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The Japanese/American Tech Deficit
Why do the Japanese get all the coolest gadgets, while the U.S. is left with the second-tier, less-innovative ones? The San Francisco Chronicle delves into this age-old mystery and provides a few explanations for those of us who don't live near Akihabara.
I live in Japan and these Credit Card phones have been out for atleast 5 months. That said, I use one and it's really handy. Riding the trains is very nice since I don't have to wait in line to buy tickets any more. Untill the tech. is adopted in more convenience stores outside of the train stations though, I'll still need my change purse.
As we all know, the japanese love to use cash anyway, so I feel like a tech like this stands a better chance at becomming really really popular in the US or Europe, where credit cards are more commonly accepted. Pretty frequent to have busniess associates of mine get into jams at nice resturants because they don't have enough cash.
In Soviet russia, only old Koreans profit from pictures of Natalie Portman stored on Beowulf Clusters.
hey, be happy you don't live in Europe! We get the cool gadgets even later than the US and for twice the price anyways. And don't even _think_ about current movies!
Then again, everything is cooler... in Japan!!!
--Chag
Many hot game titles are available here first
... hopefully), Final Fantasy 7 (available in Japan 1/31/97, in the US 8/31/97), etc. often come out in Japan first -- and some that come out in Japan don't come out here at all or come out MUCH later than in Japan.
... and yet we had to wait for that game for about 7 years.
:)
That's only partly true. Game titles that appeal to US audiences more than Japanese audiences are available in the US first, games like Grand Theft Auto, first-person shooters, etc.
Role-playing games, such as Xenosaga Episode 1 (about a year between when it came out in Japan and when it reached the US), Xenosaga Episode 2 (available in Japan 6/24/04, available in the US 2/15/05
For instance, Final Fantasy 5 came out for the Super Famicon [I assume, even though the GameFaqs page lists it as SNES] in 1992. For Playstation, it came out in 1998 in Japan. US gamers had to wait until 1999 for it to come out as part of Final Fantasy Anthology for the PS. The Final Fantasy series isn't exactly unknown here in the US
The types of games that you're thinking of that are available here first are probably the types of games mentioned in this article.
But at least, looking at the release dates on the pages linked above, RPG fans in the US are luckier than those in Europe
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Professional Wrestling
Professional Wrestling is more popular in Japan than it is in the United States.
This is the point exactly -- I don't have any mod points, so the best I can do is agree with you!
I spent a month in Tanzania this summer -- our guide in the Serengeti got better cell reception out in the middle of Africa then I get on 280 in Palo Alto.
But until cell phones can get to the 99.9999% reception or whatever the number is that landlines have, I doubt that we'll see the cell phone displacing the lanline anytime soon.
Plus, I read an article a couple of years back that basically stated that in a lot of European countries, the move to cell phones was at least in part driven by the very high taxes levied on land lines...
"That's not even wrong..." -- Wolfgang Pauli
The USA is an empire. About half of its territory was taken by force during the "civil war" after said territories tried to back out of the union of supposadably soverign states
The Confederate states account for 17% of the US land area. The US is the only country in the world larger than 500km^2 to acquire over 50% of its land area by purchasing it, as opposed to military conquest.
I've never seen a $500 cellphone in japan nor have I 've seen a $.99 cellphone in the US. $50 in Japan gets you the equivlent of a $500 cellphone in the US complete with megapixel camera, outlook integration, and fast internet. Heck I just bought $60 cellphone in japan at a convience store, that the equivlent of a motorola V600, too bad I cant use it back in NY.
The "smart toilet" stories about Japan are mostly a myth. Yeah, they exist, for about .000001% of the population that owns one.
When I lived in Japan, I was astonished to discover how primitive most toilet facilities are. I read an official government survey that said that about 40% of Japanese homes have NO hookup to a sanitary sewer, they don't have septic tanks either, they have "honey wagons" that come and suck out the shit from a holding tank once a month. An average home's toilet is more likely to be a "flapper," than a smart toilet. A flapper is not much more than an outhouse with a ceramic toilet on top, with a little flap on a spring that flaps shut once you take a dump down the hole into the holding tank. I lived in a house with a flapper, I had to take a bucket of water from the bathtub and dump it down the hole in order to flush. And let's not even get into the squat toilets..
Japan's infrastructure, even the sewer systems, look like a third world country. Sure, Japan has a few high-tech infrastructures like telecom, but that's only because of the power of monopolies like NTT to mandate a whole new infrastructure in one sweeping movement. More basic infrastructures, like sewerage, goes neglected, because nobody can make huge profits off it.
There are just a huge number of misconceptions about the Japanese flying around here. Some of it's understandable, but I'm gonna try to counter what I can.
The Japanese, especially the young ones, have huge disposable incomes, as a result of a culture where it's normal to share a tiny apartment in the city with other families. Because of this, they tend not to invest of their incomes in more permanent things, like houses.
