Not what the meme implies but yes. I went to a place in Akihabara that was mostly just one dude at a counter grilling and smoking food. He didn't speak English so the nice Singaporean gentleman next to me was translating for us. It was a great meal
The tiny hole in the wall places that Japan's zoning laws permit are soooo cool. Like 4 chairs in the whole place and 2 are reserved for regulars. They're like studio apartments, but it's a restaurant.
I visited both in a row over the summer on business and the misery just kind of ran together in my brain — and I'm saying that as a south floridian,mind so I have a certain tolerance for stupidity and pain.
I think the only rule they had when “planning” Dallas was “there are no rules”. Zero zoning rules means one giant skyscraper in the middle of a mile of strip malls, multiple city “centers”, vast areas of it are competely unwalkable due to lack of sidewalks and/or what are basically highways running through them, and no mass transit to speak of. It’s like they took 5 shitty, small cities and glued them together with more shitty city material.
I'm in Dallas and it fucking sucks, tons of suburban sprawl, tons of roads but public transit is barely functional and hard to design efficiently, a lot of the roads don't even have sidewalks or they just randomly end, the roads are designed in a way that promotes aggressive driving making it even more dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians, the local business scene here is depressing outside of restaurants and entertainment but there's like 20 Walmarts.
dang... it's just this:
My guess is that the person originally mentioning Dallas is contrasting the city's suburban sprawl and lack of public transit to Tokyo's urban density and bustling nightlife.