Why Japan Gets the Cool Stuff

haahr writes "Good article about why the coolest electronics products are available first in Japan and may never make it to the U.S., in Slate."

Comments

Isn't it obvious?

[WIAKywbfatw]

1. The Japanese have a national obsession with gadgets. They just can't get enough of them.

2. Japanese companies will give Japanese consumers what they want.

What's next on Slate? Articles telling us that Italians like pasta, Russians like vodka and Brazilians like football?

Re:Isn't it obvious?

[Deadstick]

Eons ago I read an article in a photo magazine, relating the author's tour of the Nikon factory. He remarked to the company honcho that of all features on a camera, the self-timer (the gadget that lets you photograph yourself) is the least likely ever to be used, and yet every Japanese camera has one...why was that?

The company guy responded by driving him past the Yasukuni Shrine, a war memorial that corresponds roughly to the Tomb Of The Unknowns. In front of it stood an army of tourist families smiling cheerfully at an army of tripods manned by an army of phantom photographers. "In Japan," he said, "No self-timer, no sell camera."

rj

Re:Isn't it obvious?

[Squeeze Truck]

1. The Japanese have a national obsession with gadgets. They just can't get enough of them.

The gadgets Japanese have an obsession with are the ones that facilitate social life and personal correspondence.
Cel phones that can handle email are a godsend in this arena. This way it is possible to juggle work, family, and a potentially unlimited ammount of mistresses at once in secrecy.

Think I'm joking?

Re:Isn't it obvious?

[kurtz25]

Indeed. They really are gadget lovers, but I've never seen how that improved their computers, aside from making them more proprietary and complex. I use a Japanese laptop, but I bought the bottom-of-the-line so I could simplify my driver search. I have, not surprisingly, never found the drivers for the stupid wheel on my Sony, and I see now that Sony is incorportating their loathsome roller from their phones into their laptops. Aside from size, foreign consumers don't need to fear losing out much in the way of Japanese computers, says I. Phones, yes, hell yes, but not computers. Their love of gadgets is a burden in this field.

Japan doesn't have a monopoly on 'cool stuff'

[2nd Post!]

Look at...

OS X
iMac
iMac2
iBook
iPod
PowerBook
Handspring
Newton
Palm Pilot
CrossPad
ViaVoice
Metal Gear Solid: Sons of Liberty
Spider-Man
Lord of the Rings
The Matrix
The Matrix:Revolution
VooDoo
VooDoo2
GeForce
GeFor ce3
GeForce4
Quake3
Doom3

I'm sure there are more.

Re:Japan doesn't have a monopoly on 'cool stuff'

[packeteer]

Metal Gear Solid: Sons of Liberty
u SURE about that one?... Hideo Kojima made that one... IN JAPAN...

who needs an iPod for $400 when you can get a much better on at half the price in japan...

also they dont need palm pilots or handsprings or crosspads when they have CELL PHONES than can do the same thing...

unfortunatly for us in the USA the cell phone system of Aisa is WAY better than here... its a ground up implimentation and there is none of this patchwork BS that we have to put up with... its cheaper and i know from people who have told me out of personal experiance that they work EVERYWHERE... none of this roaming, analog zone, digital zone, BS...

face it in japan they get the same tech only sooner...

Re:Japan doesn't have a monopoly on 'cool stuff'

[hbmartin]

OS X
iMac
iMac2
iBook
iPod
PowerBook

Those things are the first on the list for a reason!
You forgot the Apple logo itself, though.
Switch

Re:Japan doesn't have a monopoly on 'cool stuff'

[packeteer]

lot more what???

land?..................... nope
people?................... nope
cell phone quality........ nope

europe and aisa have better quality systems because companies are willing to risk large amount of capital to setup a good system... and its paying off... almost everyone can afford a cell phone so they now have several BILLION customers... any of you out there who work in a large company can answer this:

what would it be your your company to have several BILLION customers...

sorry but americans are too picky and competition to too hard for anyone to move in andd do a lot in america... and now cable companies dont even have to share their lines... American audio/video distribution is going down the shitter i fear but maybe we can take an example from where its working and fix this sometime soon...

