More E-core is reasonable for multi threaded application performance. It's efficient for power and die area as the name indicates, so they can implement more E-cores than P-cores for the same power/area budget. It's not suitable for who need many single threaded performance cores like VM server, but I don't know is there any major consumer usage requires such performance.
Classic "NIMBY" concept is pretty understandable, like we don't want coal power plant on my backyard. It's weird to hear that US people apply it to apartment. You guys live there too.
There's more usage of vertically written Japanese than you listed. Some signboards, some formal letters, many paperbooks (and ebook version), vast majority of non-technical magazines are still vertically written.
Fortunately, for forms, I haven't seen any vertically written forms except school work.
Had you bought 1L milk for 130JPY? It's too cheap even in 2019 so I suspect that it's loss leader on your supermarket. In my area, price jumped from 190 to 230.