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Facebook is actually starting to get popular in Japan, but it will have a slow start just like everything else has had recently. For some reason Japan still ha

by Sym3tri 16y ago

Facebook is actually starting to get popular in Japan, but it will have a slow start just like everything else has had recently. For some reason Japan still has this image of being a technologically advanced nation. I guess regarding hardware and infrastructure they are still advanced, but when it comes to the web and software they are waaaaay behind. Both in what they build, and in what they use. The iPhone didn't really take off until a full year after it went on sale here (2 years after the US), android phones are just now starting to be sold, Twitter blew up recently but that wasn't until it was already a household name in the rest of the world. Nearly all mobile websites here are written in a carrier proprietary subset of WAP/HTML. Most non-mobile sites are entirely flash. The most popular search engine is still Yahoo. Shift-JIS encoding is more widely used than the world standard UTF-8. The list goes on and on. I've been living in Japan for 4 years so I can speak from first hand experience. Before I came here I had the same image of Japan, but after being here for a while I can tell you that your image of Japan is not how it really is. The Nintendo and Walkman era has ended. I wish people outside of Japan would finally realize this and stop acting surprised when Japan doesn't seem to be following the latest tech trend.

gpjt 16y ago
Re: mobile websites -- I guess there's an "early bird gets the worm" problem here. About ten years back the story was that Japan was rushing ahead of the rest of the world because everyone had amazing mobile phones that could browse the web and process micropayments. The latter's still kind of cool, but perhaps delaying mobile internet adoption until regular HTML worked has helped other countries in the long run.
chopsueyar 16y ago
I know this is sort of not relevant, but can someone comment and compare/contrast South Korea to Japan in terms of the parent's comment?
- bane 16y ago
  I spend a bit of time in South Korea and can say this: 1) South Korea is similarly more advanced than the West in some ways and less in others. Large transportation infrastructure in South Korea is among the best I've seen, both because it is so comprehensive and because it is so new. So for example, the Seoul subway is easily comparable to the NYC subway in terms of size and coverage, but feels much nicer because it's so much newer. The stations are larger, the trains are new, etc. Similarly, Korean rail is easily as good as the best you'll find in Europe. The National Highway system is comprehensive, modern and easy to navigate. Communications infrastructure is fantastic, easily the best I've seen. Very fast high speed internet everywhere, great mobile service, digital mobile TV in the subway, etc. etc. Some infrastructure is not as good. In the well developed parts of the cities things like sewage aren't a problem, but you quickly drop off the development cliff as you head away from city center. Public restrooms are infrequent and typically dirty. If they have toilet paper, count yourself lucky. (However, the tap water is considered quite clean and drinkable by world health authorities even if the locals habitually don't drink it out of decade's old habit when things weren't quite as good). Farm areas are like farm areas anywhere, lots of dirt and plants and animals, but because of the difficult terrain, bringing modern mass farming practices has been very difficult and has left rural areas very undeveloped in relation to what you might find in the U.S. or Europe. There's a huge disparity in things like construction quality. Some areas have impressive, modern buildings. Some areas (particularly older areas built up in the late 70s early 80s) look shabby and have issues associated with shoddy construction. 