Everything in Japan is next level | Hacker News Reader

Everything in Japan is next level

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I am a Japan resident.

Except the Suica card featuring a notch (for helping as tactile aid to less-abled), I can assure you none of these are in widespread use (i.e. absolutely commonplace). For a fact, I am seeing some of these for the first time with a sense of "Wow, this is in Japan?"

The ones which are sometimes encountered are the Braille on top of cans (Beers mostly. Not colas. The article missed elevator buttons & directions - they always have braille), and the toilet pink-noise. Calculator and coffee holders depends on the banks. JP & 7-11 ATM don't seem to have it. Wrapping paper in chewing gum boxes only - not the sticks. There are equally numerous or more such novelties seen in China, so I believe its not something extraordinary.

I wish HN (and Reddit) stopped romanticizing Japan. This is a well functioning society, people are courteous & law is followed to the letter - but we are in no way living in utopia. These are some niche inventions & gadgetry. Rather, the concern is Japan is falling behind in regular technological advances since the past decade (at least)

Edit: some details, fixed typo

Been to Japan a lot before COVID, can confirm.

Most notably, they were very far behind on electronic banking and paperless processes.

Getting a Shinkansen travel pass as a tourist is a solid hour of paperwork. With pages and pages of dead trees. And stamps! It was crazy to see that in 2019 in such a highly developed country.

My impression (as an outsider) is that these paper-pushing jobs are allowed to persist to keep people employed who would otherwise have nothing to do.

> My impression (as an outsider) is that these paper-pushing jobs are allowed to persist to keep people employed who would otherwise have nothing to do.

It is more of bureaucratic inertia, extreme risk-averse mindset & accommodating the older non tech savvy generation by keeping things as consistent.

For a fact, I saw a shop still having LaserDiscs. I was not born when those things were in fashion.

Secondhand stores in Tokyo are definitely better for old tech. I suppose in the US, either collectors keep it in their bigger houses, or else everything gets damaged in transit or isn’t worth selling long distance.

In Tokyo you can sell it back when you’re done, and that’s easier than trying to keep it in your apartment.

I've definitely seen calculators at UFJ ATMs.

There are all-in-one sinks at one of the cinemas around where I live, they're the absolute worst, because it's frequent that you trigger the soap dispenser or the water while you're drying your hands.

ISTR braille on cans is also in other countries.

"What you see is what you get" is commonplace at Mos Burger, and is actually not that great, because it's a mess to eat, unfortunately...

I think it’s fallen off a little, but it’s common for shop cashiers to calculate how much you owe on an actual calculator and just show the screen to you. In a way this is surprisingly practical, but I think the assumption is that elderly customers don’t trust cash registers and want to see the workers actually adding up some numbers.

Also, the real lesson from the food pic is that Starbucks Japan has way better limited drinks. And the real mystery is why Starbucks US had app ordering and a point card for years before Japan did.

I agree as well. I guess it has more to do with where in Japan you are. Braille seems to be on cans but then again most of the stuff in cans tends to be alcoholic (beer, wine coolers, non-alcoholic beer, whisky/gin premixes).

I am also a Japan resident and I had to roll my eyes at the headline. Yes, there are some cool things like these in Japan, but as you say they are not widespread, and there are plenty more examples of terrible UX, especially on the web. Not to mention all the businesses still stuck in the land of fax machines, IE6, and mountains of non-digitized paperwork. Many public and private systems and policies are extremely inefficient or completely nonsensical, simply because conservatism is prized over innovation.

I've only visited Japan once (I'm American), and as someone who had never been, I definitely saw a lot of things that seemed magical and I can understand the tendency to romanticize it.

Funny enough, I've been planning another trip (that was supposed to be for my daughters high school graduation, but COVID changed that)and spent a lot of time watching videos to get ideas and learn a bit of the language and culture, and some of the English speaking Japan based YouTubers opened my eyes to a lot of the areas where Japan definitely isn't magical.

It's been good to get some balance! I'm still excited to visit when we finally can.

Can you recommend some channels?

Abroad in Japan. He’s really popular, but I find him pretty balanced.

That Japanese Guy Yuta. Some find him annoying, but I like it. He covers a lot of controversial subjects. I’ve actually purchased his language learning and it’s been really good.

Honor. It's what powers Japanese culture. Some might think of the Japanese as historically over-concerned with shame, but shame is the result of losing honor or pride. And Shinto beliefs hold that everything in the world has a spirit.

If you're going to make a product, you can think of it as an inanimate cog in a machine that generates cash. Or you can think of it as a representation of your own worth, the worth of your company, and the worth of those who use it. If it's shoddy, that means you and your company are shoddy, and you think the users are too. And if it will have a spirit, you want to respect that spirit, as all spirits are connected in musubi.

