Part of it comes down to the country’s culture which has more respect for public utilities overall, but I think another big aspect is that businesses in Japan aren’t nearly as bad as their western counterparts about cutting corners to juice profits, which means things like trains get the level of maintenance and care required to keep them clean, timely, and functional.

Of course Japan has its own set of issues — no country is a utopia after all — but livability in the major metro areas is not among them.