I'm not sure if the average person has the patience to sit through an entire movie anymore either, and not just in the US. Smartphones and social media have shortened our attention spans by making us crave for quick dopamine hits. I used to be able to watch an entire movie uninterrupted, whereas now if the movie is not engaging, I tend to reach for my phone.

Music enjoyment has also taken a back seat, and I usually put it on in the background while I'm focusing on something else, instead of actively listening to it. I think the shift from music being released as part of thematic albums on physical media to individual tracks on online services is part of the reason for this. The average music listener just hits shuffle on a random playlist rather than focusing on a specific band, album or even genre.

Education in the US has devolved to the point where music appreciation is only taught in the most prestigious of private primary and secondary schools, and perhaps in the public schools of wealthy neighborhoods.

dunno if vocabulary and theory background actually is useful for appreciation/experience

btw, i'm still waiting an EDM club/rave with non damaging volume levels where no one is allowed to talk on the dance-floor

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> But it’s also sad how this would absolutely never work in NA due to commercial rent prices

This and so many other things. Low rents in Japan enable small time entrepeneurship in so many ways that is impossible in NA. Derek Guy discusses this often in the context of menswear. https://x.com/dieworkwear/status/1861583359518089544

It's another example of the Housing Theory of Everything, that we're suffering in all sorts of other ways by making real estate scarce.

Yes, I don’t suppose there are cities in America that are both walkable and cheap enough that a jazz fan could own a small commercial property for this purpose (if they didn’t get rich from something else before).

Seems like a possibility in smaller European cities though.

>would absolutely never work in NA due to commercial rent prices

Iw was my understanding that NA rent prices are much lower than in places with high population density such as Europe or Japan? Every time I am in the USA I am shocked by the amount of commercial activities that would never work in Europe because of the sheer amount of space required to host them.

> Most of them seemed to be ran by an older man (70+, I’d guess)

Yep. Stopped by two on a trip to Japan earlier this year and one run by an old man and one by a woman apparently 80+ years old (!).

I had a great time but yeah feeling anxious in that for natural causes, many of these places will be closing very soon as their owners surely retire at some point. I do not think many have succession plans in place. Neither place I visited had any staff. The gentleman said he'd run the place by himself for decades.

It makes one want to immediately make more travel plans to Japan as a sort of depressing "last chance to see"[1] type trip to go visit more of them. I'm upset I was only able to visit two.

Much like how the amazing game centre culture of Japan has pretty much completely vanished from its 1990s era peak, I expect soon Jazz Kissas will be almost entirely impossible to find.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Chance_to_See

It's about the last thing I'd expect to see in Venice so I think it's a pretty good idea.

Venice seemed to me a place that looks more like a massive historical theme park, while still authentic and very much in the right place, it did not strike me as normal that tourists would just find someone going about their day as an Instagram opportunity ("look that Venician is buying bread, how authentic! Let's crowd his house and take pictures!"). It didn't seem to me like a place where one is supposed to live, just supposed to go and see. A historical zoo would be a more outrageous way to put it. What can I say, I was probably part of the problem.

So I think it's a good thing any idea that makes these touristy places look like cities where people actually live, people with different interests other than what you'd expect. Just not sure if it's a profitable idea (are Italians very into Jazz?).

Sounds like a great idea to me.

"Kissa" (喫茶) in Japanese means tea-sipping, and sometimes it's pronounced "kiccha". Jazz Kissas today would be places to be under influence of alcohol or caffeine and concentrate on listening to jazz, but kind of often in 60s also under influence of non-legal stuff. It's kind of interesting that we Japanese received what was originally a dance music and allocated it to our custom/culture to sit and listen like to a preaching. I guess people might had felt some kind of awe or something from it those days.

In English, it's close to "ass kisser" ... and I'm wondering if the pun is intentional.

My experience living in Japan tells me it's probably just a coincidence. They often seem to stumble into these!

In Finnish, kissa means cat. ”Jazz cat”, sounds pretty jazzy!