It is crazy and undermining years of progress towards reduced emissions and better road safety. I have no idea why these don't attract a massive tax.

I'm seeing more and more large vehicles in Japan. I don't think it will become an issue as much as it is in the West due to less car dependency, small roads and the weak yen making fuel rather expensive right now, but just around Kyoto I keep seeing those stupid Mercedes G Wagon things and some kind of large Jeep all over the place. There is also a large Toyota Land Cruiser thing that I see from time to time, but it's less popular.

Smaller car SUVs are fairly common though, and just the other day a friend drove me to a barbeque in his SUV thing that he got to replace his perfectly fine and nice previous car. It seemed really unwieldy on many of the country roads he was driving, and he frequently had to pull over to the side of the road in order to pass cars coming the other way. When I asked about it, he said he got it because he often has to drive business customers around, so he mostly just thinks having a stupid big car looks classy and respectable.