[rgmerk]

Paris, London and New York - the key points of comparison - aren’t exactly known for their spacious housing.

One other point that many of the Tokyo fans don’t acknowledge is how extraordinarily ugly the place is. Sure, it’s clean (more than you can say for New York) but clearly nobody in Tokyo cares about what their house looks like from the outside. And I’ve never seen more miserable public parks in a developed country.

[tkgally]

I’ve been living in Tokyo and Yokohama since 1983 and am as much of a Tokyo fan as they get, and I readily acknowledge how ugly Japanese cities are in general. But after buying a house here twenty-three years ago, and comparing my experience with those of houseowners I know in the U.S., I have started to see some beauty in that ugliness.

Many of the people I know in the U.S. live in attractive neighborhoods full of nice-looking houses and well-kept front yards. While some of that niceness is due to the owners’ own initiative, much is the result of zoning restrictions, homeowner association rules, and the like.

The only zoning restrictions on my house in Yokohama are limits on total floorspace and land coverage and fire and earthquake rules covering building design and materials. I can paint my house any color I want, pile whatever junk I want in my (tiny) yard, and hang whatever laundry I want from the balconies, and no one can or will say anything about it.

As a result of this tolerant, low-regulation regime, the neighborhood I live in is, like most neighborhoods here, an unattractive mish-mash of mismatched houses and apartments in many styles and states of upkeep. If that’s the price of (relative) freedom, I’m happy to pay it.

[franciscop]

I have to agree and disagree :)

First, it's not clean, it's just different way of unclean and only during certain periods of the day. But during too many hours of the day in popular areas it's normal to see literal piles of trash on the street covered in rats, and in the morning with crows.

On the other hand, there's no littering, virtually no homelessness (nor their encampments, etc) and finally no cars on the street, which makes the city look a lot cleaner.

"Nobody in Tokyo cares about what their house looks like from the outside" => completely agree, my pet peeve here is that one of the best towns geographically speaking of Japan is probably the ugliest town I've seen in my life in a 1st world country (Kawaguchiko, with the beautiful lake, lush forest and Fuji San nearby).

"never seen more miserable public parks" again have to agree, the median local park is taken out of a horror movie. Though there are* a bunch of very, very beautiful ones!

[seanmcdirmid]

> On the other hand, there's no littering, virtually no homelessness (nor their encampments, etc) and finally no cars on the street, which makes the city look a lot cleaner.

Last time I visited Tokyo in 2016 there was clearly an encampment at the Ueno park. And that wasn’t the first time I saw an encampment in Japan (visiting Tokyo in 2008 I saw a few in Tokyo and Osaka). However, Japanese homeless encampments are always very clean and well organized. It’s a completely different feel from the states (even if they definitely exist).

[franciscop]

That's why I said virtually; in Tokyo you know where you saw one at some point as a curiosity. In many European cities just walking around aimlessly you have high chances of seeing some homeless people. In SF I had to literally jump over homeless' people stuff to walk down multiple streets in my last visit.

[seanmcdirmid]

I wasn't looking for encampments in Japan but found them anyways. Ueno train station and the park behind it is obviously a high traffic destination. And in Osaka, we were just walking around randomly. Homelessness is common and visible enough that to say it virtually doesn't exist is not really accurate.

[karaokeyoga]

"Tokyo Ueno Station" is a well-received novel written about the homeless population in the adjacent park. https://www.amazon.com/Tokyo-Ueno-Station-Yu-Miri/dp/0593187...

[bluepizza]

> But during too many hours of the day in popular areas it's normal to see literal piles of trash on the street covered in rats, and in the morning with crows.

Apart from the worst parts of Roppongi on a Monday morning, I have never ever seen this.

[franciscop]

Trash days 5~8am, normal days in any place with many restaurants 11pm~8am basically (Shibuya, Ebisu, Shinjuku, Ikebukuro, etc).

[marak830]

That would be more attributed to the multiple day trash picking depending on which type, though right?

I mean Tuesday: burnable waste, wed cardboard, Thurs clothes and Fri other, will tend to have trash in the designated areas, on each of those days.

Edit:spelling (Note:days and trash types differ a lot per area, but it's a good generalisation based off of my location).

[franciscop]

That's one thing for sure, but I attribute it most to the lack of dumpsters. I am not sure why they were banned, the trash cans supposedly because of terrorism, but the larger containers/dumpsters would make the city so much cleaner and better.

