Month: July 2026

Spain has an extension of 506,030 square kilometers and 48.35 million people live there. Japan has an area of 377,974 square kilometers where 124.5 million people live. In the city of Madrid it is estimated that they live 3.23 million peoplewhile in Tokyo a total of 14.22 million people. The difference is even more striking if we take into account population density. In Madrid there are 5,265.91 inhabitants/km², while in Tokyo it rises to 6,501.58 inhabitants/km². Which of the two cities is hell to drive? If you cast an eye on photographs of Japanese citiesyou may have noticed that there are many, many people walking and on public transport. But how many cars do you see on the street? The answer is simple: very few. If we attend to the 2021 dataSpain had 29,875,896 million cars in use, while in Japan there were 76,702,773 cars. How can it be that a country with a much smaller surface area and that is on its way to tripling our population? don’t be a car hell If it has a density of cars per person very similar to ours (629 cars/1,000 inhabitants for Spain compared to 609 cars/1,000 inhabitants for Japan)? They have achieved this, of course, by forcibly limiting the number of cars that can be owned in large cities where, logically, a greater number of cars should accumulate. As? The secret is Shako Shomeisho Although the car density per inhabitant is very similar to that of Spain, the truth is that it plummets if we focus on large cities. In Japan it is estimated that each household owns 1.06 cars of the total. That figure plummets to 0.32 vehicles per household in Tokyo. The big Japanese city is, in fact, the rich city where cars are used the least. According to Deloitteonly 12% of daily trips in Tokyo are made by car, while 17% are made by bicycle. Figures that cannot be understood without two express prohibitions: that of parking on the street and that of buying a car… without space to park it. And a little luck. Andre Sorensen, professor of urban planning at the University of Toronto, says that part of Tokyo’s success in achieving this low vehicle density begins with a coincidence. At the beginning of the 20th centuryonly 15% of Japanese lived in cities. That figure is now 91%. Tokyo (above) and Rotterdam (below) two examples of cities rebuilt after World War II. Source: Google Maps The explosion came with the end of World War II. The cities were devastated and the growth in Tokyo was so chaotic that buildings began to grow uncontrollably, one close to the other. You can compare with photographs from Google Maps how Tokyo grew, completely uncontrolled with countless tiny plots, and how Rotterdam grew, with planning studied to combine green areas in residential areas. Sorensen explains that this population explosion caused the flourishing of narrow streets that made it difficult for vehicles to pass through and store them. The wave of workers to the cities forced the institutions they will turn to public transport and in 1957 the first measure was taken to harshly regulate car use in cities. And, in turn, a good reason to discourage its use. Since then, a law has been applied that prevents parking cars on the street. What is common in any European city is strictly prohibited in Japan. The fine is also not nonsense. They apply penalties of up to 200,000 yen for leaving the car parked irregularly, which entails a fine of more than 1,200 euros. Just a few years later, in 1962, the Shako Shomeisho. This name refers to the certificate that the buyer of a car must present when purchasing the vehicle. This guarantees that that person has a place to park the car. That is, you have a parking space where you can park your car every night. If you do not have a garage space, you will be prohibited from buying a car. Kei Cars, like this Daihatsu Copen, do not need to have a parking certificate except in Tokyo and Osaka This Shako Shomeisho does not apply to Kei Carssmall Japanese cars that measure less than 3.4 meters in length, 1.48 meters wide and 2.0 meters high and with engines less than 660 cc that cannot exceed 64 HP of power. The problem is that street parking options are minimal and parking in a public parking lot is very expensive. Shako Shomeisho the price of land has skyrocketed of the parking lots. In fact, the expensive thing is not buying a car, the expensive thing is getting the chance to buy a car. Is something similar to what happens in Singapore with a subtle difference: there are spaces available to park cars in Tokyo that sell for more than one million euros and the advertisements themselves already reflect the performance that can be obtained by allowing the rental of vehicles by the hour. And it must be taken into account that not all parking spaces are valid. The garage where the car is stored must be less than two kilometers from the habitual residence and to obtain the certificate it must be possible to corroborate this with plans or, even, the entrance and exit measurements of the garage are required. If the car is too big, the buyer may have problems getting the certificate approved by the authorities and may not have anywhere to park it… or rent it. The solution can go through rent the garages But there are neighborhoods where monthly rents can easily go above 500 euros (about 77,000 yen). In some very specific places in the most expensive neighborhoods, the spaces They are quoted with rents above 700 euros (110,000 yen). As it could not be otherwise, houses for sale are offered with skyrocketing prices when the combination “downtown” and “parking space” go hand in hand. With offers that exceed 3.5 million euros (550 million yen) for 130 m2 houses… And with space … Read more