>To your primary point, public spaces in Japan, or the ones I see portrayed in the media, are very very cute (for lack of a better word and I don't mean that in a condescending manner. I think the term is kawaii?).

It sounds like you've never been here. Yes, some public spaces are cute ("kawaii!" I'm impressed!), but that's not really the norm. There are places where anime characters are shown, there's a godzilla statue in downtown Tokyo, there's a giant electronic billboard with a cat, etc., But it's not like you'll see anime stuff on every street or shopping area. Many places are quite old-fashioned looking (as in Edo-era, pre-war). Other places are just ultra-modern, like in central business districts: you'll see huge steel-and-glass skyscrapers, but there's nothing cute about them or the interior design.

>That would never fly here. Even with fences and guards that stuff would be covered in graffiti if not just broken.

Yeah, that's the big problem. That kind of thing just doesn't happen here. There is graffiti, but it's rare, and very confined to certain places. I rarely see it; offhand, I know of the underside of an elevated highway that has some (i.e., a rather ugly, out-of-the-way place where people don't often go). You certainly don't see it in any high-pedestrian-traffic area. The most annoying things I've found here as far as delinquent young men are motorcyclists who drive around the highways on late weekend nights revving their engines, and also very rich young men driving customized Lambos and Ferraris in Shibuya and revving their engines (seemingly with no mufflers).

>As for the abortion reference, it wasn't long ago that we too were filled with that same confidence. And we're learned it only takes a single election to undo decades of progress.

I completely disagree here. It wasn't a single election; the GOP was trying to undo Roe v Wade for decades; it was long a campaign issue for them. It's been a constant struggle for ages; various states passed laws banning it long ago, even though Roe v Wade overruled those laws, just because they knew if the decision was overturned, those laws would come back into effect. Republican Presidents have tried to install SCOTUS justices for decades to overturn RvW, with varying success. Trump just got lucky by getting to install 3 justices at once, but that wasn't enough; pre-existing justices also voted with them, remember, and they were installed by previous Republican presidents. This fight has been going on for a long time.

By contrast, there's is NO such thing going on over here (or most other developed nations that aren't heavily Catholic). It's not a political issue here at all, so there's really no risk of anyone passing such a law. (Plus, law here isn't made by the courts, it's made by the legislature, since the system isn't based on English Common Law.) Similarly, there's no constant political struggle over gun legality. No one wants the laws to become less strict than they already are. The politicians here just argue about things like how to deal with population decline, labor shortage, the weak yen, etc., i.e., important issues that face the country and its citizens today, rather than ideological wedge issues.