Also, let’s face it – most of Kyoto’s big attractions like Kinkakuji, Daitokuji, and Chion-in (ji?) are a bit out of the way and when you are on the grounds, the modern sh!t is out of sight, out of mind. The ones that suffer from their surroundings (like the bigass McDonalds next to Sanjusangendo) are okay in a way because the big attractions (at Sanjusan and Toji, for example) are the statues INSIDE.

As for the city—most of the nice traditional houses are already gone and not coming back so Kyoto will most likely always be an ugly-ass city. I’m not sure that it was really every possible, however, to convince the people who live there to keep living a quaint wooden house existence for the sake of tourists as Kerr would have liked…. When you think about it, Kyoto may be ugly, but it does have great shopping and dining, a very nice station (I’m not so big on the look but it has great facilities), excellent bus service, a world-class university, etc. All of this has managed to coexist with what I would call the “islands of beauty” in the sea of concrete so I don’t think that the end result is all that bad.

Ah, but you are overlooking the beauty of living in a magical land where tort damages can almost always be paid in the cash you have in your pocket!

When it’s a Japanese person suing another Japanese person. However sue happy Americans are different, and persistent. “An American woman injured in a car accident in northern Japan has filed a lawsuit with a U.S. court seeking about $95 million in damages largely from a Japanese insurance firm which she alleges provided false information about the driver who caused her injury, the woman’s husband said Wednesday.” However I’m not trying to say that the women wasn’t right to seek damages from an insurance company who lied and said they didn’t have a policy for someone they did..

You’ll need to add two zero’s to that number to include the cost of insuring 15 year old American kids who will undoubtably cut a few legs off.

Ah, but you are overlooking the beauty of living in a magical land where tort damages can almost always be paid in the cash you have in your pocket!

Should he get some credit for his activism, or were these policy changes inevitable?

They were inevitable, but let’s give Kerr credit nonetheless, especially since there is a possible cause-effect relationship for the first story.

Western tourists can pay a cheap 500 yen to spend the day in the thick of nature removing a major blight on the landscape and nuisance to Tokyo residents and visitors.

You’ll need to add two zero’s to that number to include the cost of insuring 15 year old American kids who will undoubtably cut a few legs off.