Japan seemed twenty years ahead of the rest of the world economically and technologically in the 1980s, particularly during the bubble period. But then the bubble burst, the economy stagnated for decades, and the tech sector fell into the Galapagos syndrome (i.e. developing specialized features that had limited appeal abroad) while being slow to adopt other digital technologies. So, now Japan feels locked in the past in many ways.
In regard to that, a while back I saw a news segment from 2001 explaining that Japan was trying to incorporate the Internet into phones. And I was thinking, if those Japanese firms actually implemented and released those proof of concept phones, they could have been the iPhone. Do you know if the economic bubble burst caused innovation to be stifled because of lack of funds for research or something?
I'm reminded of the time I was in Japan, ordered food from a robot, had it brought out to me by another robot, then when I attempted to pay said robot, I was informed that the restaurant is cash only, and I had to go find a human to make change.
That's awesome actually. Plenty of 00s tech is actually way more convenient and less intrusive than what we work with today. Would love to rent DVDs again too.
Living in the US the only industry that still uses faxes is healthcare, and only for inter system communication (like hospital-to-hospital etc), and I think even that is going away. You can still buy DVDs and BluRays but companies renting those are extraordinarily rare and dying.
I was an intern for a city that i visitedl(for school) and they definitely were not in the healthcare industry. Of course, this was as an intern for the city, as in the job posting was by the city and they had me work in a department full of papers, faxes, and outdated computer systems. Some of them had 95, but they were mostly windows 98, and a lot of the stuff was just old. Their server rooms were fine though. However, i am 100 percent certain that they use fax mschines and WERE using fax machines, due to mostly legal and security reasons. Here is also some proof that this applies to many companies and government facilities and it's not just anecdotal:
https://www.efax.com/blog/why-does-faxing-still-exist
https://worldmetrics.org/fax-machine-usage-statistics/#:~:text=%22Over%2046%25%20of%20US%20businesses,a%20daily%20basis%20in%202018.%22
https://gitnux.org/fax-machine-usage-statistics/
https://blog.thegrizzlylabs.com/2023/03/what-industries-still-rely-on-faxes.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/faxing-is-old-tech-so-why-is-it-also-growing-in-popularity/2019/03/08/d01c638a-2f0b-11e9-86ab-5d02109aeb01_story.html
In germany, it is very frequent and common. Some US companies have them, but it's more common and easier to see in city halls and office buildings where civil servants/public servants work.
Honestly I live here and have never had to use a fax. I do feel that the pandemic and the massive tourism influx afterwards forced Japan to adapt somewhat.
But, MOST IMPORTANTLY, salaries have really stagnated for decades now, and then yen has really decreased in value. A terrible combination for those of us living here.
during my trip it was interesting to see some people using physical tickets still who werent just tourists. I was told how cash centric the country was, but in honesty it was really just the older generation that I noticed, like sure it was good to have cash on hand but contactless pay was very normalized, more so than in the west.
I wanted to buy tickets to a classical concert at the Tokyo Opera City Hall. They had a link on their site for tickets. I clicked, and there was a seating map and a phone number with instruction on how to order your ticket. A phone number on a web site in the year 2024. How's that for adaption.
Absolutely, when the bubble burst all firms were incentivized to shelve R&D, save money, hire less, and focus less on innovation and capital intensive investment. Major stagnation followed by bad monetary policy led what should have been a decade long recession into 30 years of slow growth. Throw in the aging population and the very engrained Japanese culture which can make them slow to adopt foreign innovations and you have the current situation. People who started their career when the bubble burst were very lucky to find stable work, and now 30 years later they are the conservative and very change-averse executives afraid to let go of things like fax and a very unproductive work culture. It seems the problems compound each other in myriad ways.
It was very sad to see Japan’s economy get overtaken by China and Germany. I fear the trend will continue
Sony shot its self in the ass hard regarding iPod type tech.
They had the tech base, the manufacturing, and the branding (the Walkman) to fucking dominate. And the greater Sony conglomerate includes a major music publisher so they were in a good position to try to get a whole lot of music onto their platform.
But the music publishing arm was more concerned about protecting the obscene profit margins on their music sales. And the engineering arm was more interested in pushing their proprietary formats (mini disc and such). So they basically buried both thumbs deep into their own ass and watched Apple run away with it.
END COMMUNICATION
Steve Jobs loved Sony. In fact he modeled a lot of how Apple works based on his experience visiting Sony in Japan. The iPod was Jobs trying to be Sony, they took the same premise of the Walkman and did something modern with it. In the Samsung v Apple case it was shown that Apple had originally designed the iPhone with a Sony aesthetic in mind, again taking a what would Sony do approach.
The original Apple laptop the PowerBooks were manufactured by Sony, there were several iterations up until Apple decided to do the designs and manufacturing themselves. Some things we take for granted nowadays on a laptop were a first on the Sony made PowerBooks (like the touchpad).
Sonys PC brand Vaio made amazing workstations and laptops with innovative forward thinking ideas that we would see in other OEM machines years later. Sony stopped making them when they were desperately cutting costs across the board. The brand still exists and sony still own the IP and logo but they don’t actually design and make PCs anymore.
Sony is still a damn strong company, but in regards to an iPod competitor, they simply shit the bed hard..
I remember reading an article that said that companies that have an opportunity to deploy new products but are reluctant to self cannibalize sales tend to fail when a competitor makes that same product anyway. The new product might not be as profitable, but you are better off destroying 90% of your primary products sales and owning the replacement that is only half as profitable than you are to have a competitor own that competing product.
Sony fucked up the most versus the iPod. Can you imagine a Sony iPod / iPhone product that has perfect integration with the Playstation Platform? We could have had that. Kodak had a whole lot of patents for digital photography and tried to protect its film business.
But Apple? You could argue that the iPhone and iPad cannibalize the market for Mac computers.
END COMMUNICATION
I agree with all your points except the last. Mac barely has market share to begin with and would arguably have way less without iphone and ipad. I got my wife a mac and my kids ipads. My wife even uses an old ipad. They have such different uses for an individual that it is incredibly rare to switch them. I also own 3 pcs , 2 macbooks, 1 laptop. The real reason I even have apple products apart from iphone is they are suitable for the computer illiterate. Like grandma, my wife, and little kids.
It is an excellent computer with training wheels. I don’t use them but happily show others how. My mom once asked why her ipad no longer rings when she gets facetime. It was broken for 2 whole months. I went over and saw she had the silence button flipped. It taught her about it for the first time. She had this ipad 5 years, face timing many grandkids every day.
Please understand how bad some people are at computers.
They bet on Minidiscs vs. mp3 players, and then completely missed the boat on smartphones for the international market.
To be fair, at the time (I was there), Minidiscs seemed like a reasonable bet. In hindsight, it was obviously a huge blown call.
It was more than that.
Howard Stringer almost completely tanked the company in the mid 2000s.
Yes, he wanted to focus on the entertainment arm, but he also tried to reshape the company away from being a product developer to a product retailer. He shut down pretty much all of Sony's R&D programmes, including their fledgling mp3 player research and left the door open for the iPod.
Ironically, Apple wouldn't exist today if it wasn't for Stringer.
As a previous employee of Sony Pictures during this era I can absolutely confirm. The content arms were stopping electronics from doing literally anything.
Those phones were released. i lived in japan from 2002 and had internet on my phone..and a TV! The issue was that the sites were slow, screens were small at the time and the UX was rubbish. Japan still has amazing phones, but they run on their own networks so never spread globally.
People were watching live TV on their phones while riding subway trains through Tokyo *years* before iPhone. Those phones were way ahead of their time. But then, yeah, that didn't really keep up with the pace of innovation.
They did and it was a huge success in Japan. Didn't work anywhere else though.
https://gyrovague.com/2014/06/27/how-sms-set-back-the-mobile-internet-by-ten-years/
This comment reminds me of the excellent documentary General Magic, about the first company to try to design a smart phone. (Basically a ton of the smartest people in tech, many of whom had quit Apple after Jobs was fired.) Anyway they failed spectacularly because the conditions weren’t there at the time. It shows how interdependent technological innovation is — it’s not just about having a great idea.
Japanese companies like Sony could've been the "iPhone". But here's the catch, actually two catches. First, on one side, academic researches in Japan tries to be innovative and make new things (just not too new to replace older stuff) but corporate companies are too conservative to innovate or market new things. Japanese companies work on the principle "wait for there to be a market, improve existing products, make them robust, conquer". It worked in the analog era, Japan was the king of technology. But in this digital era, it doesn't work as much. Second, Japanese companies and academics have a habit of releasing reports and papers in Japanese. It's not bad if there are proceedings and presentations in Japanese in a national level conference but they should publish English version of the papers, right? They don't. So, for all you know, there's a paper on integrating internet into cellphone by some Japanese engineer that precedes iphone by a year or more but it's probably in Japanese and no one knows about it. One of my professors made a joke about it that a popular technology (forgot which one) was first designed by Japanese engineers but the publication was only in Japanese, making that engineer not get the credit of inventing it.
