A quick story about me, public seating and Japan: It's 1994. I've been in Tokyo less than a week and this is my first time in Shinjuku. Lunchtime comes and my student thriftiness and Australian love of the outdoors beget a plan: I'll grab something at a department-store food counter and eat it on a seat or a bench somewhere. The first part goes off without a hitch. The second ends in disaster. For half an hour I wander about looking for somewhere to sit, eventually settling for a bench in a bus stop in the very middle of the west Shinjuku bus terminal. Each time a bus comes, commuters shuffle past, glancing piteously in my direction. Red-faced and with a mouthful of tonkatsu sandwich, I wave them ahead. Better to pretend I'm just waiting for a different bus, I think, rather than explain I'm just there for the seat.

At the time, a vague notion formed in my mind that Japan had less public seating than the other (mostly Western) countries with which I was familiar. But I tended to see such realizations merely as new opportunities to adapt myself to the ways of the "Romans." I was soon introduced to the wonders of Japan's fast foods, such as Yoshinoya, and I've never again even tried to find somewhere to sit outside — not in this country, anyway.

Sixteen years later, I now realize that complaints about the lack of benches in public spaces are a fairly common gaikokujin (foreigner) gripe. Various ex-pat blogs decry the dearth of places to sit, and now, perhaps more significantly, there are surveys that indicate tourists feel the same way.