> In all rich (non-micro-state) countries, outside of big cities, they are all driving nations

I think this is a key takeaway. Urban life is a city thing no matter where you live. Of course, if you lived in Tokyo, you could live an hour away from things and still live in a city with good public transport (Saitama, yokohama, chiba, etc). But then you could probably afford a house with a car as well. Seems like a nice life.

I live in India and we have a very vegetarian society comparatively to the rest of world and our cuisine is developed with this in mind.

From Samosas and gol gappas to Pav bhaji to Shahi Paneer to the more European style cuisine like french fries, burgers and even the Chinese cuisine like spring roll, finger chips and momos are all vegetarian food.

And I can eat all of this by moving like what 100-200 meters, there's a shop which makes these foods and before that there comes a locally owned convenience store and also an shop owned by an uncle who used to work in our military and they have specific canteens where they can buy things from cheap (as a sort of thank you to service to nation)

And I live in a random city within India where my family has been living for generations at this point. The place I eat my fries, they are a couple who make food and I have seen them eating their own food so they are a foodie too.

So its absolutely sad to me to see some people pick some videos on the internet and portray it as bad when its actually really cool :<

Another point is that street food is one of the cheapest here. I can eat till my heart desires in less than 3-4$. Usually when I eat something from outside, it costs 2$.

I think my point is that this is genuinely a really great place for vegetarian food and Indian cuisine is very spicy.

For what its worth tho I should mention that I used to eat eggs/egg rolls sometimes but I used to eat them so few that I have just stopped eating them for the most part now.

> All of the reactionary screed that you are seeing on YouTube or reading from low quality news sources about negative reactions to foreigners can be generally ignored. It is not the reality on the ground. Yes, there will be isolated incidents by assholes, but they are far, far less than 1% of common interactions. Also, if you speak even a tiny amount of Japanese (100+ words) and make an effort to speak Japanese and be polite, they will immediately see that you are not some annoying tourist and treat you better.

Yeah, I do get that in the sense that certain negative aspects of a country which doesn't reflect the ground truth can be shown to everybody on youtube. I do realize this point.

I'd say the same is true for India as well even within the northern and southern state where Northern Indians prefer Southern Indians to speak Hindi and Southern prefer if Northern Indians speak Kannada and the local language. And both might want somewhat of the same thing if you are foreigner as well.

Here we are more likely to take selfies with foreigners (I have never seen one in my city fwiw) so I am curious if japan feels the same way or is there something more to it?