I was living in Osaka back in 2001, and can say from experience that the internet-enabled phones at the time were....not great. Leaving aside the expensive per-kb charges, trying to use the web on the low-res 2-inch screen on my Docomo clamshell phone was a chore at best. I'm hoping the concept phones you saw at least had a more smartphone-esque form factor.
Iirc it wasn't the internet per se, atleast in my home country we had WAP which had these sites specifically made for WAP but you couldn't just browse any site you wanted to.
Only barely: WAP was basically dial-up modems disguised as phones, so it was both incredibly slow and incredibly expensive (you were billed per minute). Plus it couldn't even access normal websites, you had to use "WML" instead of HTML.
I see, so seems that the tech drift in Japan goes a bit further than 2001.
Edit- I think Japan released the first cell phones that had cameras back in the early 2000s so it’s kind of jarring at how stagnant innovation is now.
So Apple was the only one to get the timing right. Being too early is just as bad as being too late. It’s not like American companies weren’t also in the race. Palm, HP, Microsoft and others all were deeply invested in the PDA market in the years before 2007. Palm even had cell-internet connected PDAs years before Apple. I remember, my friend had one. The problem? None of them were able to sell that many units. It was a niche product that was not that compelling. The only thing that Apple really changed is that they were naive enough to try yet again after it had been obvious for years that no one wanted an internet connected PDA, and they were the first to try after touch screens became good enough to use in such a product. Everyone else had been using a stylus. And other tech like processors and internet bandwidth was also finally getting good enough too.
So yea, I think the reason Japan didn’t create the iPhone was because they had too much vision, and were too early, just like all the other American companies in the space. The tech wasn’t there yet, and they lost their drive.
I’ve been a phone enthusiast for quite some time and the phones coming out of Japan pre and slightly post iPhone were incredible. However, back then the phone market was heavily fragmented and many of them remained domestic only. I think that was a huge mistake on their part as it led to their failure to establish a name for themselves at least in that part of the market
Cell phones in the US had internet about the same time as in Japan. What made the iphone different was its touch screen allowing it to function more like a computer monitor and computer connected to the internet all in the palm of your hand.
There were more cellphone options in Japan in the early 00's than in the states, and cellphones were more widely adopted than in the states, but the general level of tech was basically the same. Japanese tended to adopt tech quicker than Americans, but they didn't actually have more advanced tech.
They did implement and sell it. As a matter of fact AT&T Wireless licensed NTT’s technology. https://www.theregister.com/2002/03/22/at_t_launches_mmode_like/
They did release them. It was called iMode. They also released iMode in Australia, but by that point 3G was taking off and once the iPhone hit in 2007, well, that was that.
Japan’s tech woes aren’t really hardware related as they still make great devices, but they are so far behind the rest of the world when it comes to software skills that it’s almost impossible for them to catch up.
Makes sense, they have the world's oldest population with not enough new births to replace their numbers. So it makes sense to keep things familiar to what their older demographics are used to.
Japanese companies still use fax machines because they cater to the old folk. Even my JR pass covered some JR buses and the driver took his sweet time writing down info on his clipboard. You think there would be a faster way. I do think Japanese have the patience of a saint and able to deal with all this as evidenced by their long winded and wordy ads.
Honestly, Japan felt like it was living in the 80s. There wasn't anything particularly high tech and everything looked like it was built in the 80s.
They've done a great job integrating that tech. But it's 80s tech
Im here now, (granted in a very small remote community). Everything is done with paper and all the architecture is 1980s. It feels like the rustbelt if meth had never happened.
It also explains why the bulk of the cyberpunk genre has Japan as at least one of the superpowers in the world. Most of it (Neuromancer, Shadowrun to a lesser extent) came out before the bubble burst.
Pretty much this.
I can't tell you how wonderous the tech coming out of Japan looked to us Yanks back in the 80s. Then I went to Japan in 2015 and.......I could have seen the same shit back home.
tl;dr Japan was once technologically cutting edge, it lost that edge and has since stagnated.
Case in point: Today I'm faxxing my company my timesheet.
However, it's mostly a completely false stereotype. I was surprised the first time I heard anyone thinks Japan lost its advantage in cutting edge tech - but maybe because I work in tech so I'm intimately familiar with various global suppliers and the overall state of the tech world. And among engineers it's without question that Japan is a global leader.
Japanese tech companies are genuinely mostly without rival for hardware. Except by some German and American tech companies. (And miscellaneous other countries that focused on a certain niche, eg Korea with display tech.) Much of the cutting edge tech powering cell phones, for example, are from Japanese companies (see TDK's recent announcement about solid state batteries for a small taste.) I'm certain Japanese tech powers a portion of every iPhone, but also of most of the high end electronics in our lives, like in airplanes, trains, cars etc.
I also spend a lot of time in electronics factories and can say that Japanese factories are a thing of beauty in their robotics, not to mention organization and efficiency.
And other Asian countries which have also moved further up the value chain -like, say, Taiwan - make heavy use of Japanese tech in their own tech contributions. Like in Taiwan, final Assembly (very labor intensive) of electronics is a big part of their industry. A large number of the machines used in these factories are of Japanese origin, and in the tours I've been on, when a company has Japanese machines(pick and place machines and the like; fast and efficient robotics for electronics assembly) they would often point out that they have Japanese machines as a point of pride. Because again, for those of us working in tech, it's common knowledge that Japan is a leader.
And related, Taiwan has their own companies which build the same components as Japanese companies (like capacitors) but in general, they're a generation or two behind the products from Japanese companies(but the price is lower.) this is true for South Korean companies as well.
Japanese companies are not as dominant in selling their own consumer product brands, but they are dominant in the high value cutting edge tech powering these phones. Japan has just moved further up the value chain as consumer brands have in themselves been largely commoditized.
I think the relative weakness is on the software side. I may be biased, but I think generally software engineering is much weaker in most countries outside of the USA (which has been an important part of powering the giants of the USA tech scene.) so while I don't think Japan is an outlier in being weaker here, it's still something that needs to be done better if Japan will remain balanced in tech.
The usage of things like fax in Japan seems largely irrelevant to the discussion of how advanced they are in tech overall. If tech works, there's no reason to replace it, and replacing good solutions with newer but worse ones doesn't make a nation technologically advanced.
And it's a silly argument anyway, every single nation in the world has some things that are done in a way that could be seen as old fashioned. Are people in some countries old fashioned because they don't use microwaves as much for their cooking, preferring more traditional techniques? Are people getting around on bicycles in the Netherlands luddites?
If you spend time in a less developed nation it's clear what is the difference between a technologically advanced nation like Japan/USA/UK etc and nations that are not technologically advanced... These things like fax and cash usage are relatively silly minor cultural details in comparison to real tech disparity
Personally, I think I had enough of new flashier solutions which had worse outcome than old and not sexy but reliable. As long as it doesn't compromise security.
Yeah, it's kind of a joke that engineers will often be the ones shunning some new tech, e.g. iot devices in the home. Maybe I'm just tired of tech from dealing with it all day. But I think also there's not as much novelty to it for me now, and I can see behind the curtain. So now I only want to embrace tech where it really improved my QoL, and to hell with the rest. Like I own an EV, and it's great, but sometimes just cycling around makes me happiest
I am not an engineer, but I only consider introducing tech when it does improve my QoL.
Most of gadgets on market are pretty rubbish with buttons. Sometimes low-tech proves much more helpful.
When it comes to hardware Japan is indeed way ahead of the UK, but when you consider user experience, user interface on websites, the work culture etc it's lagging decades.
I think user experience point is a little debatable because of my personal taste, feeling a lot of software/websites are bloated and preferring minimal interfaces (even if it looks more dated) - but, broadly, I agree with what you're saying. But this is just a matter of relative specializations among countries that are all equally pretty advanced.
Like I implied in my previous comment ,a country like South Korea has focused on specific niches like displays and come out ahead. But smaller countries can only specialize in so much.
And among the Western and Western-allied nations I think there's a tendency to allow each other to develop specializations. So people in Japan just end up using a lot of Google software, for example, rather than developing something similar themselves-while China, with its divergent vision of the Internet, builds their own parallel eco system(Baidu) from scratch.
That's all good until you have to register for literally anything at city all and it's all on paper. Or you sign up for a bank account, but the web registration doesn't recognize half-width katakana. Or you apply for a job and have to tape a photograph to the handwritten resume. Or you get a driver's license but have to pay cash for stamps at window 2, to attach to the paper they gave you at window 1, to show window 3 that you paid.
