yeah, I like the vibe of these shops too but maybe there’s a bit of japan fetishization for a kind of commerce that anywhere else wouldn’t make sense to have.
One of the reasons for the Japanese economy’s stagnation over the last 20+ years is a lot of government spending on things that are not contributing to a healthy economy. I’m thinking about huge infrastructure projects but I’m sure this extends too many other aspects of how the economy is run.
The book "Dogs and Demons: Tales From the Dark Side of Modern Japan" by Alex Kerr covers this well. It's over 20 years old but not much has really changed. The Japanese government is still engaging in major capital misallocation through unnecessary infrastructure projects, and they allow insolvent companies to continue operating.
That at least has some economic justification; Tokyo-Sapporo is one of the busiest air routes in the world, and more trains means free slots at chronically congested Haneda.
Wasteful Big Infrastructure would more be doubling down on the seawalls that did not work in 2011 in Tohoku; in some cases those seawalls actively made things worse.
One of the reasons for the Japanese economy’s stagnation over the last 20+ years is a lot of government spending on things that are not contributing to a healthy economy. I’m thinking about huge infrastructure projects but I’m sure this extends too many other aspects of how the economy is run.