Re:Japan doesn't have a monopoly on 'cool stuff'

[packeteer]

it isn't very easy to get broadband in the USA... in fact you must either be within 15,000 feet from a central dsl box (usually only populated areas) or have cable tv... cable tv is very expensive and you add the internet it gets very expensive leaving really only dsl for those who have to watch their money... MANY people cannot get dsl you jsut dont hear about em... well because they arent on the internet as much as other people :)... i just moved into an area that can get dsl and im VERY hapy to be paying my $60 a month for a conenction with 128k upload speed... take what you can get...

Advertisement?

[co_fisha]

Doesn't this article look like a big advertisement for at Dynamism importing?

err thought that was obvious

[Brigadier]

perhaps because they aahh make them. Same reason why mexico has the best mexican food, and aaah irland has the bast dark ale ...

Left one out

[The Cat]

Japanese companies keep their staff employed for more than six months at a time.

A minor point, but meetings don't make money, and middle managers don't build products.

Re:Don't pay sales tax when shopping in Akihabara

[Cryptnotic]

Japan is region 2, not region 3. This is because Japan is culturally a part of Europe (Region 2), and not part of Asia (Region 3).

Re:Don't pay sales tax when shopping in Akihabara

[Mooset]

Only certain stores will do this, because it requires special licensing. Be sure to go to the "Duty Free" stores. They are easy to find in any big shopping area and usually have English speakers to help out if you have questions about the gadgets. Laox in Akihabara is a good one.

Re: A friend of mine once told me about..

[BJH]

Oh, please...

You would get your check in USD and stand in front of the bank line waiting for a favorable exchange rate between USD and YEN. Then when the numbers were right, the tellers would be mobbed.

When was your friend in Japan? Banks generally give an average rate for the day, unless you happen to be a corporate investor.

There was this huge gomi pile of abandoned electronics that were almost brand new but no longer wanted; because there was a new model that just came out that had more gee wiz features.

No, it's because in Japan the manufacturers have made it so expensive to have an item out of warranty repaired that you might as well buy a new one.

If money falls on the street in Japan, it will usually lie there till it rots or is cleaned up and thrown away; he said it was beneath Japanese to pick up money or objects that have fallen on the ground.

Yeah, right. And in the US, if a penny hits the ground, everyone within a hundred-metre radius comes running. Next unsubstantiated 'fact', please...

People walk into a sushi/food bar and pick from freshly prepared items on a conveyor that moves past the patron. You pay on the way out.

How is this any different to a McDonalds, except that in McDonalds the conveyer belt is hidden and you pay in advance? I go to kaiten-zushi regularly, and it's just basically the Japanese version of fast food.

People regularly sleep in what seems like morgue cabinets. Complete with miniature amenities.

They're called capsule hotels, and in twelve years in Japan I have yet to meet anyone who's actually stayed in one. They're generally for older male businessmen that didn't make the last train home (as the trains usually finish between midnight and 1am in Tokyo).

Well....

[ImaLamer]

First like they say in Crazy People they are closer to the chips.

Actually it's a big question. We are afraid to test the waters and move forward. While we pioneered these technologies Japan will put a semiconductor in anything - at least once.

America is quite like the fall of the Victorian Empire. She has become a nation afraid of progress and if something doesn't change she won't stay towards the top of the heap.

Off-topic, somewhat:

Space could provide a new rain of resources, or it could bankrupt us. But its habitation does offer two other advantages.
The first: internation cooperation. No single nation can afford the price of extraterrestial development. To turn the wastelands of asteroids and planets into lands of plenty would involve consortia including Russia, Europe, and Japan. Those partnerships are already under development, though too often we are not involved in them. ... ... ...
-Howard Bloom, The Lucifer Principle (Chapter:Tennis Time And The Mental Clock)

There is more, that is actually on topic, but I can't find the page now. I don't want to misquote either. Basically we pioneered that technology, invented the PC but the majority of parts aren't even made here - and I don't mean assembly - I mean the companies who own the RAM factories etc.