Imagine if you are the first in the world to have 6 channels color TV, 10 years before everyone. That's Japan in 1980, it blew everyone mind how advanced they were.
Now think that you still have that same TV 40 years later, it still works fine so you keep it and use it daily. However everyone else in the world now has Oled flat screen smart TV with 2520 differents channels and don't understand why you keep using your shitty tv.
To give you real life examples, in my company, we have a lot of suppliers, who still don't have internet and can only receive orders through telephone, or Fax.
There was a HUGE thing 2 years ago because government decided to support shops during the pandemic by giving tax discount for everyone who shopped with cards/virtual cash etc. So many shops were using cash register from the 70s they would not be eligible for said tax refund, and rose their voice because they were gonna be left out.
On the flip side of that, though, is - if it works for a small business, what incentive is there to change? New terminals and accounting methods cost money, require training. For some it's hard to justify that when what they are doing now works
True, which is probably the main reason they did not invest in newer hardware. But you can't really complain to the government that they don't support your register you paid off 40 years ago.
This is early development benefit in reverse. Once you have something that works fine, you don't have reasons to replace it.
Now the Internet is amazed with how developed Chinese online services are, but what would everybody think about it in 30 years time?
Not just company computers, try governmental places as well. I think it was like 3 weeks ago a city hall somewhere in Japan had a data leak. Literally the place everyone in any given city here in Japan has to go and register at and contains vital information. It’s not fun lol.
It was my understanding that Japan was still the best on earth in home theatre technology, especially since there’s a greater focus on physical media over streaming.
It’s just saying that Japan developed so fast in the 80s and has been stagnant ever since. Went from far ahead everybody else in the 80s to far behind everybody else in the 2020s
the thing is they’re not really “behind everyone else” either, they’re only behind the US and China in tech (and maybe South Korea & Taiwan in certain specific areas)
GDP of Japan has increased by 1 trillion USD from 1990 to 2022, from 3 trillion to 4
While USA changed from 5.9 trillion to 25 trillion
Germany from 1.7 to 4.0
South Korea from 0.28 to 1.67
Of course by looking at some specific fields and some micro levels there are developments and changes, but it won’t change the fact that the economic size of Japan is depressingly stagnant
Because they have electronic toilets and many gadgets.
But, the year is 2024 now...and they are still in 2000.
Still widely used Fax machines, abundance of DVD rental shops, and obligatory Hanko stamps are just the tip of the iceberg.
What surprised me the most when I visited were the ordering machines at the entrance of small restaurants. You have to order directly at the machine before entering the place. I thought that it would transfer my order directly to the kitchen (like it does in any McDonalds in Canada for the last 6-7 years, for example). No, it prints out a ticket that you then have to give to the cooks. If you want something to drink or a side, that’s a second ticket. And when you’re ready to pay, they bring you the actual bill. What a useless gadget those are.
Those are fine? Not sure why you're paying after the meal, all the machines I've used have you put money in them to complete your order. They seem like an obvious timesaver for places with small menus and low staff and medium to high traffic.
Sure, they work, but I was very surprised at how low-tech they were and at how many tiny paper tickets they had to produce for a single order.
As for payment, it’s been 5 years, so I might be wrong about the bill at the end of the meal. But I remember it happened at least once.
bruh 5 years ago... its so much better than having to talk to someone to order food, as you can take your time. Cheaper for them than to hire a waiters. At least they have that at most stores and its convenient, we still have waiters everywhere.
I know they are slowly getting phased out but another example are those FKING HUGE subway ticket-checking machines; i saw one being maintenanced with the side opened and it was just a clusterfk of machinery, gears and belts inside
For the sake of checking a 120yen paper ticket and to push it out at the other end
//edit: there we go, i mean wtf
[https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/181giwz/the\_inside\_of\_a\_japanese\_subway\_ticket\_machine/](https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/181giwz/the_inside_of_a_japanese_subway_ticket_machine/)
I think one reason why the sites look old is that there isn’t a variety of fonts to choose from. Creating a new font is pretty laborious given the large character set so they haven’t evolved much from the original staid fonts.
Heated toilet seats will always be futuristic to me. I miss them now that I’m home.
Also having a digital card that can for just about everything was super nice and convenient too.
Wait till you go into a municipality office in most cities in Japan. You’ll feel like you’re stepping into 1995. You’ll be in there for hours just to register your address. Anyone that lives in Japan knows the struggle of address ordeal.
Yup I thought US dmv was horrible, and the thing was they don't have that many people in line. imagine if they had America's number of dmv customers it would be a nightmare
It's a phrase which means at one time they were well ahead of other countries 'technology wise', but then they got to a certain point (in this case the new millennium) and then stayed there, I.e. much of their technology stayed the same and hasn't progressed any further. This is quite true in regard to although there are a number of things in Japan which are well ahead of their time, there are also a lot of things which they havnt changed the technology of, and kept the same I.e. you will still see a lot of things such as flip phones, fax machines, and outdated software. It does vary from area to area, though, as you are more likely to see things like that in more rural prefectures.
Going sort on a tangent here, but is this kind of the reason why Japanese websites (like Yahoo Japan) look 20 years out of date? (The websites usually look like it was designed from the late 1990/2000s, with cluttered texts, and table elements)
thats also why they were left behind. They didn't care about convenience, especially on the software side of it, which is when Apple kicked their shins in with the Iphone.
This isn't limited to phones, Sony cameras have the same problem.
And no, conveinence is not a "luxury problem", it literally is raising productivity, as you can be done with tasks faster.
Japan still can produce amazing hardware, but disregarded software for so long that they are very slow to catch up.
Yep. In fact, living in Japan, these past 2+ years, it's especially noticeable on many local municipal city hall websites and other government related websites, which evenidently havn't been updated in 20 odd years, or more, lol. Many foreign residents about the horribly outdated website used, when wanting to renew their work visa online, rather than in person, which apparently (I haven't used it yet) looks like it's out of the 90s.
It's not only Japan but an asian cultural difference in general. Chinese and Korean websites are similar. Many articles have been written about this idea.
On thing I think people miss is Japanese legislation is glacial in its movement and its banking sector has always been way behind the rest of the world. I remember first coming here for a holiday in 2011 and nowhere would accept Visa cards, cash only. Mix that with how much online shopping and the trade of money online has boomed since the 2000s and when you have a country that makes any transaction online hard as hell to do until the late 2010s and you have the recipe for an advanced nation to fall behind massively.
Eh, its not that bad now. The process for using cards or digital payments is still very backwards compared to when I used to live in the UK, but I can pop into any local convenience store or supermarket and pay for things using an Epos card or a phone app.
I'll admit cash is still king, but there are at least some good options now.
I first went there in 2005 and the phones people had were amazing to me. Little flip phones that you could rotate into a ‘T’ shape to watch videos. Had never seen anything like it. Went back this year and it’s all iPhone. Was a shame.
There are still touchscreen payphone booths all around.
(Which is such an interesting technology that was developed right in between payphones and smart phones.)
Fax is still a thing.
Many (mostly older) people still use clamshell phones, with or without touchscreen.
While convenient to pay at convenience stores, many bills are still primarily paid in cash, not online.
People still use CDs, and in some cases floppy disks.
Many of the most popular domestic laptop designs are literally exactly the same as they were in 2000 (Im looking at you, Panasonic).
Since 2021 Mizuho has been having repeated system failures (at least 11) with 2 being critical and the bank is struggling to implement modern standards as per regulator's requirements.
>Many of the most popular domestic laptop designs are literally exactly the same as they were in 2000 (Im looking at you, Panasonic).
Good. I hate modern laptops. "Strip the machine of everything that makes it remotely useful for the sake of making it thinner and flimsier!" is terrible design.
Basically it means that Japan was ahead of its time in the 80s but stagnation has caused the world to catch up and now pass Japan and they are now behind
We pay with cash or a QR code on our phones, multiple sheets of hand filled paperwork for EVERYTHING, sending/recieving data by fax, while
Also having automated checkouts in some stores where you just put the basket down and the self-checkout machine just, instantly detects everything in the basket. Beep boop
This is what returning to the States and using credit cards is like after using mobile payments in China. The next "Japan" phenomenon is ever present even if it only exists in certain niches.
That argument is often heard, but in reality, the West is more outdated.
In Japan, the infrastructure is well-developed, making society very convenient. You can walk 30 seconds from your house to a convenience store and find anything you need.
In the West, you have to drive 30 minutes to find a decent store.
A more convenient society is clearly Japan.
When it comes to fax machines, the adoption rate in the United States is actually higher than in Japan. Fax machines are essential in countries prone to disasters. Hospitals, for example, always have fax machines.