Losing face has nothing to do with quality or thoughtful design.

Japanese products were synonymous with low quality cheap stuff in the 50s and 60s, and nowadays they still make tons of crap, but those just don't make it out of the country for obvious reasons.

I've been to Japan several times, and they have tons of useless low quality crap on sale in every corner.

White noise toilets are not powered by honour.

This seems like a very strange fetishization of Japan.

Without looking it up, what’s “honor” in Japanese?

You won’t know because they don’t actually talk about it because this idea was made up by a white guy. (Similarly, most ideas about Bushido being cool and honorable were made up by a Japanese pop historian who was actually educated in the West.)

A funny consequence of this is that every time a fantasy novel series has a fake-Asian culture that talks about honor or face all the time, they have to make up a fake word for it, because they don’t know what the real word is. Like in Wheel of Time it’s “toh”.

They do know what shame is though (haji).

> And if it will have a spirit, you want to respect that spirit, as all spirits are connected in musubi.

Did you get that from Your Name?

(It’s “kizuna”. Though I don’t think they’d explain it that way either. “Musubi” is a nonmetaphorical knot or a kind of Hawaiian food.)

    > Everything in Japan is next level. 

    > Here are some user experience (UX) based designs in Japan that make people's lives easier.

Their UX is awesome, especially in train stations. I really appreciate the attention to detail — the little things you never notice until you look for them.

I hurt my knee one summer. Spending a couple weeks getting around Tokyo on crutches was a blast!

One hasn’t really “done Japan” until they’ve navigated the train stations in a wheel chair or crutches.

> navigated the train stations in a wheel chair

And then there's trying to do the same in NYC (360º video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXlZ1tqd1RI

> you're never assured when you get on that you're going to be able to get off

The VR was really cool! Totally unexpected.

Yeah, I disagree - some things that look nice do not take away from Japanese bureaucracy and the biggest things - literacy in the language.

Many people praise Japan, and it's culture, and alot of it is amazing, but they fail to highlight the dark sides.

1. Mobile Phones and Mobile Internet - yeah it's still the same. 2. Fax machines are common for business to consumer and business to business. 3. Cultural barriers that even natives fail to overcome.

The whole thread is just someone highlighting whatever made it to "top" reddit posts, w/o any background understanding.

This is a joke, right? It gives the impression those things are super common, and some of that is obvious BS, like needing to know where the front of an IC card is when you do insert it into a machine.

You're right on some, but I have to say that some of those are indeed common (instead reminding me that these things may not be common outside of Japan). Including: the calculator on ATMs (at least Mitsui-Sumitomo ATMs usually have them), the all-in-one sink with soap, braille on top of cans (just checked my fridge and all alcoholic beverages have it), the paper in bubblegum boxes (always bothers me when I'm in Germany), that most restaurants (including fast food) try to make the dish look like the ad, and reading glasses at city hall.

In the US, I remember when the "wide-mouth can" gimmick became popular; nearly all the soda and beer brands adopted it at exactly the same time, because there's really only one supplier of aluminum-can-tops. I would expect that's true about the braille thing in Japan too.

Contrary: This is the worst designed card for train (Tokaido shinkansen): https://expy.jp/product/card/img/pic_02.jpg

Why? It seems fine to me. I don't even know how a design for a card could be good or bad. It's just a print.

<- true insert direction indicator but small

＞＞＞＞ looks like big insert direction indicator but wrong

In the 1980s, going to Japan really did feel like stepping into the future. A decade later, it didn't so much. There are still neat things you see only in Japan, but you can say that about a lot of countries. As a traveler/worker in Japan over many years, I am so tired of hearing from that kind of visitor who idolizes their limited idea of the society, regards anime/manga as Japan's most significant fine arts, and refers to all Japanese as "-san" even when speaking English.

I had a Sony Vaio laptop (now long defunct) from Japan that had a FeliCa port.

With that you can put your Suica card close to the reader and get the info out: stations you had traversed, remaining balance.

Next level economic stagnation. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61718906

Urinals with videogames you control with your pee? For real?

I tried one in a Sega or Taito arcade center in Tokyo. The "game" was just to pee as much as possible to beat an npc while some other cute character was cheering me up. There were no controls required at any point but it was amusing. Unlike the electronic washlets with the waterfall noise that are ordinary, I think this one is an unusual gimmick.

I've used one at SEGA, and they are creepy.

The more you pee, the more the cute weather girl skirt will lift. Your pee is supposed to be like "wind" during a storm.

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