Iām also in Japan right now. Being here makes me realize just how far behind Taiwan is in some crucial ways. For example food quality is significantly better even for mundane food here in Tokyo. Additionally, japanese buildings seem to be significantly better maintained. Havenāt seen a single rat here in Tokyo vs Taipei I see them every day.
People in Tokyo are significantly better dressed, there is significantly more variety of just about everything here vs Taiwan most shops seem to be cookie cutter copies of the exact same low effort concept (some noticable exceptions are in Taiwan but on average Japan just seems to have more variety). In General things here seem better maintained and thought out. Oh and although there are small sidewalks, there hasnāt seemed to be much of a problem staying out of the street.
Iāve also noticed how Tokyo seems to do just fine without scooters and as a result the traffic seems far less chaotic or congested.
Also I wish the MRT had padded seats. But I prefer the price and clarity of the Taipei MRT
And I would say Japan and UK are more like for like in comparison when it comes to the depth of development in time at least and power. Both superpowers of their time and ironically things like trains were brought over by the British and seeing how affordable and well run the trains and MRT is compared to the UK is just shocking.
But you are right that Taiwan clearly has room for improvements in key areas mentioned.
I guess what is really mind boggling is how much larger the Japanese population is compared to the land mass (which is actually fairly similar to Taiwan in terms of size). A lot of excuses Iāve heard about Taiwanese development comes from geographic arguments. Yet Japan seems to have adapted to similar constraints in such an efficient and effective way. I think this kind of just hammers home the truth, that the really biggest difference comes in terms of policy.
I mean, for me, Japan is a culture of thousands of years. Even after the devastation of the war (Taiwan was also not spared from that as a colony), it had some sort of foundation and a lot of help from the allies to reconstruct. Considering Taiwanās history, itās come a long way in
a very short time and had to adapt quickly to development that made concessions.
I agree with this. Taiwan is a brand new democracy. Like all new democracies, it takes time to mature. I think Taiwan is in the midst of this maturation and so will continue to make significant improvements over time.
I hope I get the chance to visit Korea soon. I believe Korea is a bit more similar to Taiwan? Both are relatively new democracies born in the wake of a long standing autocratic Regime. Both were born from civil war as well.
Obviously there are also many differences as well but Iād be curious to see how big those differences are really.
I would say Korea is a bit cleaner and the cities were built with the future in mind. But outside of Seoul, it is more similar to Taiwan in terms of development. Korea and Taiwanās GDP were on par with African countries just a few decades ago, so they also went through rapid development but were more focused on major cities like Seoul. Koreaās lack of resources and farm land kept it rather poor for a while.
Where as you can see houses that are hundreds of years old built beautifully in Japan.
Democracy has nothing to do with it. Japanese people just care about little things like that. The US and France are old democracies and their big cities are all filthy as fuck.
Iāve yet to see anyone piss in the middle of Taipei, but it was something shocking I saw in Paris often at night. London was so bad they literally put these pissing stations around SoHo on the street and other areas people used to piss on the streets.
Taipeiās garbage system is often criticized but at least itās not just left on the side of the road in Europe which is quite strange to me.
The residential areas of most Japanese cities are ugly. Boxy, disposable houses with no character and no yards. Treeless streets. The architectural blandness of it all is depressing.
At least the use of space in those houses in Japan is thought throughālots of storage space, etc.
Here in Taiwan you get the ugly exteriors compounded by an all-too-often mind-numbling use of interior space with minimal storage areas and apparently zero thought in how to set up the space.
