The Purpose of Inconvenience

Silly rules can be small taxes we pay to avoid large problems later

Image generated with Stable Diffusion XL // Prompt: tokyo, japan, small street next to a house, sunny day, man sweeping the street with a broom

After my friend returned from his two-week trip to Japan, I asked him about his experience. “What was the best thing? What was the worst thing?” As often in life, the pros and cons he mentioned went hand in hand: “Tokyo is one of the top three cleanest places I’ve ever been, but there are no trash cans…