Home ownership in Japan is only about 6% lower than it is in the United States. It's a fallacy that they all live in tiny little apartments - or that they all rent those apartments. Many city apartments are owned, not rented, and there are plenty of less urbanized areas just as there are here, with single-family homes. According to UN statistics, the ratio of urban to rural living is virtually the same in the US and Japan.
(I actually think people forget just how urban the United States is in discussions like this as much as they fail to realize how rural or suburban much of Japan is.)
In fact, the overall savings rate in Japan is much higher than it is in the United States (though the rate has been falling over time in both countries). So this idea that they just spend all of their disposable income on gadgets is wrong. They actually spend less money on gadgets than we do.
You are so wrong it's not even funny.
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The Japanese save more money and spend less than Americans. They may seem to buy more crap, but they actually save more money.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/sipa/PUBS/SLANT/FALL
Only 15 percent of Japanese families own computers, for instance. In the United States, this figure stands at 40 percent. Likewise, appliances such as modern laundry machines, clothes dryers, dishwashers, and ovens are largely unknown.
Since World War II, the Japanese have resisted the consumerism that engulfs Americans, and Japanese households have enjoyed some of the highest savings rates in the world. But this is changing. In 1984, the average savings rate for Japanese households was nearly 20 percent. America's rate for the same year was only eight percent. Within only ten years, however, both Japanese and American savings rates had dropped. By 1994, Japan's fell to 14 percent while the American rate plunged to four. During the same period, savings rates in countries such as Great Britain, France, Canada, and Germany either remained stable or increased. By American standards, the Japanese savings rate is still high. But Japan remains one of the few countries mirroring America's downward slide in savings rates. The Japanese are clearly buying more than they used to.
Thanks alot slashdot moderators, you make slashdot suck.
I've been living in Osaka, Japan for the last three years and I have to say that even among Japan's most outgoing people (the Osakans), the Japanese are not as outgoing as you seem to think. The grandparent was a lot more accurate, based on his books, than you, based on your personal experience. I would tend to believe what I read from research first, rather than one person's personal experience, anyway; a weekend trip to Tokyo doesn't count. Remember: every person's experience is different. Here's a little bit of mine:
The Japanese are as often hamstrung by social structure as books will lead you to believe. A "good" Japanese person worries about not putting themselves forward too much; they also are very conscious of seniority and groups. This largely defines how they interact with people.
It's really hard for a Japanese guy to meet a girl, based on several things: one, they're incredibly shy. As a high school teacher, I have been surprised to find that sometimes the boys don't even know the girls' names, even though they sit in the same room for several years. Getting them to even acknowledge the presence of a particular member of the opposite sex may be misconstrued as voicing one's personal interest, which is a definite no-no. The idea of using a pager that automatically identifies people of similar interests sounds very Tokyo-ish, and probably a very small, niche market. Most likely, it is used by school girls to identify other school girls, because guys wouldn't even dream of getting involved.
For a Japanese, the idea of rejection means that they will have exposed their inner feelings, potentially to everyone, which is the ultimate embarrassment for them. Japanese prefer to let things develop over a long period of time, which is why the whole sempai/kohai (senior/junior) relationship is often romanticized.
Japanese can seem very warm and friendly to foreigners especially, because they believe that we're not hampered by Japanese restraints, as we're not Japanese. However, by that same token, they are less likely to take us seriously, because, well, we're not Japanese. They can be very generous and gracious hosts, but unless you make a serious effort to integrate yourself into the culture and the language, you'll find yourself just as lonely as the rest of them.
On gadgets: at least in my area, while there are many gadgets to be had, the Japanese are pretty reasonable on the whole thing. They prefer sensible to gaudy, and would rather not waste their money on features they don't need. One of my friends just got his Docomo cell phone replaced, and he always tells them to give him whatever's cheapest at the time (he's regretting that policy right now as it got him a 505i, which was the latest and greatest of last year; the design is pretty much crap.)
Finally, most Westerners make the mistake of judging Japan based on what they know of Tokyo. That's a lot like judging America based on, say, New York, or Germany based on Munich. For natives of those countries, they know that this is a gross misrepresentation of their culture, as such large cities often have unique micro-cultures of their own. Tokyo is very un-Japanese in many ways. It is a giant shopping district, attempting to be everything to everyone, and failing completely to have a personality of its own. But then, I prefer Osaka.
I found the article to be typical of the genre; very narrow scope that continues to feed the Western stereotypes of Japanese. My findings? There are only a few things that Japan has that are better than what you get in America; otherwise, we're pretty much on par. America is, after all, Japan's biggest market; it's in their best interest to continue to offer the latest tech.
Yeah, you can find weird novelty items for sale, but that doesn't mean people are buying it. Were Japanese to base their conceptions of America on what you can find in stores in Los Angeles, they'd be convinced that the creature comforts available in America are more elaborate, st
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life