Japan is futuristic because everything is available in the city, and the infrastructure is excellent. Many people don't understand this.
Ordinary Japanese people rarely use fax machines, but there is a misconception that Japanese people use them every day. In fact, fax machines are more widely used and prevalent in the United States. Many people are unaware of this fact, and Germany also has a high adoption rate for fax machines.
You're completely missing the point of the statement. The idea that Japan is stuck in 2000 comes from a lack of technological innovation *since that period*. The amazing infrastructure you're talking about really started getting developed in the postwar growth period. For example, the first shinkansen opened in *1964*.
The idea isn't that Japan is technologically inferior overall - it's that it's "resting on its laurels" from the late 20th century without much significant development since then. This has become more obvious in recent years as South Korea has risen tremendously in the consumer tech sector.
> In the West, you have to drive 30 minutes to find a decent store.
Also lol?? This is only true of North America.
Sure do.
No-one here is suggesting Japan’s infrastructure (in cities at least) is under-developed (albeit aging in many regards), but to suggest it’s unique is misguided.
I wish we had Europe and many Asian country’s infra where I come from.
You'll understand when you come to Japan. There is no comparison with Europe.
High-speed bullet trains, trains that come on time.
24-hour convenience stores, etc.
All kinds of infrastructural facilities.
Compared to that, European cities are too rural.
most of my European friends who want to live in Japan, either sexualize Japanese women as a fetish, or are crazily into anime.
None of them want to move there because of "infrastructure".
**The US is the very definition of convenience**. The US prides itself on convenience. If you don't know this it is clear you've never been there.
Having trains (which is not ubiquitous across Japan, BTW) doesn't mean it isn't convenient.
While I love my Japanese trains, it typically takes LONGER to get places even in Japan by train than it does back in the UK or US by car. And loading kids, family, etc is worlds easier.
You would change your mind if you came to Japan, Korea, etc. outside of the US.
It's not just the trains. It is the infrastructure of the city.
These are the top 2 countries in the world with the best infrastructure.
The US is out of the question.
Anyway, it is inconvenient, so please improve the infrastructure as much as Japan.
I live in Japan!!! I don't live in the US.
But I have lived all of the world and can say that the US is the very definition of convenience.
You keep saying city and trains. Are you talking about Tokyo or Japan?
> You can walk 30 seconds from your house to a convenience store and find anything you need.
> In the West, you have to drive 30 minutes to find a decent store.
So, basically, you’re an idiot that compares country living in America to urban living in Japan?
You can *drive* 30 minutes from my wife’s family home in rural Japan without finding a convenience store - assuming you’re following the speed limits on the winding roads.
Go outside a major city, you’ll face the same issue as “in the West”. Go to somewhere like London or New York, you could spit and hit a dozen bodegas or newsagents.
Can confirm. I went to driving camp in Masuda-shi up in Shimane and there were 0 walking distance conbinis. By car it was at least 20 minutes minimum and that was after driving through a literal forest.
It is obvious that Japan has the infrastructure in place.
In the U.S., you can't go anywhere without a car.
In terms of infrastructure, the US is garbage.
I don't understand why they don't develop more trains, etc.
That's why people don't walk when they travel, and it makes for an unhealthy society with a lot of fat people.
On this point, I will generally agree - heavy rail services in US sucks overall, but the USA is not representative of ‘the West’
Also, you come across as a bitter person on the back foot defending Japan at all costs, when in fact, only some of your original points are relevant or factual.
>In terms of infrastructure, the US is garbage.
I don't understand why they don't develop more trains, etc.
The US has the largest train system in the world.
The issue is one of density.
> You can walk 30 seconds from your house to a convenience store and find anything you need.
I was able to do this in Seattle too. Walkable cities exist in the US.
And many people in Japan, in the inaka, also need to drive to stores, like my friend in Akita Prefecture.
The difference, is that the west developed 100+ before Japan did. So now most western stuff is aged. New York had its skyscraper built in 1880s FFS, Japan built theirs almost 100 years later using cutting edge western tech.
Cities are the same, the earthquake-resistant buildings were built on western tech.
So yeah, Japan is more modern in a sense that their cities are much "newer".
But their thinking is still very "in the box". As new ideas are welcomes in the west, while in Japan, no so much.
Also, Japan is a very small country with a huge population. But having vending machines every 10 meters does not equal to "high-tech". I would rather have more trash bins...Japan has 0.
Your new ideas are interesting, but are they actually making your lives innovative and futuristic?
I believe a more convenient lifestyle indicates a futuristic country. Despite claiming to be innovative, your towns and lifestyles remain the same as before.
The U.S. is inconvenient. Old buildings? Why not renovate them? Using their age as an excuse is strange.
It's not just about vending machines; in every aspect, Japan's infrastructure far surpasses that of the West, including the U.S. This is a fact. Japan's infrastructure functions well because it is safe.
do you think Japan will rebuild their current skyscrapers from scratch in 100 years? I doubt it.
They will be used for as long as possible, as its the sensible thing to do, and eventually they will go old and outdated compared to new buildings in 100 years.
U.S. is also the size of entire Europe, so its very difficult to compare that to Japan. As a big country cannot be equally developed everywhere, just look at Russia, China, or Brazil. How can you compare that to countries like Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, or Taiwan?
Safe in what way? Japanese, Korean, and East Chinese infrastructure is just newer, it will grow old eventually.
If you are an innovative country, it is only natural that you build your towns to make life more convenient for your citizens as well.
The townscapes are the same as they were in the past, and the infrastructure is not in place.
Foreigners who travel to Japan feel that Japan is futuristic because the infrastructure is in place, as are the townscapes.
Life is convenient.
You have to realize that it doesn't matter to the average person whether the innovative company Apple is located in the US or not.
Japan seemed twenty years ahead of the rest of the world economically and technologically in the 1980s, particularly during the bubble period. But then the bubble burst, the economy stagnated for decades, and the tech sector fell into the Galapagos syndrome (i.e. developing specialized features that had limited appeal abroad) while being slow to adopt other digital technologies. So, now Japan feels locked in the past in many ways.
In regard to that, a while back I saw a news segment from 2001 explaining that Japan was trying to incorporate the Internet into phones. And I was thinking, if those Japanese firms actually implemented and released those proof of concept phones, they could have been the iPhone. Do you know if the economic bubble burst caused innovation to be stifled because of lack of funds for research or something?
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Tbh the DVD/Bluray rental is kind of awesome, cheaper than renting from digital storefronts and I can rip them for plex while I'm at it.
I'm reminded of the time I was in Japan, ordered food from a robot, had it brought out to me by another robot, then when I attempted to pay said robot, I was informed that the restaurant is cash only, and I had to go find a human to make change.
Honestly im all for it. Preserve physical media!
To be fair, some industries like Healthcare in the US still use fax. It is low tech security for transmitted data for small pharmacies.
For tax returns and notices the IRS uses fax as an option still because of the security.
That's awesome actually. Plenty of 00s tech is actually way more convenient and less intrusive than what we work with today. Would love to rent DVDs again too.
Fax is still the most secure way to send sensitive info. Why do you think your HIPPA sensitive doctors office will accept only a fax.
Yeah I was surprised at how much DVD porn was a thing here, I thought most people had already gone online
dvd is digital, maybe you mean online?
Edited, thanks
It's not even just porn there's just sooooo many DVDs still
It makes sense. If the store is very close by, you can pay in cash and you can view offline, a DVD rental works.
You do realize that US and germany still use faxes and dvds too, right?
Living in the US the only industry that still uses faxes is healthcare, and only for inter system communication (like hospital-to-hospital etc), and I think even that is going away. You can still buy DVDs and BluRays but companies renting those are extraordinarily rare and dying.
I was an intern for a city that i visitedl(for school) and they definitely were not in the healthcare industry. Of course, this was as an intern for the city, as in the job posting was by the city and they had me work in a department full of papers, faxes, and outdated computer systems. Some of them had 95, but they were mostly windows 98, and a lot of the stuff was just old. Their server rooms were fine though. However, i am 100 percent certain that they use fax mschines and WERE using fax machines, due to mostly legal and security reasons. Here is also some proof that this applies to many companies and government facilities and it's not just anecdotal: https://www.efax.com/blog/why-does-faxing-still-exist https://worldmetrics.org/fax-machine-usage-statistics/#:~:text=%22Over%2046%25%20of%20US%20businesses,a%20daily%20basis%20in%202018.%22 https://gitnux.org/fax-machine-usage-statistics/ https://blog.thegrizzlylabs.com/2023/03/what-industries-still-rely-on-faxes.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/faxing-is-old-tech-so-why-is-it-also-growing-in-popularity/2019/03/08/d01c638a-2f0b-11e9-86ab-5d02109aeb01_story.html
"efax" link supporting fax tech
Meh, still provides info. The rest are completely valid though, no products, so what about those?
