The local stores in Japan and Taiwan are really nice. 7/11 and Family Mart are these pleasant places where you can see schoolchildren sitting chatting and eating. That’s not something you’d see in San Francisco.

You’ll see adults with children sometimes at Whole Foods, which is nice, but unattended children not so much.

▲

AznHisoka 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I’ve seen little children take the subway alone in Japan. Its a completely different environment

	▲	ShinTakuya 13 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		For what it's worth, this is commonplace in Australia too. I feel like you're describing a general safe country thing. I've lived in Japan so I know it's probably one of the safest places in the world, but I feel like what this thread describes is more US/Canada/some Euro countries being particularly dangerous, and not Japan being uniquely safe.
	▲	vkou 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Or walk home from school, or the playground, or wherever they are going from, through the middle of what in any NA city would be described as 'downtown', and would get CPS dispatched on speed-dial.

▲

UncleOxidant 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> but unattended children not so much.

But that's down to larger cultural differences. Japanese schoolchildren probably get less supervision overall than their US counterparts.