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Backyard Coffee and Jazz in Kyoto

(thedeletedscenes.substack.com)
592 points wyclif | 2 comments | 23 Jun 25 14:37 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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nomilk ◴[23 Jun 25 17:59 UTC] No.44358364[source]▶
> on the vibrant business and street culture in Japanese cities and the seemingly very, very low barriers to entry for regular people to participate.

An astute observation that allowing markets to operate without onerous licensing schemes and regulations often has wonderful upsides, allowing quirky and niche interests to survive and even flourish.

A similar situation was true of Melbourne's small bar scene vs Sydney's. Sydney's more expensive/onerous licensing requirements were prohibitive for tiny bars. Whereas Melbourne's licensing was more permissive and less expensive, resulting in an abundance of quirky and interesting venues. Possibly my favourite example was a tiny indy video game bar (it shut down during covid, I think). https://barsk.com.au/skgames/?p=done

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lwansbrough ◴[23 Jun 25 19:41 UTC] No.44359274[source]▶
North Americans: the city planners are ruining your life in ways you didn't even know could exist.
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kurthr ◴[23 Jun 25 19:51 UTC] No.44359364[source]▶
I'm all for reducing permit requirements, but realisitically these would be used by McDo and Starbux to externalize more costs while increasing their quarterly profit. Really, you need to have something that is trusted and rational without corporate corruption, which Japan nominally is. The US is going the opposite direction from that.
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1. davidw ◴[23 Jun 25 21:41 UTC] No.44360450{3}[source]▶
It's kind of the other way around: McDonalds will find a way to operate in pretty much any kind of environment. They have the deep pockets and knowledge to do so. They have restaurants across the world, including in very tricky places like Venice, Italy.

It's the small, local guy who with low margins who is not going to thrive in an environment where it's very difficult to get past all the hurdles to even start up.

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2. throwaway2037 ◴[24 Jun 25 05:31 UTC] No.44363096[source]▶

    > They have restaurants across the world, including in very tricky places like Venice, Italy.
You raise a great point. Their internal property consulting unit must be incredibly sophisticated, mixing international best practices with local, specialised knowledge. It would be interesting to hear some detail about how McD's selects their locations.