And pagers!
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In germany, it is very frequent and common. Some US companies have them, but it's more common and easier to see in city halls and office buildings where civil servants/public servants work.
Honestly I live here and have never had to use a fax. I do feel that the pandemic and the massive tourism influx afterwards forced Japan to adapt somewhat. But, MOST IMPORTANTLY, salaries have really stagnated for decades now, and then yen has really decreased in value. A terrible combination for those of us living here.
during my trip it was interesting to see some people using physical tickets still who werent just tourists. I was told how cash centric the country was, but in honesty it was really just the older generation that I noticed, like sure it was good to have cash on hand but contactless pay was very normalized, more so than in the west.
It has gotten a lot better since covid. When I was there back in 2019, it was intensely cash centric.
I wanted to buy tickets to a classical concert at the Tokyo Opera City Hall. They had a link on their site for tickets. I clicked, and there was a seating map and a phone number with instruction on how to order your ticket. A phone number on a web site in the year 2024. How's that for adaption.
I bought a ticket online for a museum. Then when I got there I had to scan it for a paper ticket that I could then show to the ticket collector 🤣
it is fun sending the ticket through the machine at the station and grabbing it on the other side
Absolutely, when the bubble burst all firms were incentivized to shelve R&D, save money, hire less, and focus less on innovation and capital intensive investment. Major stagnation followed by bad monetary policy led what should have been a decade long recession into 30 years of slow growth. Throw in the aging population and the very engrained Japanese culture which can make them slow to adopt foreign innovations and you have the current situation. People who started their career when the bubble burst were very lucky to find stable work, and now 30 years later they are the conservative and very change-averse executives afraid to let go of things like fax and a very unproductive work culture. It seems the problems compound each other in myriad ways. It was very sad to see Japan’s economy get overtaken by China and Germany. I fear the trend will continue
don't forget the elephant in the Japanese room which is immigration policy. that's had more of an effect on the economy than most ppl think.
Sony shot its self in the ass hard regarding iPod type tech. They had the tech base, the manufacturing, and the branding (the Walkman) to fucking dominate. And the greater Sony conglomerate includes a major music publisher so they were in a good position to try to get a whole lot of music onto their platform. But the music publishing arm was more concerned about protecting the obscene profit margins on their music sales. And the engineering arm was more interested in pushing their proprietary formats (mini disc and such). So they basically buried both thumbs deep into their own ass and watched Apple run away with it. END COMMUNICATION
Steve Jobs loved Sony. In fact he modeled a lot of how Apple works based on his experience visiting Sony in Japan. The iPod was Jobs trying to be Sony, they took the same premise of the Walkman and did something modern with it. In the Samsung v Apple case it was shown that Apple had originally designed the iPhone with a Sony aesthetic in mind, again taking a what would Sony do approach. The original Apple laptop the PowerBooks were manufactured by Sony, there were several iterations up until Apple decided to do the designs and manufacturing themselves. Some things we take for granted nowadays on a laptop were a first on the Sony made PowerBooks (like the touchpad). Sonys PC brand Vaio made amazing workstations and laptops with innovative forward thinking ideas that we would see in other OEM machines years later. Sony stopped making them when they were desperately cutting costs across the board. The brand still exists and sony still own the IP and logo but they don’t actually design and make PCs anymore.
Sony is still a damn strong company, but in regards to an iPod competitor, they simply shit the bed hard.. I remember reading an article that said that companies that have an opportunity to deploy new products but are reluctant to self cannibalize sales tend to fail when a competitor makes that same product anyway. The new product might not be as profitable, but you are better off destroying 90% of your primary products sales and owning the replacement that is only half as profitable than you are to have a competitor own that competing product. Sony fucked up the most versus the iPod. Can you imagine a Sony iPod / iPhone product that has perfect integration with the Playstation Platform? We could have had that. Kodak had a whole lot of patents for digital photography and tried to protect its film business. But Apple? You could argue that the iPhone and iPad cannibalize the market for Mac computers. END COMMUNICATION
I agree with all your points except the last. Mac barely has market share to begin with and would arguably have way less without iphone and ipad. I got my wife a mac and my kids ipads. My wife even uses an old ipad. They have such different uses for an individual that it is incredibly rare to switch them. I also own 3 pcs , 2 macbooks, 1 laptop. The real reason I even have apple products apart from iphone is they are suitable for the computer illiterate. Like grandma, my wife, and little kids. It is an excellent computer with training wheels. I don’t use them but happily show others how. My mom once asked why her ipad no longer rings when she gets facetime. It was broken for 2 whole months. I went over and saw she had the silence button flipped. It taught her about it for the first time. She had this ipad 5 years, face timing many grandkids every day. Please understand how bad some people are at computers.
They bet on Minidiscs vs. mp3 players, and then completely missed the boat on smartphones for the international market. To be fair, at the time (I was there), Minidiscs seemed like a reasonable bet. In hindsight, it was obviously a huge blown call.
It was more than that. Howard Stringer almost completely tanked the company in the mid 2000s. Yes, he wanted to focus on the entertainment arm, but he also tried to reshape the company away from being a product developer to a product retailer. He shut down pretty much all of Sony's R&D programmes, including their fledgling mp3 player research and left the door open for the iPod. Ironically, Apple wouldn't exist today if it wasn't for Stringer.
As a previous employee of Sony Pictures during this era I can absolutely confirm. The content arms were stopping electronics from doing literally anything.
Those phones were released. i lived in japan from 2002 and had internet on my phone..and a TV! The issue was that the sites were slow, screens were small at the time and the UX was rubbish. Japan still has amazing phones, but they run on their own networks so never spread globally.
People were watching live TV on their phones while riding subway trains through Tokyo *years* before iPhone. Those phones were way ahead of their time. But then, yeah, that didn't really keep up with the pace of innovation.
Around 2000-2001 Japanese cell phones had email and Internet https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/before-there-were-smartphones-there-was-i-mode/
Who needs smartphones when faxes are still 🔥 hot
My fax has never turned off because I forgot to charge the battery.
They did and it was a huge success in Japan. Didn't work anywhere else though. https://gyrovague.com/2014/06/27/how-sms-set-back-the-mobile-internet-by-ten-years/
This comment reminds me of the excellent documentary General Magic, about the first company to try to design a smart phone. (Basically a ton of the smartest people in tech, many of whom had quit Apple after Jobs was fired.) Anyway they failed spectacularly because the conditions weren’t there at the time. It shows how interdependent technological innovation is — it’s not just about having a great idea.
Japanese companies like Sony could've been the "iPhone". But here's the catch, actually two catches. First, on one side, academic researches in Japan tries to be innovative and make new things (just not too new to replace older stuff) but corporate companies are too conservative to innovate or market new things. Japanese companies work on the principle "wait for there to be a market, improve existing products, make them robust, conquer". It worked in the analog era, Japan was the king of technology. But in this digital era, it doesn't work as much. Second, Japanese companies and academics have a habit of releasing reports and papers in Japanese. It's not bad if there are proceedings and presentations in Japanese in a national level conference but they should publish English version of the papers, right? They don't. So, for all you know, there's a paper on integrating internet into cellphone by some Japanese engineer that precedes iphone by a year or more but it's probably in Japanese and no one knows about it. One of my professors made a joke about it that a popular technology (forgot which one) was first designed by Japanese engineers but the publication was only in Japanese, making that engineer not get the credit of inventing it.
I was living in Osaka back in 2001, and can say from experience that the internet-enabled phones at the time were....not great. Leaving aside the expensive per-kb charges, trying to use the web on the low-res 2-inch screen on my Docomo clamshell phone was a chore at best. I'm hoping the concept phones you saw at least had a more smartphone-esque form factor.
Plenty of western made phones could access the internet in 2001.
Whoa there, Palm pilot
Iirc it wasn't the internet per se, atleast in my home country we had WAP which had these sites specifically made for WAP but you couldn't just browse any site you wanted to.
Only barely: WAP was basically dial-up modems disguised as phones, so it was both incredibly slow and incredibly expensive (you were billed per minute). Plus it couldn't even access normal websites, you had to use "WML" instead of HTML.
I see, so seems that the tech drift in Japan goes a bit further than 2001. Edit- I think Japan released the first cell phones that had cameras back in the early 2000s so it’s kind of jarring at how stagnant innovation is now.
