My guess is the music goes into the past, leaving echos in your memories.

They have some of the most heavily used rail stations in the world, but still a large chunk of the population has a car. 85 million cars registered in a population of about 124 million people.

Unfortunate their renewable potential is so low.

Maybe they’ll figure out space based power https://www.japan.go.jp/kizuna/2023/08/japans_long-planned_photovoltaics.html

I think it’s more fair to compare average income versus average life satisfaction. (using a scale of 1 to 10) (On this scale Finland is the happiest, and Afghanistan is the least happy)

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-vs-happiness

Average satisfaction for Costa Rica (6.61) or Mexico (6.33) isn’t that much lower than the United States (6.89) at roughly 1/4th the GDP.

South Korea (5.95) doubles Mexico’s GDP ($45.5k vs $20.25k) but has a lower life satisfaction.

Or Hong Kong (5.31, $58k) is close the US ($64k) in GDP but less happy than Russia (5.66, $27.4k).

Costa Rica is at the 1.5t per capita probably safe emissions and has a life satisfaction of 6.61 compared to the US’s 6.89.

Our world in data also has life satisfaction versus CO2 emissions and central america looks to be doing fairly well for themselves. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-satisfaction-vs-co-emissions-per-capita

Most of the young adults in America currently can’t afford kids, housing, or cars.

https://www.npr.org/2024/01/25/1225957874/housing-unaffordable-for-record-half-all-u-s-renters-study-finds

As an island nation with a scarcity of resources, you’d think Japan would be more interested in transportation solutions that don’t involve regular delivery of fuel.

Dark Sky is a group working to protect the visibility of the night sky. https://darksky.org/what-we-do/advancing-responsible-outdoor-lighting/

They’ve got suggestions on both limiting use of lighting and using lights that don’t point upward, automatically dim, and don’t generate a lot of glare