[m_mueller]

If you read more favourably you can interpret OP as saying that the 'average' haute cuisine restaurant in Japan is better than the best in NYC. Which to me seems believable - at least the Michelin guide seems to somewhat agree. But I'm aware that I'm running into a no true scotsman fallacy there. Personally I don't have enough experience to say anything about haute cuisine, but I can say with certainty that at the low to mid end, Japan is in a completely different ballgame from the US.

In the US I essentially have a severe discoverability problem - there is great food, but you have to really hunt for it and do research to find it - sites like yelp are no help to me at all, a 5 star rating in the US translates to about a 2 star in Japan on tabelog, i.e. there's not enough resolution. Btw. in Europe the problem is usually the same, so that's not purely an American problem, more like Japan being an exception. There you can condidently walk into any place and get great food with about 70% success rate, and the other 30% is usually still good enough to not bother or even endanger you. A 3 star rating is standard, everything above promises greatness. Also, the accuracy with which Japanese can replicate (and often improve ok) Western food is surprising.

[nemo44x]

The mid-tier is far more consistent in Japan. The tradeoff is it mainly only includes Japanese food. Which is vast and amazing. But in my experience I'd say a "typical" Japanese restaurant is of higher quality than a "typical" Western restaurant. The tradeoff is that you have more variety and acceptance (and embrace) in the West.

Tokyo is better if you have 2 weeks. NYC is better if you have a year. At least today.

[m_mueller]

I don't think mid-tier only includes Japanese. Since at least the 80s it has become common for Japanese to train as chefs, pastry makers, bakers and cheese makers in Europe and NYC. They usually return and open up their own small restaurants in Japan. Tokyo is full of micro restaurants with 12-30 seats that have been started this way and their quality is very often top notch, so much that it is now often cheaper and better to eat certain dishes in Japab rather their original place. For certain things Tokyo has developed enough that Japanese can now learn it there just as well - Napoli Pizza or French pastry are examples. This goes all the way back to Tempura, a Portuguese import.

What is missing is the more exotic stuff. Latin American, Middle Eastern and African cuisines are underrepresented compared to Western megacities.

[nemo44x]

I've only spent limited time in Tokyo and was probably hunting for Japanese specific food so my observation is likely biased by that.

But yeah I think you're touching on my point which is there's just much more breadth in NYC.