Magical girls
thank you DoctorButts
meguca is suffering
And the mechas
Excellent public transportation
Is is a joke I’m too European to understand?
On the flipside, something most developed countries consider normal but would blow Japanese minds is the ability to do all “paperwork” on your phone or laptop without any paper ever being printed anywhere. Japan is somehow still a country of fax.
We are getting more and more stuff, but they often have a really shit UX. We can do some stuff on PC since the “My Number” card system, but that also requires installing all kinds of software, only works in certain browsers, etc.
sweats in german
I heard Japan described as being “stuck in the year 2000 since the 1980’s”. I think South Korea fits the original question better than Japan nowadays.
Yeah, Japan had a massive tech boom in the 80s and 90s, but then just kinda stopped growing that field. It’s still there and still a strong industry in Japan, but the cultural tech hype isn’t there anymore, it seems.
You can fax at your local public library. It was only about six months ago that my state’s social services dept. stopped requiring faxes.
Are you talking about Japan here?
No, Indiana.
Isn’t this because of those special stamps they use in Japan to notorize documents? I heard about them on a podcast: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/hanko/
Love that show.
From what I see joked about in tv and film: toilets.
From what I know from people who have actually been there personally: Vending machines.
Also they have the most advanced KitKat flavors in the world. I want them. But they’re like specialities of specific regions kinda like Pokemon. It’s wild.
There’s a sampler you can get on Amazon with like 30 Japan flavors or something, but I don’t really like Kit Kat so I’ve never tried it.
I wanted to try all KitKat flavors until I found out about Nestlé.
Fuck Nestlé!
mcdo with their cellphone cleaners
wrt US, I guess they shoot butts and not children?
also I heard Japan recycling laws are effective compared to US counterparts.
Automatic opening doors but they don’t open by a proximity sensor, they open when you press the button. This is the optimal solution as the door doesn’t open needlessly but still allows for ease of access.
Ordering machines, where all your menu options are clearly listed and priced. Pressing on a combo of buttons will print a receipt which you can sit down and show the staff/cook your order.
Water (hot and cold) tapped straight to your dining table for self serve drinks.
Unfortunately becoming less applicable with the smartphone domination finally reaching Japan, but their flip phone technology.
Automatic opening doors but they don’t open by a proximity sensor, they open when you press the button. This is the optimal solution as the door doesn’t open needlessly but still allows for ease of access.
Ordering machines, where all your menu options are clearly listed and priced. Pressing on a combo of buttons will print a receipt which you can sit down and show the staff/cook your order
I see those all the time over here in my European country.
If you have to push a button, does it really count as an automatic door?
I guess you have a point. What I meant is that it’ll still slide open (like an automatic door does) but you push a button that has a similar feel to a door bell. So, still very accessible and automatic!
Oh yeah, I agree, just needless pedantry on my part :-)
taco bell in particular is embracing the kiosks and it’s wonderful. they have signs in the lobby saying ‘order at the kiosk’ even. and why wouldn’t you? why do people in the US have this pig-like stubbornness where they must have a human stand there and ‘PeRsONaLIze tHE iNtERacTion’ or some shit
There was an article published last year, maybe the year before, where they tested the touch screen kiosks in McDonald’s. Every single one of them has traces of faeces on it.
Even if that wasn’t true, it takes me significantly less time to tell someone my order than to scroll through however many sub menus the restaurant has decided to put their food into, and then select the options for each item and add it to my basket, then check out.
Having to crawl through multiple menus to order is not that big of a deal for restaurants. They don’t value your time, they value their staff time (because they have to pay for it). There is probably very little ongoing cost to double the number of order kiosks while every additional human taking orders needs to be paid minimum wage. The restaurant owner watches with hate as their money slowly melts away while you decide if you want pickles, fried onions, and jalapenos on your burger.
I’m amazed how people in Japan have some small squares instead of genitals, that must be advanced technology I haven’t seen in other countries.
Update for you, now with AI they have genitals that are constantly morphing around in weird ways.
Automated underground bike storage
It’d be cool if they had those here but I swear we have enough idiots that would try to get in for shits and giggles and maim themselves
I’d imagine it’s got weight and pressure sensors, so I don’t think a person would get very far. I can definitely see the mechanism getting jammed by garbage or some shit, especially if someone’s trying to jam it.
You could put giant billboards warning for the risk and it would still become a recurring event. Even if it said “warning: this is capable of grinding a human being to pulp”.
Make it self cleaning. Problem will solve itself after a while
We got a few of bike towers on the ground in Czechia. Very neat.
It’s just a small thing. The escalators don’t run continuously. They start running as you approach them.
We have those in Europe as well, not Hyper commin, but still
I’ve seen some in the US that run slowly until you get close. I guess they think that if it was stopped completely, people would assume it’s non-operational.
Found at 7-11, combo ketchup/mustard blister pack that when you simply bend and squeeze together, ketchup and mustard come out evenly for your corn-dog and no mess for your fingers.
And the 7/11 corn dog is better than any I’ve eaten in the US.
Those little squeeze packets are an Aussie invention, I believe!
We take our tomato sauce seriously here!
You have tomato sauce packets? It’s funny to think of ketchup as tomato sauce, in the US if you called it that everyone would be confused even though it is really the most accurate thing you could call it
We do no indeed! What do you guys call tomato sauce?
We would call the sauce for burgers, fries etc ketchup, ‘tomato sauce’ in the US would be the sort for pasta, like marinara. If you asked for tomato sauce for a burger people would be very confused lol.
Ah right right, haha that’s cool!
Useable transit
Japan currently doesn’t have this in the more normal sense. That Japan is still super high-tech is more of a PR move. I literally had to send a fax to get my current internet (though it is fiber-to-the-home).
Where Japan is innovating is in robots and also its crossovers with an aging population. Possibly also some space stuff.
But for an everyday person, I don’t really see anything that doesn’t already exist somewhere else. I was raised in the US and have been living in Japan most of the last 10 years.
Japan’s been living in the year 2000 since 1980
but they’re still in the year 2000…
Bidets. General cleanliness everywhere, kinda like what we had when everyone was cleaning like crazy during the pandemic, but even more so.
The cleanliness of Tokyo is mind blowing.
Saw a video from Denmark I think where everyone is biking everywhere and the metro station has an enormous numbered rack for depositing bicycles for storage. The entire thing is spotless, well maintained, and has zero graffiti.
All I could think is that in the US the fabric of our society and the integrity of the social contract is so degraded that even if we somehow had the political capital to build it - it would be destroyed by individual anti-social behaviors. And we’d certainly never have the wherewithal to maintain or repair it.
Or South Korea
Plastic wrapping that’s easy to open.
