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For further reading, check out Asphalt Nation
Anonymous File :-(, x)
Read up on urban decentralization. Essentially since the end of WW2, people in the U.S. have been shifting from living in urban areas to living mostly in suburbs, so much that the urban areas themselves have been transformed as a result. As more and more space is taken up by roads, parking spaces, and enormous mall/Wal-Mart parking spots, buildings become spaced further and further apart to compensate. Essentially, the country has been crafted in the automobile's image.
Japan is forced to focus on keeping buildings close to one another because of the limited land available for construction. It also means that public transportation can be integrated into the average citizen's lifestyle more easily. Both of these mean that a public bath in Japan can service a far larger quantity of people than it would be able to in the U.S., where bath houses would either need to be ridiculously numerous (bare in mind that all but the bath houses near the most densely-populated areas would likely not be profitable enough to justify their upkeep), or people would need to drive quite a while just to take a bath. The latter would especially be a problem in some southern states, such as Georgia, where the distance between residential areas and centers of commerce can be miles on end.
In an urban environment, a bath house is feasible; in a suburb, not so much.
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