Backyard Coffee and Jazz in Kyoto

> 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

Japan is full of licenses and regulations, it is almost the exact opposite of the free market utopia you're imagining. You're not even allowed to buy a car without a permit that proves you have a parking space for it.

What Japan does different is that it has sensible zoning laws that are designed around foot traffic rather than car traffic. Why don't you have small shops like this in the U.S.? Because of minimum parking space requirements for cars.