Visiting Japan from Korea is always interesting because the countries share enough similarities to make for meaningful comparison. This time I’m spending most of my time in Kyoto with short side trips to Osaka and Nara. After a few busy days of sightseeing, various thoughts come to mind.

One of the strongest impressions is that housing in Korea is better than in Japan. Using Airbnb rooms as a guide is not scientific, but it does offer insight into how average people might live. In Seoul, I stayed in a fairly large studio near Dongdaemun for $33 a night; in Kyoto, I stayed in small studio for $38. After Seoul, the studio in Kyoto seemed excessively cramped and outdated (though I enjoyed the small bathtub). The studio in Kyoto is typical of how many students and single young people in Japan live, and I remember the tiny six-tatami-mat place I lived in when I first moved to Japan in 1995.

Cramped housing is the norm in urban Japan, particularly in Tokyo, where land prices are high (though much lower than their peak in the early 1990s). Korea has its share of cramped housing, but a middle class family living in an apartment in Seoul no doubt has more space than a similar family in Tokyo. The long boom in apartment construction has left Korea with a roomier housing stock than Japan. Apartment buildings and complexes in both countries are ugly and do not hold up well over time, making judgements about quality difficult. At the very least, Korean apartments have under-floor heating that make them more comfortable in the winter than their stone cold counterparts in Japan.

Another impression is the aging population. Korea is rapidly catching up with Japan, but the median age in Japan is still six years older than Korea. Economists point to the aging population in Japan as one of the reasons why the economy has remained stagnant despite various government attempts to simulate growth. The decline in consumption has hurt the small mom-and-pop stops that once dotted cities. Central areas of large cities are busy, but neighborhood shopping streets have many empty shops and little foot traffic.

In Seoul, shopping streets in areas designated for redevelopment have many empty store fronts because much of the surrounding area has been abandoned to make way for apartments. E-commerce is more popular in Korea than Japan, which reduces the need for neighborhood retail. As the population in Korea ages, retail will continue to decline, which will raise the question of what to do with all the empty retail space.

In many ways, a trip to Japan is a trip back to the analog age when books were printed and people used cash. As elsewhere, book shops in Japan have fallen on hard times, but they remain plentiful and crowded. On a subway car in Seoul, very few people read printed books, but on a subway in Kyoto, they are still common. Cash is still the preferred method of payment and many small businesses do not take credit cards. My Airbnb studio has two keys — one for the entrance and one for the apartment door — instead of two codes.

Japan, of course, remains a leader in technology, but it the technology is mixed with older analog practices. This often makes tech-centered activities in Japan easier than in Korea. E-commerce is much easier to use in Japan than in Korea because there are no cumbersome Active-X downloads. Websites are easier to use because there is no database of citizens and foreign residents taken from a national ID number.  

Yet another impression is the large number of Chinese tourists. The train from the Kansai Airport was full of Chinese tourists, most of whom got off at various points in Osaka. During a visit to Osaka, I was surprised to see that Chinese has become almost a second language in some of the main shopping areas. The number of Chinese tourists in Kyoto is much larger than when I lived here in the 2000s. Many shops that once catered main to local residents now have a few signs in English and Chinese. Many studio apartments in central Kyoto have been turned into Airbnb rooms because they are more profitable than renting.

The keyword from these observations is “change.” From the end of the 19th century to the early 21st century, Japan sat as the uncontested No. 1 in Asia. That has changed, and it will be interesting to see how Japan adapts to this new reality.

By Robert J. Fouser

Robert J. Fouser, a former associate professor of Korean language education at Seoul National University, writes on Korea from Ann Arbor, Michigan. -- Ed.