This is just a preview of things to come.

Re:Don't pay sales tax when shopping in Akihabara

[BJH]

No, the DVD Consortium organized it that way so that Japanese consumers would not be able to play cheap imports from Taiwan and Hong Kong on their Region 2 players.

$2000 killer app

[peterdaly]

What makes the Libretto so great is that it takes up very little space. At 10.5 inches wide by 6.6 inches deep, it actually sits between the keyboard and monitor of my desktop, allowing me to check mail on one machine while running Photoshop full-screen on the other.

Wow, that "feature" alone makes me wish I had $2k to dump into a product like that. At work I have a 15" monitor and PC next to my 15" Dell (L)Attitude screen, just so I can have my email up all the time. Email is becoming enough of a killer app for some people where it is worth paying for a device like this which really is a PC, not some crippled appliance to fufill solely that function.

This may be an emerging market segment. I believe the whole Japanesse only thing has to do with the culture of the companies. Car companies are the same way, just look at the Nissan Skyline, Subaru WRX (now here), Mitsubishi Lancer (an not the crap they are selling in the US now), etc. Electronics companies are no differrent.

-Pete

Re:$2000 killer app

[rodgerd]

It's the culture of the US, not Japan. Here in New Zealand (1/100th the size of the US market...), we've had the Legacy RS Turbo, the Impreza WRX and STi, the Skyline GT-R, full-spec Type-R 200ZX/SX, Evos, and all the rest since day one; the only top end Japanese sports car I'm aware of not having was the "Batmobile" RX-7, which flooded in as a second hand import until Mazda realised they screwed up by not bringing it in themselves.

The US suffers from a huge NIH chip on its collective shoulder; look at what happens whenever a /. article appears suggesting the US trails some other part of the world in technology - cell phones, for example, bring out a horde of dickheads who argue (against all facts) that the reason the US has terrible cellular infrastructure is because the rest of the world has a third world phone system, and anyway, who cares about cell phones.

The US leads in a number of areas, but like all big, important nations, its citizens tend to stick their heads up their arses in the areas it trails - not unline that class of Pom who keeps reminiscing about 1966 and the Battle of Britain whenever a German wanders into earshot.

Re:$2000 killer app

[wheany]

Why do little kids here go nuts over Pokemon?

Ignoring marketing and the fact that Pokemon might really be fun (don't know, haven't played):

Because they have not been brainwashed yet to think nationalism is the greatest thing ever.

Oh the irony, it burns

[hayden]

It was frustrating and almost insulting--why don't we deserve the best too?

To here an American say that. May I welcome you to a place known as the rest of the world.

America caters to the mainstream

[infiniti99]

I think the reason Japan has so much cooler stuff is that they are willing to take risks. In the USA, if a particular device or software/game is not going to "make millions" by attracting mainstream buyers, then there is little chance it would ever make it to the market. Publishers and manufacturers here want to take only the safest bets. Ever wonder why the USA is full of so many crappy movies, games, and me-too products? Why take a risk when you can copy something proven?

In Japan, they release just about anything that their minds and conjure up. Surely they have the same economic business sense as those in the USA, but perhaps their consumer market is much more willing to risk buying innovative stuff (this is basically what the article seems to conclude). Also, maybe because of Japan's small size, companies don't have to spend very much money on initial production runs?

Re:Balderdash

[jidar]

Hah! If you stopped patting yourself on the back long enough you might realize that your argument only works if Japan and the US are seperate entities that make their own items and don't export to each other. It's a global market and how things are manufactured in Japan as compared to the US has nothign at all to do with what is available on our market since anything they make they can sell here if there is a market for it.
The reason Japan has those things and we don't is exactly like the man said, they don't export it to the US because we wouldn't buy it. :P