Not really the same thing. They're much larger already than most stores you'd see in urban Japan.
Think more in terms of small convenience stores ("Spätis" with daily necessities) everywhere. Typical distance to a store is maybe 500-1000m in Germany. In dense areas of Japanese cities it's closer to one store every 100m-200m.
So in Germany it'd be a 10 minute walk, while in Japan most of your "walk" would be getting downstairs.
The flipside of that is that selection is going to be limited compared to what you'd find in Germany.
I see. What you describe does seem to match what I experienced in NYC, Portugal, and Spain? Small supermarkets everywhere with a bit of a random selection of items
I also wonder how much the pressure filled culture of not standing out has something to do with this. My impression is Japanese are under a lot more pressure to not abuse the permissiveness of the zoning laws.
While size does matter in practical terms when we think of zoning it’s really about noise, smells, pollution etc. So when I say abuse I thinking because of cultural norms and pressure of not standing out there is greater incentive to not disturb others. The argument and question on my end is does this zoning work because folks are pressured to also not stand out. They try to not disturb others.
You will see countless threads on Reddit about bad neighbors in the US. Folks playing loud music, causing disturbances at all hours and will not stop. This applies to zoning as well. If the law allows it, people will do it so there is much more consideration in the US. I don’t know if it’s the right solution but certainly different cultures play a huge role in this.
I'm not meaning to take a dig at you, but the fact that you (and presumably many others) can genuinely ask that question serves to illustrate the parent's point quite nicely.
To spell it out, "abuse" here means to engage in behavior that is socially undesirable or disruptive or would generally be expected to upset otherwise reasonable neighbors or whatever while nonetheless falling within the bounds of the law. An alarmingly large amount of what goes on in the US falls into that category IMO.
The parent comment is specifically talking about abusing zoning laws. It’s also a very generic term and I’m interested in what would be an abuse of zoning laws specifically.
There are many kinds of zoning laws going as far as to say how tall and how open fences have to be depending on the type of yard the fence encloses. Eg a backyard can have a 7ft high 100% closed fence while a front yard is limited to 4ft and must be 50% open.
How someone can “abuse” sections of the law that can get so wildly specific as to restrict paint color is lost on me.
I don’t buy into the Japanese exceptionalism in such generic terms. Show your work.
The other responder called it out well but to add. Abuse would be anything that disturbs others and out of the norm. Smells, pollution, noise etc. Japanese culture is much more considerate than a lot of western culture because of the social pressure to not standout.
That means no car trips when you run out of bread or milk.
Smartest property of that zoning system IMO.