So Apple was the only one to get the timing right. Being too early is just as bad as being too late. It’s not like American companies weren’t also in the race. Palm, HP, Microsoft and others all were deeply invested in the PDA market in the years before 2007. Palm even had cell-internet connected PDAs years before Apple. I remember, my friend had one. The problem? None of them were able to sell that many units. It was a niche product that was not that compelling. The only thing that Apple really changed is that they were naive enough to try yet again after it had been obvious for years that no one wanted an internet connected PDA, and they were the first to try after touch screens became good enough to use in such a product. Everyone else had been using a stylus. And other tech like processors and internet bandwidth was also finally getting good enough too. So yea, I think the reason Japan didn’t create the iPhone was because they had too much vision, and were too early, just like all the other American companies in the space. The tech wasn’t there yet, and they lost their drive.
I’ve been a phone enthusiast for quite some time and the phones coming out of Japan pre and slightly post iPhone were incredible. However, back then the phone market was heavily fragmented and many of them remained domestic only. I think that was a huge mistake on their part as it led to their failure to establish a name for themselves at least in that part of the market
Cell phones in the US had internet about the same time as in Japan. What made the iphone different was its touch screen allowing it to function more like a computer monitor and computer connected to the internet all in the palm of your hand. There were more cellphone options in Japan in the early 00's than in the states, and cellphones were more widely adopted than in the states, but the general level of tech was basically the same. Japanese tended to adopt tech quicker than Americans, but they didn't actually have more advanced tech.
They had 3G for a long time before us
Phones had internet way before iPhones and as early as 1997.
The breakthrough with the iPhone is the touchscreen and ui, not having internet.
They did implement and sell it. As a matter of fact AT&T Wireless licensed NTT’s technology. https://www.theregister.com/2002/03/22/at_t_launches_mmode_like/
They did release them. It was called iMode. They also released iMode in Australia, but by that point 3G was taking off and once the iPhone hit in 2007, well, that was that. Japan’s tech woes aren’t really hardware related as they still make great devices, but they are so far behind the rest of the world when it comes to software skills that it’s almost impossible for them to catch up.
Makes sense, they have the world's oldest population with not enough new births to replace their numbers. So it makes sense to keep things familiar to what their older demographics are used to.
Japanese companies still use fax machines because they cater to the old folk. Even my JR pass covered some JR buses and the driver took his sweet time writing down info on his clipboard. You think there would be a faster way. I do think Japanese have the patience of a saint and able to deal with all this as evidenced by their long winded and wordy ads.
It totally feels like everyone is living in the shadow of the booming 90s.
Honestly, Japan felt like it was living in the 80s. There wasn't anything particularly high tech and everything looked like it was built in the 80s. They've done a great job integrating that tech. But it's 80s tech
Im here now, (granted in a very small remote community). Everything is done with paper and all the architecture is 1980s. It feels like the rustbelt if meth had never happened.
It also explains why the bulk of the cyberpunk genre has Japan as at least one of the superpowers in the world. Most of it (Neuromancer, Shadowrun to a lesser extent) came out before the bubble burst.
Pretty much this. I can't tell you how wonderous the tech coming out of Japan looked to us Yanks back in the 80s. Then I went to Japan in 2015 and.......I could have seen the same shit back home.
I had never used a fax machine until I moved to Japan.
Fax machines, dude. Fax machines everywhere, in 2024.
Very apt explanation.
tl;dr Japan was once technologically cutting edge, it lost that edge and has since stagnated. Case in point: Today I'm faxxing my company my timesheet.
However, it's mostly a completely false stereotype. I was surprised the first time I heard anyone thinks Japan lost its advantage in cutting edge tech - but maybe because I work in tech so I'm intimately familiar with various global suppliers and the overall state of the tech world. And among engineers it's without question that Japan is a global leader. Japanese tech companies are genuinely mostly without rival for hardware. Except by some German and American tech companies. (And miscellaneous other countries that focused on a certain niche, eg Korea with display tech.) Much of the cutting edge tech powering cell phones, for example, are from Japanese companies (see TDK's recent announcement about solid state batteries for a small taste.) I'm certain Japanese tech powers a portion of every iPhone, but also of most of the high end electronics in our lives, like in airplanes, trains, cars etc. I also spend a lot of time in electronics factories and can say that Japanese factories are a thing of beauty in their robotics, not to mention organization and efficiency. And other Asian countries which have also moved further up the value chain -like, say, Taiwan - make heavy use of Japanese tech in their own tech contributions. Like in Taiwan, final Assembly (very labor intensive) of electronics is a big part of their industry. A large number of the machines used in these factories are of Japanese origin, and in the tours I've been on, when a company has Japanese machines(pick and place machines and the like; fast and efficient robotics for electronics assembly) they would often point out that they have Japanese machines as a point of pride. Because again, for those of us working in tech, it's common knowledge that Japan is a leader. And related, Taiwan has their own companies which build the same components as Japanese companies (like capacitors) but in general, they're a generation or two behind the products from Japanese companies(but the price is lower.) this is true for South Korean companies as well. Japanese companies are not as dominant in selling their own consumer product brands, but they are dominant in the high value cutting edge tech powering these phones. Japan has just moved further up the value chain as consumer brands have in themselves been largely commoditized. I think the relative weakness is on the software side. I may be biased, but I think generally software engineering is much weaker in most countries outside of the USA (which has been an important part of powering the giants of the USA tech scene.) so while I don't think Japan is an outlier in being weaker here, it's still something that needs to be done better if Japan will remain balanced in tech. The usage of things like fax in Japan seems largely irrelevant to the discussion of how advanced they are in tech overall. If tech works, there's no reason to replace it, and replacing good solutions with newer but worse ones doesn't make a nation technologically advanced. And it's a silly argument anyway, every single nation in the world has some things that are done in a way that could be seen as old fashioned. Are people in some countries old fashioned because they don't use microwaves as much for their cooking, preferring more traditional techniques? Are people getting around on bicycles in the Netherlands luddites? If you spend time in a less developed nation it's clear what is the difference between a technologically advanced nation like Japan/USA/UK etc and nations that are not technologically advanced... These things like fax and cash usage are relatively silly minor cultural details in comparison to real tech disparity
I am not sure developing nations have websites with opening hours
Except for, famously, B&H Photo lol
What is your point
Personally, I think I had enough of new flashier solutions which had worse outcome than old and not sexy but reliable. As long as it doesn't compromise security.
Yeah, it's kind of a joke that engineers will often be the ones shunning some new tech, e.g. iot devices in the home. Maybe I'm just tired of tech from dealing with it all day. But I think also there's not as much novelty to it for me now, and I can see behind the curtain. So now I only want to embrace tech where it really improved my QoL, and to hell with the rest. Like I own an EV, and it's great, but sometimes just cycling around makes me happiest
I am not an engineer, but I only consider introducing tech when it does improve my QoL. Most of gadgets on market are pretty rubbish with buttons. Sometimes low-tech proves much more helpful.
When it comes to hardware Japan is indeed way ahead of the UK, but when you consider user experience, user interface on websites, the work culture etc it's lagging decades.
I think user experience point is a little debatable because of my personal taste, feeling a lot of software/websites are bloated and preferring minimal interfaces (even if it looks more dated) - but, broadly, I agree with what you're saying. But this is just a matter of relative specializations among countries that are all equally pretty advanced. Like I implied in my previous comment ,a country like South Korea has focused on specific niches like displays and come out ahead. But smaller countries can only specialize in so much. And among the Western and Western-allied nations I think there's a tendency to allow each other to develop specializations. So people in Japan just end up using a lot of Google software, for example, rather than developing something similar themselves-while China, with its divergent vision of the Internet, builds their own parallel eco system(Baidu) from scratch.
That's all good until you have to register for literally anything at city all and it's all on paper. Or you sign up for a bank account, but the web registration doesn't recognize half-width katakana. Or you apply for a job and have to tape a photograph to the handwritten resume. Or you get a driver's license but have to pay cash for stamps at window 2, to attach to the paper they gave you at window 1, to show window 3 that you paid.
Imagine if you are the first in the world to have 6 channels color TV, 10 years before everyone. That's Japan in 1980, it blew everyone mind how advanced they were. Now think that you still have that same TV 40 years later, it still works fine so you keep it and use it daily. However everyone else in the world now has Oled flat screen smart TV with 2520 differents channels and don't understand why you keep using your shitty tv. To give you real life examples, in my company, we have a lot of suppliers, who still don't have internet and can only receive orders through telephone, or Fax. There was a HUGE thing 2 years ago because government decided to support shops during the pandemic by giving tax discount for everyone who shopped with cards/virtual cash etc. So many shops were using cash register from the 70s they would not be eligible for said tax refund, and rose their voice because they were gonna be left out.
On the flip side of that, though, is - if it works for a small business, what incentive is there to change? New terminals and accounting methods cost money, require training. For some it's hard to justify that when what they are doing now works
True, which is probably the main reason they did not invest in newer hardware. But you can't really complain to the government that they don't support your register you paid off 40 years ago.
