crazy because it is incorrect. In your premise, that 9% profit margin includes the regulatory costs for a brick and mortar restaurant already. The only way your logic works out is if truck regulations are on average $30k more expensive than a regular building, which they almost certainly are not.
You can’t even begin to do the calculation without knowing the breakdown underlying the profit margin you cite.
2. burrito trucks sell their burritos at the market clearing price for a burrito, which is $18 because most of that burrito truck's competition is brick-and-mortar restaurants with expensive rent because of zoning laws.
Zoning is only one tiny piece of the puzzle.
Guess why the rent is expensive?
Are there $4 lunch bowls there?
The lax zoning laws doesn't mean there are no rules, just that there are no rules preventing you from having an eatery right next to an active oil and gas well right next to a townhouse right next to a liquor store right next to a welding shop.
[0] https://www.houstontx.gov/planning/DevelopRegs/docs_pdfs/par...
$7-9 for bun, and 3.25-5.50 for banh mi
The problem with US or any other country is that too many things that should not be ideological become ideological. So many people would be happy to live in a 1400 sq ft 3 bedroom house over 2500 sq ft single family homes if a lot of other things were provided.
I thought the planning process in UK is even more perilous because of the lack of zoning laws? Everything is up to council review, which basically means vibes based instead of something that's codified.
It's totally normal to have shops, restaurants and houses in the same area, and often on the same street.
Basic pre-packaged sandwiches can be had for under $2.
For about $4.75 you can get a sandwich, pastry, and a latte from just about any of the chain corner shops (Tesco Express etc)
It's not gourmet, but it's a solid affordable option that millions of people eat every day. There's no real equivalent of this in the US sadly.
And, look, I am all for attacking some regulations; but I have to confess the requirement for multiple sinks is going to be far down my list of regulations that have to go. Odd to see it be one of the top mentioned ones, here.
The biggest question, for me, is raised when the complaint is dropped that we spend about an hour in the kitchen. I cannot believe that that is an meaningful number to compare between city and urban/rural living. Which, at large, is a big part of the problem with looking at anything from places like Tokyo. They have density that many in the US just don't understand.
The article even largely acknowledges this by comparing Manhattan pizza shops. A business model that you just can't magically make work in less dense cities.
And sure, we can tackle making places denser. A large hurdle there is that people want both the space that they currently have, along with the benefits of higher density. And that just doesn't work.
Frankly I think alternative laws should be applicable (you don't need to be able seat wheelchair people if you're willing to bring the food to them to-go) since I just think it's not worth losing that efficient density and cost-effectiveness for a tiny tiny fraction of the population.
You can microwave it in 4-6 minutes; ingredients are often flash-frozen, locking in nutrients; and food-safety concerns are addressed at scale, rather than in a hit-or-miss way in a tiny storefront.
So perhaps, instead of advocating for more tiny restaurants that would likely need to skimp on safety considerations, we should be advocating for more microwaves available in grocery and convenience stores, so people can select a frozen meal, heat it up, and be on their way.
There were't any $4 healthy bowls of anything, but there were $2 "red hot beef & bean" (& fake soy filler) burritos which hit the spot if you'd failed to find a way to eat real food...
The problem with the microwave solution, I think, is that pretty much only burritos and pasta can be packaged in a microwavable way that still tastes good? And maybe like a few kinds of vegetable side dishes.
https://www.centraloregonlandwatch.org/neighborhood-commerci...
The city council just had a work session and was quite supportive of the idea.
There were no $4 lunch bowls nearby, but I didn't need that to appreciate that I could walk to six restaurants, two wine shops and three cafes in less than three minutes. It was wonderful.
Yes, a bowl at chipotle in the US might be 2x the price (more, probably) of a Japanese bowl, but it matters if I am getting 2x the calories also.
And there are foods in the US that are technically as cost effective, although maybe not as nutritious, like pizza which they mention, that can be around $1-$3 per slice. (Not my first choice for a lunch, but I could pickup a large 3 topping dominos pizza for $10 and make 3-4 lunches out of it, for example)
The title doesn't capture that, but the issue is not that the US can't produce $4 lunches. It's it can't enable cheap(er) healthy lunches
Nice strawman. How about a $4.59 salad at Carls Jr or Wendy's, or an In-n-out cheeseburger for $4?
potato3732842•2h ago
Every single one of these rules that amounts to death by a thousand cuts preventing these sorts of businesses (as well as many others) will be rabidly defended by many/most if presented in the abstract. That sort of inability to reason about the forest based on what you're doing to the trees is the root problem. And it's a social/ideological/moral one, even if it expresses itself via governments.
It's no more "reasonable in isolation" to peddle rules than it is to justify littering in the park because they don't take effect in isolation. If everyone does it everything goes to crap and we all know it so we don't let anyone justify littering in the park using the effect in isolation.
HPsquared•1h ago
falcor84•1h ago
https://youtu.be/DTPSeeKokdo
throw0101d•1h ago
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...
Analemma_•1h ago
The problem is, that's not really how it works. There are a bunch of regulations made by bureaucrats, but those tend to be the pretty arcane ones which are necessary but aren't adding a lot of cost (think "what color do the flashing lights on radio towers have to be so planes don't crash into them"). And simultaneously, there are a bunch of regulations which are actually driving costs up, but those are the ones either broadly supported by the public, or supported by one particular interest group who will fight tooth-and-nail to keep it because their livelihood or home equity depends on the rent extraction.
To actually cut costs with deregulation, you need to fight ugly political battles often against sympathetic groups (homeowners, doctors, teachers, construction workers etc.), which no politician wants to do, so they instead try to pretend that "bureaucrats" (who could be less sympathetic than bureaucrats?) are to blame.
ak217•1h ago
There is hope. Scott Wiener is a California politician who saw that these problems can't be resolved at the local level and got himself elected to the state legislature. He is smart about how he sets up the battles so he has had very good results incrementally improving California's zoning - and other things - by gradually restricting local zoning authority when it's abused.
We are not yet at the "convenience store at the subdivision corner" stage, but give him time.