2) Software in the South Korea is...not as advanced as in the West, but from the sounds of it, in better shape than in Japan. There's a pretty thriving games industry that's as good as any average or better than average western developed games. There's also a pretty sizable contract software industry. Mostly Western firms who've setup shop to take advantage of highly educated developers and slightly lower pay. Though the Internet is high speed, for various reasons, almost entirely legal (that would involve thousands of words to properly explain and would probably require a dive into South Korean Social Security law believe it or not), browser technology and techniques are stuck with IE6 era sites. This means lots and lots and lots of flash everywhere to make things look good. However, the design work is about as good as what you'll normally find in the west. Nothing spectacular, they aren't pushing the boundaries of usability, but there's a sophistication in the sites that makes them equivalent to say reddit or amazon. Here's two of the most popular sites http://www.daum.net/ http://www.daum.net/ http://www.naver.com/ http://www.naver.com/ I think one thing that helps is that the South Koreans have a strong tradition in graphic design and the arts that at least helps make things look pleasant even if the interfaces can be a little "off". But you can see it everywhere, mundane signs in the grocery store for example, are put together with harmonious color schemes and beautiful typography. It's wholly different than Japanese aesthetic (and Chinese for that matter), and seems to have made it's way onto the web more or less. I've never really encountered encoding issues or the like, I guess most places have moved on to UTF-8. Most people at home have older, less powerful computers, but laptops and netbooks are extremely common. Apple computers...I think I've seen one, one time. And *nix is almost unknown. iPhones are starting to get popular, but most people have phones that better work in South Korea since they also have digital TV reception (yes, it's broadcast over the air) and near field payment chips and such in the phones. 3) Facebook is not heavily used (if at all) compared to other social media sites.
kazuya 16y ago
> I guess regarding hardware and infrastructure they are still advanced It depends. Your categorization is too coarse. > Most non-mobile sites are entirely flash. The most popular search engine is still Yahoo. Shift-JIS encoding is more widely used than the world standard UTF-8. I didn't know these 'facts'. Can you give me the details? Just out of curiosity, how did you know Shift-JIS is popular than UTF-8?
- bluedanieru 16y ago
  Shift-JIS is still widely used here, how widely used I don't know and I don't work on projects where we deal with character encoding so much anymore so I don't bother to keep up. But it does make some sense that it would still be used because, if you stick to Japanese characters, it is more space-efficient than UTF-8.
- Sym3tri 16y ago
  > It depends. Your categorization is too coarse. Yes it is course b/c that is not my area of expertise. Feel free to inject any information here. > I didn't know these 'facts'. Can you give me the details? Just out of curiosity, how did you know Shift-JIS is popular than UTF-8? Well I don't have any hard statistics to back up my statements. They are all simply personal observations. However in Japan "moji-bake" (character encoding error) is an everyday phrase. Shift-JIS is mostly to blame. I think that's enough to show that it's still widely used.
  - drinian 16y ago
    My Japanese mobile phone would occasionally silently fail to display an email message (forwarded to the phone's Softbank address, naturally, since I couldn't get data access without a contract plan) because of the character encoding. And then there's the fact that you can't get a prepaid SIM in Japan without buying a phone to go with it. And the fact that Softbank is the only prepaid provider. And the fact that I wasn't legally supposed to have a prepaid phone anyway, because I didn't have an Alien Registration Card but was lucky enough to find a discount store that would overlook that. Japan is VERY technologically advanced, but they often do things in a way that lacks any consideration for the world outside of their islands. The mobile phone debacle is a perfect example of this, because it affects so few Japanese directly. "Open" platforms like Linux, the Internet, and even Windows are largely regarded as hobbyist items, while Docomo and Softbank's closed, curated networks are reality for most Japanese. The recent film "Summer Wars" is an excellent expression of this.
philwelch 16y ago
Shift-JIS encoding is more widely used than the world standard UTF-8. I thought that was because the Japanese were unhappy about Han unification: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_unification#Rationale_and_controversy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_unification#Rationale_and_c...

