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

North Americans: the city planners are ruining your life in ways you didn't even know could exist.

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.