Tip: when there's a typhoon, restaurants close and there's no trash on the street, the rats invade nearby shops looking desperately for food:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkpV_fCeuIE

[bombcar]

To be fair to Tokyo I doubt there's a major city in the world that doesn't have rats unless rats can't live in a super hot desert or frozen tundra.

It's a matter of how contained/controlled/visible they are.

[lmm]

Ugliness is subjective. Tokyo is varied but to me that's generally nicer and more interesting than uniformity. I don't think there's any part of Tokyo that looks as bad as the Barbican or the Brunswick, and to me the endless rows of identical beach-hut-style houses in San Francisco were far grimmer than Tokyo. YMMV I guess.

I'm not a huge fan of the look of the gravel parks, but every kid having a nearby park that they actually use beats a handful of parks that look nice, IMO. And it's not like Tokyo doesn't have big beautiful parks as well.

[monting]

You folks ought to spend some time in Taiwan. I'm in Tokyo now, was in TW for a couple of years prior. Tokyo is extremely beautiful in comparison. (I'm Taiwanese Canadian)

[pezezin]

Not just Tokyo, but the whole of Japan. I live in Aomori, I have traveled quite a bit around the country, and I haven't seen yet a single city that wasn't extremely ugly. I have asked many Japanese people, and they just don't care.

[aikinai]

I live in and love Japan, and after many years have also gotten used to the general ugliness and just enjoy the beautiful parts when I can, but turning off the Japanese filter I’ve developed, good god this is so true.

[JohnJamesRambo]

Can you post examples of this ugliness? I’ve never been to Japan and am curious. I had never heard of this.

[rippercushions]

Pick a random spot in any suburb of Tokyo in Google Maps Street View and start exploring. Here's one:

亀戸中央通り商店街 https://maps.app.goo.gl/9yY4Ncb5oM3hXqLY6

It's not particularly hideous by Tokyo (or world) standards, it's just exactly what was described earlier, a random mishmash of houses and shops in various states of repair.

[jonpurdy]

You've just linked to a small, walkable street with slow traffic that has multiple food and shopping options mixed with medium density residential. Zooming out it looks like a quick walk to a metro station and multiple parks nearby. Not to mention how safe these areas are.

The random mishmash of houses and shops is exactly the type of place that makes walking viable negating the need for a car (and the expense and waste of space storing one).

I wish I could find neighbourhoods like those found in many Japanese and Korean cities; they're very small and hard to find even in Toronto and SF (and not really comparable anyway).

[rgmerk]

Not disagreeing with any of that but it’s still incredibly ugly.

Just a planter box or two would be a massive improvement!

[kiney]

for me it's the cables and similiar visible infrastructure. Most european cities I know have most or all of that stuff underground.

[kipchak]

I don't think it's pretty, but I somewhat enjoy this sort of look.

It reminds me a bit of a compressed version of older, less affluent northeastern towns, where buildings are a mish mash of styles and designs. It's an overused term, but it gives a sense of character or that it's a discrete place with it's own history. This building is a good example.

https://goo.gl/maps/4ExAzUnFJmez6EPa7

[ErneX]

I’ve been to Tokyo and other cities in Japan, and I would gladly trade what you consider ugly for their cleanliness.

I live in Barcelona and not even Gaudi’s architecture can distract you from the amount of dog feces and piss that are rampant in this city, plus a considerably lack of cleaning in recent years for some reason.

[midoridensha]

>I live in Barcelona and not even Gaudi’s architecture can distract you from the amount of dog feces and piss that are rampant in this city

That's become extremely common in American cities too, in the past 2 years or so.

Here in Tokyo, I never see dog feces on the ground. Dogs are always on a leash, and their owners always clean up after them. I guess it's a cultural difference: dog owners outside Japan (and maybe Germany) think they're entitled to let their dogs run wild and crap wherever they want.

[_cs2017_]

Interesting, I find it, while not beautiful, quite pleasant, and in fact enjoy walking or biking on such streets.

OTOH, while I heard that Paris is considered beautiful by some people, I didn't like it at all, and no longer visit there even if I happen to be going to other parts of France.

Similarly, I would never voluntarily spend a day in SF and several other famous US cities.

I guess the idea of "ugly" is quite subjective.

[no_time]

Having the powerlines underground would improve it a lot. Other than that I wouldn't call it particularly ugly.

[dirtyid]

> how extraordinarily ugly the place is

First impression as well, but it's an aquired taste.