by Sym3tri 16y ago

gpjt 16y ago

Re: mobile websites -- I guess there's an "early bird gets the worm" problem here. About ten years back the story was that Japan was rushing ahead of the rest of the world because everyone had amazing mobile phones that could browse the web and process micropayments. The latter's still kind of cool, but perhaps delaying mobile internet adoption until regular HTML worked has helped other countries in the long run.

chopsueyar 16y ago

I know this is sort of not relevant, but can someone comment and compare/contrast South Korea to Japan in terms of the parent's comment?

bane 16y ago
I spend a bit of time in South Korea and can say this: 1) South Korea is similarly more advanced than the West in some ways and less in others. Large transportation infrastructure in South Korea is among the best I've seen, both because it is so comprehensive and because it is so new. So for example, the Seoul subway is easily comparable to the NYC subway in terms of size and coverage, but feels much nicer because it's so much newer. The stations are larger, the trains are new, etc. Similarly, Korean rail is easily as good as the best you'll find in Europe. The National Highway system is comprehensive, modern and easy to navigate. Communications infrastructure is fantastic, easily the best I've seen. Very fast high speed internet everywhere, great mobile service, digital mobile TV in the subway, etc. etc. Some infrastructure is not as good. In the well developed parts of the cities things like sewage aren't a problem, but you quickly drop off the development cliff as you head away from city center. Public restrooms are infrequent and typically dirty. If they have toilet paper, count yourself lucky. (However, the tap water is considered quite clean and drinkable by world health authorities even if the locals habitually don't drink it out of decade's old habit when things weren't quite as good). Farm areas are like farm areas anywhere, lots of dirt and plants and animals, but because of the difficult terrain, bringing modern mass farming practices has been very difficult and has left rural areas very undeveloped in relation to what you might find in the U.S. or Europe. There's a huge disparity in things like construction quality. Some areas have impressive, modern buildings. Some areas (particularly older areas built up in the late 70s early 80s) look shabby and have issues associated with shoddy construction. 2) Software in the South Korea is...not as advanced as in the West, but from the sounds of it, in better shape than in Japan. There's a pretty thriving games industry that's as good as any average or better than average western developed games. There's also a pretty sizable contract software industry. Mostly Western firms who've setup shop to take advantage of highly educated developers and slightly lower pay. Though the Internet is high speed, for various reasons, almost entirely legal (that would involve thousands of words to properly explain and would probably require a dive into South Korean Social Security law believe it or not), browser technology and techniques are stuck with IE6 era sites. This means lots and lots and lots of flash everywhere to make things look good. However, the design work is about as good as what you'll normally find in the west. Nothing spectacular, they aren't pushing the boundaries of usability, but there's a sophistication in the sites that makes them equivalent to say reddit or amazon. Here's two of the most popular sites http://www.daum.net/ http://www.daum.net/ http://www.naver.com/ http://www.naver.com/ I think one thing that helps is that the South Koreans have a strong tradition in graphic design and the arts that at least helps make things look pleasant even if the interfaces can be a little "off". But you can see it everywhere, mundane signs in the grocery store for example, are put together with harmonious color schemes and beautiful typography. It's wholly different than Japanese aesthetic (and Chinese for that matter), and seems to have made it's way onto the web more or less. I've never really encountered encoding issues or the like, I guess most places have moved on to UTF-8. Most people at home have older, less powerful computers, but laptops and netbooks are extremely common. Apple computers...I think I've seen one, one time. And *nix is almost unknown. iPhones are starting to get popular, but most people have phones that better work in South Korea since they also have digital TV reception (yes, it's broadcast over the air) and near field payment chips and such in the phones. 3) Facebook is not heavily used (if at all) compared to other social media sites.

kazuya 16y ago

> I guess regarding hardware and infrastructure they are still advanced It depends. Your categorization is too coarse. > Most non-mobile sites are entirely flash. The most popular search engine is still Yahoo. Shift-JIS encoding is more widely used than the world standard UTF-8. I didn't know these 'facts'. Can you give me the details? Just out of curiosity, how did you know Shift-JIS is popular than UTF-8?

bluedanieru 16y ago
Shift-JIS is still widely used here, how widely used I don't know and I don't work on projects where we deal with character encoding so much anymore so I don't bother to keep up. But it does make some sense that it would still be used because, if you stick to Japanese characters, it is more space-efficient than UTF-8.
Sym3tri 16y ago
> It depends. Your categorization is too coarse. Yes it is course b/c that is not my area of expertise. Feel free to inject any information here. > I didn't know these 'facts'. Can you give me the details? Just out of curiosity, how did you know Shift-JIS is popular than UTF-8? Well I don't have any hard statistics to back up my statements. They are all simply personal observations. However in Japan "moji-bake" (character encoding error) is an everyday phrase. Shift-JIS is mostly to blame. I think that's enough to show that it's still widely used.
- drinian 16y ago
  My Japanese mobile phone would occasionally silently fail to display an email message (forwarded to the phone's Softbank address, naturally, since I couldn't get data access without a contract plan) because of the character encoding. And then there's the fact that you can't get a prepaid SIM in Japan without buying a phone to go with it. And the fact that Softbank is the only prepaid provider. And the fact that I wasn't legally supposed to have a prepaid phone anyway, because I didn't have an Alien Registration Card but was lucky enough to find a discount store that would overlook that. Japan is VERY technologically advanced, but they often do things in a way that lacks any consideration for the world outside of their islands. The mobile phone debacle is a perfect example of this, because it affects so few Japanese directly. "Open" platforms like Linux, the Internet, and even Windows are largely regarded as hobbyist items, while Docomo and Softbank's closed, curated networks are reality for most Japanese. The recent film "Summer Wars" is an excellent expression of this.

philwelch 16y ago

Shift-JIS encoding is more widely used than the world standard UTF-8. I thought that was because the Japanese were unhappy about Han unification: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_unification#Rationale_and_controversy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_unification#Rationale_and_c...