The one country that seems to do housing right and not consider it an investment vehicle. Unlike our depressing situation that is tearing society apart.
That it's considered an investment vehicle is downstream from the rising markets due to tight regulation which limit supply. In Japan what zones exist is standardized across the country and what zone applies to a given area is defined by the government in Tokyo. This prevents local homeowners to lobby for tighter regulation to strangle supply.
>That it's considered an investment vehicle is downstream from the rising markets
That's not what its downstream from, that's restating the same thing in financial terms. What it's actually downstream from is that Japan is a fully urbanized society. The reason why Americans cannot implement this is because houses are their little homesteads and castles, Fukuyama used the term "suburban villager" for this attitude (also prevalent in Greece and Eastern Europe etc.)
Housing is absolutely an investment vehicle in Japan. It's just that Japan has been economically stagnant for 30+ years, bordering on deflation, and anywhere outside of a first- or second-tier city is effectively dying. Couple that with the Japanese cultural distaste for pre-owned housing, and this is the outcome.
If you operate a rental in any area outside of the core of the major cities, you are in the business of charging a huge monthly premium over a property value that is rapidly depreciating to zero. This is fundamentally different than the US.
You're being snarky but it's obvious you're speaking from the prospective of a foreign tourist who has only been to Tokyo and major cities while not being able to speak Japanese.
You're making a strong but false generalisations as a tourist. The tourist aspect is important because of the anthropic principle. If you were a local who was in the inaka where Uber doesn't operate and you had to reserve a taxi by phone in Japanese, you'd have an entirely different experience.
Japanese people are notoriously introverted and shy. That's why people don't make small talk especially on a taxi. Plus, if they presume you're a tourist who doesn't speak Japanese, why bother? It's also not true that it's "your space". Just because the driver and other service people aren't confronting you on your behavior doesn't mean it's socially approved behavior. Japanese people silently judged and tourists can't even notice. There is an unspoken rule you keep your conversation with your fellow passenger private and quiet. Even wearing a perfume/cologne in a communal space, which a taxi is, can be considered rude.
If the reason people prefer Waymo is because they're introverted and not just avoid socializing but avoid being the presence of other people alltogether, then it's entirely possible for Waymo to do okay in Japan.
> The space in the car is, factually, your space.
This such an arrogant Westerner thing to think and say. Until you can step out of that, you will never understand Japan like you think you do.
So you are saying that as a Japanese ordering a Japanese by phone, that your driver would:
- happily speak on the phone while driving
- listen to music
- open the window to cool himself without asking if you're OK with that?
(i.e. all the things drivers in the best do; also, when I said that the space in a taxi is factually the clients space I didn't imply that the client can do whatever he wants - rather that the client can enjoy that space undisturbed; you only zoned in on the part of the client creating disturbance, which I can see though is an issue with tourists in Japan.)
I find that hard to believe. But open to be proven otherwise if you can cite such occurrences.
My other point that we in the west suck still seems to hold true: even if your point is true and I may get better treatment in Japan only as a tourist in a big city, you can rest assured that no Japanese in a western big city will get any kind of better treatment. Drivers in the west are usually impolite equally to everyone.
I share the same perspective .. I was also wondering how UDA handles the problem of evolving schemas, "old clients" communicating with newer server or vice versa.
Only when you're comparing the cheapest vehicles of each size, where the cost of the vehicle and maintenance is probably roughly in line with vehicle size. There are plenty of luxury and sports cars widely available for rent that will cost more than a minivan.
We just posted our first Show HN ever with your exact same setup, but s/python/go. If you're running it in Docker, then this might work for you too:
1) CloudRun ( run a Docker container exposing a port to the web )
It can autoscale.
2) CloudSQL ( managed Postgres and some other SQL choices )
We faced some friction getting the two connected. CloudSQL is available on an IP address, then in our code we have PSQL library which we specify the IP address to. The complication was that CloudRun instances can't actually "see" the CloudSQL. After navigating the GCP documentation, website, and some trial and error, it magically worked.
It was painful to get setup but it's running smooth now.
Housing is the biggest expenditure for people in America and many parts of the world. Housing is cheap is Japan so people can get by on much less.