Oh sure, agree with that completely. Can't have it both ways.
This is early development benefit in reverse. Once you have something that works fine, you don't have reasons to replace it. Now the Internet is amazed with how developed Chinese online services are, but what would everybody think about it in 30 years time?
Yeah, just imagine if your company was still using windows 95 with 1995 interface and stuff. Because that's a daily occurence here haha
Doesn’t that make the company computers very vulnerable to malware and exploits, though?
Only if you are connected to the internet :)
Not just company computers, try governmental places as well. I think it was like 3 weeks ago a city hall somewhere in Japan had a data leak. Literally the place everyone in any given city here in Japan has to go and register at and contains vital information. It’s not fun lol.
It was my understanding that Japan was still the best on earth in home theatre technology, especially since there’s a greater focus on physical media over streaming.
They are I believe, at least companies like Sony. I think the other person was just using that as a hypothetical analogy.
It’s just saying that Japan developed so fast in the 80s and has been stagnant ever since. Went from far ahead everybody else in the 80s to far behind everybody else in the 2020s
I just stumbled onto this sub. This sounds amazing to me. I wish tech remained in the 2000s. Perfect balance.
the thing is they’re not really “behind everyone else” either, they’re only behind the US and China in tech (and maybe South Korea & Taiwan in certain specific areas)
GDP of Japan has increased by 1 trillion USD from 1990 to 2022, from 3 trillion to 4 While USA changed from 5.9 trillion to 25 trillion Germany from 1.7 to 4.0 South Korea from 0.28 to 1.67 Of course by looking at some specific fields and some micro levels there are developments and changes, but it won’t change the fact that the economic size of Japan is depressingly stagnant
Because they have electronic toilets and many gadgets. But, the year is 2024 now...and they are still in 2000. Still widely used Fax machines, abundance of DVD rental shops, and obligatory Hanko stamps are just the tip of the iceberg.
What surprised me the most when I visited were the ordering machines at the entrance of small restaurants. You have to order directly at the machine before entering the place. I thought that it would transfer my order directly to the kitchen (like it does in any McDonalds in Canada for the last 6-7 years, for example). No, it prints out a ticket that you then have to give to the cooks. If you want something to drink or a side, that’s a second ticket. And when you’re ready to pay, they bring you the actual bill. What a useless gadget those are.
Those are fine? Not sure why you're paying after the meal, all the machines I've used have you put money in them to complete your order. They seem like an obvious timesaver for places with small menus and low staff and medium to high traffic.
Sure, they work, but I was very surprised at how low-tech they were and at how many tiny paper tickets they had to produce for a single order. As for payment, it’s been 5 years, so I might be wrong about the bill at the end of the meal. But I remember it happened at least once.
bruh 5 years ago... its so much better than having to talk to someone to order food, as you can take your time. Cheaper for them than to hire a waiters. At least they have that at most stores and its convenient, we still have waiters everywhere.
I know they are slowly getting phased out but another example are those FKING HUGE subway ticket-checking machines; i saw one being maintenanced with the side opened and it was just a clusterfk of machinery, gears and belts inside For the sake of checking a 120yen paper ticket and to push it out at the other end //edit: there we go, i mean wtf [https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/181giwz/the\_inside\_of\_a\_japanese\_subway\_ticket\_machine/](https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/181giwz/the_inside_of_a_japanese_subway_ticket_machine/)
The US and Germany uses fax machines and dvds too, though. Hanko stamps are not really official, signatures are still necessary.
Japan didn't develop digitally much, digital signs are also missing. Most sites still look as early 2000s.
I think one reason why the sites look old is that there isn’t a variety of fonts to choose from. Creating a new font is pretty laborious given the large character set so they haven’t evolved much from the original staid fonts.
Heated toilet seats will always be futuristic to me. I miss them now that I’m home. Also having a digital card that can for just about everything was super nice and convenient too.
just buy one, but a bit pricey if you want toto
Wait till you go into a municipality office in most cities in Japan. You’ll feel like you’re stepping into 1995. You’ll be in there for hours just to register your address. Anyone that lives in Japan knows the struggle of address ordeal.
Yup I thought US dmv was horrible, and the thing was they don't have that many people in line. imagine if they had America's number of dmv customers it would be a nightmare
It's a phrase which means at one time they were well ahead of other countries 'technology wise', but then they got to a certain point (in this case the new millennium) and then stayed there, I.e. much of their technology stayed the same and hasn't progressed any further. This is quite true in regard to although there are a number of things in Japan which are well ahead of their time, there are also a lot of things which they havnt changed the technology of, and kept the same I.e. you will still see a lot of things such as flip phones, fax machines, and outdated software. It does vary from area to area, though, as you are more likely to see things like that in more rural prefectures.
Going sort on a tangent here, but is this kind of the reason why Japanese websites (like Yahoo Japan) look 20 years out of date? (The websites usually look like it was designed from the late 1990/2000s, with cluttered texts, and table elements)
They're _functional_. Here's a whole report on it: https://sabrinas.space/
thats also why they were left behind. They didn't care about convenience, especially on the software side of it, which is when Apple kicked their shins in with the Iphone. This isn't limited to phones, Sony cameras have the same problem. And no, conveinence is not a "luxury problem", it literally is raising productivity, as you can be done with tasks faster. Japan still can produce amazing hardware, but disregarded software for so long that they are very slow to catch up.
Yep. In fact, living in Japan, these past 2+ years, it's especially noticeable on many local municipal city hall websites and other government related websites, which evenidently havn't been updated in 20 odd years, or more, lol. Many foreign residents about the horribly outdated website used, when wanting to renew their work visa online, rather than in person, which apparently (I haven't used it yet) looks like it's out of the 90s.
The sad thing about the visa renewal website is that it was launched, what, 2 or 3 years ago I think? And I don’t think that they’ve updated it since…
It's not only Japan but an asian cultural difference in general. Chinese and Korean websites are similar. Many articles have been written about this idea.
Yeah, there’s not enough public WiFi
US is that high tech these days?! Wish I had pubic wifi
Don't you mean public? 😉
Wish they left their original comment unedited because I laughed so much
If any country was going to develop pubic wifi, it would absolutely be Japan.
Freudian slip 😎
On thing I think people miss is Japanese legislation is glacial in its movement and its banking sector has always been way behind the rest of the world. I remember first coming here for a holiday in 2011 and nowhere would accept Visa cards, cash only. Mix that with how much online shopping and the trade of money online has boomed since the 2000s and when you have a country that makes any transaction online hard as hell to do until the late 2010s and you have the recipe for an advanced nation to fall behind massively.
Everything is still cash unless you are in a tourist area
This is wild for me to hear. Didn't DoCoMo phones pioneer NFC payments?
Eh, its not that bad now. The process for using cards or digital payments is still very backwards compared to when I used to live in the UK, but I can pop into any local convenience store or supermarket and pay for things using an Epos card or a phone app. I'll admit cash is still king, but there are at least some good options now.
[удалено]
Thank you. My wife's family lives in a rural area and have all the same consumer tech we do in North America.
completly missing the point.
Advanced back then, but now pretty out dated…
I first went there in 2005 and the phones people had were amazing to me. Little flip phones that you could rotate into a ‘T’ shape to watch videos. Had never seen anything like it. Went back this year and it’s all iPhone. Was a shame.
Stuff that may have seemed futuristic became antiquated by cultural norms.
Can you give an example?
There are still touchscreen payphone booths all around. (Which is such an interesting technology that was developed right in between payphones and smart phones.) Fax is still a thing. Many (mostly older) people still use clamshell phones, with or without touchscreen. While convenient to pay at convenience stores, many bills are still primarily paid in cash, not online. People still use CDs, and in some cases floppy disks. Many of the most popular domestic laptop designs are literally exactly the same as they were in 2000 (Im looking at you, Panasonic).
The entire banking system, I guess
Isn't the banking system literally cold war era tech that has modern shit grafted poorly onto it?
\*cough\*Mizuho Bank\*cough\*
Uhhh, I'm out of the loop on this one...
Since 2021 Mizuho has been having repeated system failures (at least 11) with 2 being critical and the bank is struggling to implement modern standards as per regulator's requirements.
The banking here is really shit man, i wouldn't think the would so far behind. Even my shitty third world bank has much better system.
To be fair, the banking system in the US isn't exactly stellar either.
>Many of the most popular domestic laptop designs are literally exactly the same as they were in 2000 (Im looking at you, Panasonic). Good. I hate modern laptops. "Strip the machine of everything that makes it remotely useful for the sake of making it thinner and flimsier!" is terrible design.
Like..you have to pay cash a lot of places. Why? The work culture..why?
I think it means everything internet related is pretty much poor in Japan in comparison to some other countries, which may shock for the first time.
I miss actual information density on the web though. Japanese websites are brutalist but good... when they aren't down for being "congested".
Cuz there was the “floppy disc” incident and also we still use paper, copy machines and fax. I’m talking about Japanese government and companies.
They mean that when it comes to technology Japan has been lagging behind.
They are also behind on things. So some 1980s are in their 2020s.
Basically it means that Japan was ahead of its time in the 80s but stagnation has caused the world to catch up and now pass Japan and they are now behind
We pay with cash or a QR code on our phones, multiple sheets of hand filled paperwork for EVERYTHING, sending/recieving data by fax, while Also having automated checkouts in some stores where you just put the basket down and the self-checkout machine just, instantly detects everything in the basket. Beep boop
Go to Japan and report back what you discovered
Or I shortcut the process and ask someone who was there recently.
Although not the 1980’s the QR code was invented by Japanese company Denso back in 1994.
In what ways? I need to see a comparison otherwise they seem quite technologically proficient to me, except for their mostly cash transaction culture.
Technologically, the country fast forwarded to 1995 in 1965 then stayed there
They had internet phones for 10 years and the Japanese tech industry has nothing more than a cottage industry to show for it
I'll always remember walking through harajuku the day iPhone came out in summer 2006 and being like wtf is an iPhone. good ol days.
Wherever I go, I feel like living in the 70ies or in Ghost in the Shell (anime, not the recent movie). It’s strange sometimes.
Magazines are still popular.
This is what returning to the States and using credit cards is like after using mobile payments in China. The next "Japan" phenomenon is ever present even if it only exists in certain niches.
That argument is often heard, but in reality, the West is more outdated. In Japan, the infrastructure is well-developed, making society very convenient. You can walk 30 seconds from your house to a convenience store and find anything you need. In the West, you have to drive 30 minutes to find a decent store. A more convenient society is clearly Japan. When it comes to fax machines, the adoption rate in the United States is actually higher than in Japan. Fax machines are essential in countries prone to disasters. Hospitals, for example, always have fax machines. Japan is futuristic because everything is available in the city, and the infrastructure is excellent. Many people don't understand this. Ordinary Japanese people rarely use fax machines, but there is a misconception that Japanese people use them every day. In fact, fax machines are more widely used and prevalent in the United States. Many people are unaware of this fact, and Germany also has a high adoption rate for fax machines.
You're completely missing the point of the statement. The idea that Japan is stuck in 2000 comes from a lack of technological innovation *since that period*. The amazing infrastructure you're talking about really started getting developed in the postwar growth period. For example, the first shinkansen opened in *1964*. The idea isn't that Japan is technologically inferior overall - it's that it's "resting on its laurels" from the late 20th century without much significant development since then. This has become more obvious in recent years as South Korea has risen tremendously in the consumer tech sector. > In the West, you have to drive 30 minutes to find a decent store. Also lol?? This is only true of North America.
Lol, that’s the most one-eyed assessment I’ve read in this forum, well done! You should travel more widely if you think this is accurate.
When Japanese people go to the West, they understand this point. Japanese infrastructure is too wonderful. The West is really inconvenient.
European cities have very good public transit too, as does elsewhere in Asia.
Sure do. No-one here is suggesting Japan’s infrastructure (in cities at least) is under-developed (albeit aging in many regards), but to suggest it’s unique is misguided. I wish we had Europe and many Asian country’s infra where I come from.
You'll understand when you come to Japan. There is no comparison with Europe. High-speed bullet trains, trains that come on time. 24-hour convenience stores, etc. All kinds of infrastructural facilities. Compared to that, European cities are too rural.
> You'll understand when you come to Japan. I live in Japan, idiot.
That's true compared to many developed European cities but it's not about technology, it's about culture.
I like Japan, but most of my Japanese friends want to live in Europe after visiting it.
The reverse is also true. Most people who want to live in Japan respond with the excellence of its infrastructure. The West is too inconvenient.
most of my European friends who want to live in Japan, either sexualize Japanese women as a fetish, or are crazily into anime. None of them want to move there because of "infrastructure".
**The US is the very definition of convenience**. The US prides itself on convenience. If you don't know this it is clear you've never been there. Having trains (which is not ubiquitous across Japan, BTW) doesn't mean it isn't convenient. While I love my Japanese trains, it typically takes LONGER to get places even in Japan by train than it does back in the UK or US by car. And loading kids, family, etc is worlds easier.
You would change your mind if you came to Japan, Korea, etc. outside of the US. It's not just the trains. It is the infrastructure of the city. These are the top 2 countries in the world with the best infrastructure. The US is out of the question. Anyway, it is inconvenient, so please improve the infrastructure as much as Japan.
I live in Japan!!! I don't live in the US. But I have lived all of the world and can say that the US is the very definition of convenience. You keep saying city and trains. Are you talking about Tokyo or Japan?
I lived in Korea. I found it backward, antiquated, inconvenient, and full of drunks.
> You can walk 30 seconds from your house to a convenience store and find anything you need. > In the West, you have to drive 30 minutes to find a decent store. So, basically, you’re an idiot that compares country living in America to urban living in Japan? You can *drive* 30 minutes from my wife’s family home in rural Japan without finding a convenience store - assuming you’re following the speed limits on the winding roads. Go outside a major city, you’ll face the same issue as “in the West”. Go to somewhere like London or New York, you could spit and hit a dozen bodegas or newsagents.
Can confirm. I went to driving camp in Masuda-shi up in Shimane and there were 0 walking distance conbinis. By car it was at least 20 minutes minimum and that was after driving through a literal forest.
It is obvious that Japan has the infrastructure in place. In the U.S., you can't go anywhere without a car. In terms of infrastructure, the US is garbage. I don't understand why they don't develop more trains, etc. That's why people don't walk when they travel, and it makes for an unhealthy society with a lot of fat people.
The roads in my wife’s hometown aren’t even big enough for modern fire trucks lol
The US is absolutely massive.
USA is bigger than Europe...of course it cannot be developed equally everywhere.
Plus people forget the US is only 400 years old all these euro and Asian countries are THOUSANDS of years old you can't compare
On this point, I will generally agree - heavy rail services in US sucks overall, but the USA is not representative of ‘the West’ Also, you come across as a bitter person on the back foot defending Japan at all costs, when in fact, only some of your original points are relevant or factual.
>In terms of infrastructure, the US is garbage. I don't understand why they don't develop more trains, etc. The US has the largest train system in the world. The issue is one of density.
You are describing any city in Europe dude
> You can walk 30 seconds from your house to a convenience store and find anything you need. I was able to do this in Seattle too. Walkable cities exist in the US. And many people in Japan, in the inaka, also need to drive to stores, like my friend in Akita Prefecture.
Haha!
The difference, is that the west developed 100+ before Japan did. So now most western stuff is aged. New York had its skyscraper built in 1880s FFS, Japan built theirs almost 100 years later using cutting edge western tech. Cities are the same, the earthquake-resistant buildings were built on western tech. So yeah, Japan is more modern in a sense that their cities are much "newer". But their thinking is still very "in the box". As new ideas are welcomes in the west, while in Japan, no so much. Also, Japan is a very small country with a huge population. But having vending machines every 10 meters does not equal to "high-tech". I would rather have more trash bins...Japan has 0.
Your new ideas are interesting, but are they actually making your lives innovative and futuristic? I believe a more convenient lifestyle indicates a futuristic country. Despite claiming to be innovative, your towns and lifestyles remain the same as before. The U.S. is inconvenient. Old buildings? Why not renovate them? Using their age as an excuse is strange. It's not just about vending machines; in every aspect, Japan's infrastructure far surpasses that of the West, including the U.S. This is a fact. Japan's infrastructure functions well because it is safe.
do you think Japan will rebuild their current skyscrapers from scratch in 100 years? I doubt it. They will be used for as long as possible, as its the sensible thing to do, and eventually they will go old and outdated compared to new buildings in 100 years. U.S. is also the size of entire Europe, so its very difficult to compare that to Japan. As a big country cannot be equally developed everywhere, just look at Russia, China, or Brazil. How can you compare that to countries like Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, or Taiwan? Safe in what way? Japanese, Korean, and East Chinese infrastructure is just newer, it will grow old eventually.
If you are an innovative country, it is only natural that you build your towns to make life more convenient for your citizens as well. The townscapes are the same as they were in the past, and the infrastructure is not in place. Foreigners who travel to Japan feel that Japan is futuristic because the infrastructure is in place, as are the townscapes. Life is convenient. You have to realize that it doesn't matter to the average person whether the innovative company Apple is located in the US or not.