6 ms·

I’ve lived in japan and believe me, what you see as a tourist does not translate into reality. Japan in general is about 10 years behind the western world and i

I’ve lived in japan and believe me, what you see as a tourist does not translate into reality. Japan in general is about 10 years behind the western world and in some places even more. Sure, tourist facing areas and central tokyo are pretty nice, but that’s not the reality in most places.

bergstromm466 6y ago
> Japan in general is about 10 years behind the western world In which areas is Japan behind? What are some of your observations?
- robjan 6y ago
  When was the last time you used a fax machine? We maintain one specifically for communicating with Japanese companies.
  - cbzbc 6y ago
    It's possible this is for legislative reasons rather than anything else.
    - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
      If that's the case, then a fax isn't too bad (compared to some of the bureaucratic contortionism in the west).
    - andi999 6y ago
      At least until a few years back only fax was considered 'in writing', so if like a lawyer wanted to submit an appeal to a court it either had to be a letter or a fax, no email. Now the government invented a new authenticated email system which supposedly is like 'in writing'
  - mrob 6y ago
    Japanese has the most complicated writing system of any language. For a long time handwriting was the easiest means of written communication, and faxes can transmit handwriting. There are good Japanese IMEs now, but if faxes already work why change them?
    - morceauxdebois 6y ago
      Really, what's makes Kanji so complex compared to Mandarin that it originated from?
      - mrob 6y ago
        Chinese is second most complicated. Japanese has all the Chinese characters, and hiragana and katakana in addition.
        ginko 6y ago
        Japanese also having commonly used phonetic writing systems makes it easier than Chinese in my book.
        mrob 6y ago
        But Japanese has fewer phonemes than Chinese, and no real tones, which results in a large number of homophones, which makes phonetic writing harder to read. It's not appropriate for business communications.
        gsk22 6y ago
        This is not true at all. Japanese Kanji comprise only a few thousand characters (~2000 being considered sufficient for functional literacy). Chinese has well over 50000 characters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_characters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_characters
        mrob 6y ago
  - nipponese 6y ago
    Recently I have began to wish we still used them, and I say that as a consumer and a UI designer, as I think about all the designs I have made and discarded that could have easily been solved with pen and paper. It may not scale for an Amazon-sized business, but it totally works for small restaurant.
    - giantDinosaur 6y ago
      What do you mean? You can still print at the other end if you really needed certain designs to be somewhere on paper, no?
      - nipponese 6y ago
        I mean, the design never needed to be designed in the first place. We should have created some manual process until it it becomes so cumbersome to process the requests that it needs to be someone’s full time job.
  - asdff 6y ago
    Last month when I had to fax my social security number to HR. Still in full force if you work in any sort of bureaucratic organization in the U.S...
chrischen 6y ago
I’ve stayed there for extended periods (months) and while I may not live like a poorer or even average income Japanese, I can say day to day life quality is pretty ahead in Tokyo/Osaka/ surrounding areas at least (but then most people live in and around Tokyo or big cities).
growlist 6y ago
> Japan in general is about 10 years behind the western world and in some places even more Sounds good to me Edit: because the West is such a utopia in 2020? Please...
everdrive 6y ago
What does it mean to be "10 years behind the western world" ? Are they behind in technology, values, policy? Can you give some examples? I'm not disagreeing with you, just curious for more info. (I don't know much about Japan myself.)
- jhanschoo 6y ago
  A partial answer: Googling 'japan fax' would give you many articles attesting that faxes are still a stable for communication in offices. e.g. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/coronavirus-japan-fax-machine-online-hanko-a9501906.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/coronavirus-ja... > Japan’s health ministry has said it will allow health centres to report new coronavirus cases online, instead of by handwritten faxes, after a doctor lambasted the legal requirement. Another very externally visible example is that the Japanese have taken a long time to transition from SHIFT_JIS to Unicode on the web, and on Windows.
  - kiliancs 6y ago
    I appreciate this is a partial answer, but by those standards the US is also similarly behind. For example, still commonly use checks and they are nowhere near transitioning to the metric system.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - T-R 6y ago
      While I don't think Japan should be judged solely on its fax machines (they're ahead in some places and behind in others), there is a difference with fax machine usage in Japan vs the US - they're a trailing indicator of another bottleneck. Fax machines are so widespread in Japan largely because they ease the process of physically stamping documents with a registered stamp (a hanko), which is used instead of a signature. So far they've failed to digitize them, and it's often cited as a huge cause of bureaucratic slowdown, especially in the pandemic. One of the goals of the new prime minister is to finally start phasing them out.
asdff 6y ago
Are you currently in the western world? I live in Los Angeles, which is a city that feels like it's trapped in the 1990s. Our highways were never finished and the city is fundamentally crippled as a result. We are building rail faster than any other city but it's still far too little and much too late, and what we do build is littered with compromises and further issues that hobble its utility, such as a failure to develop grade separations, until the project is redone entirely. The local government is corrupt. The FBI is indicting councilmen and city hall officials left and right. We are zoned for a smaller population than we were in the 1920s, with 4x the population living here today compared to the 1920s. This isn't just LA. Development across the U.S. over the past 20 years has been largely stagnant, and this is reflective in our huge shortage of housing supply that has come to bite us in the rear in recent decades with homes increasingly out of reach for working people, not just in California, but increasingly in flyover places like Idaho and Ohio too. Of course, maybe it's the U.S. that is 30 years behind the western world.
- reducesuffering 6y ago
  The part about U.S. development is partially true. Idaho has been developing immensely, with Boise Area 10x'ing since 1930 and averaging 30% YoY population increase the past few decades.[0] If you go there, there's immense construction with frequent road closures and cranes everywhere. So while Idaho may still be dealing with the second-order effects of California's underdevelopment, I would struggle to find anywhere that's been building as much as Idaho is. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boise_metropolitan_area#Demographics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boise_metropolitan_area#Demogr...
  - asdff 6y ago
    I'm willing to bet Boise is still not building nearly enough housing to put a dent in increasing cost of living.
    - reducesuffering 6y ago
      While that could be true, it wouldn't point to the root cause. There exists a limit to how fast an area can physically develop by modern construction speeds and government permitting procedures, orthogonal to the area's willingness to develop. It's possible that 600k population Boise area is unable to build as fast as California's 700k yearly exodus would like to be accommodated.

bergstromm466 6y ago

> Japan in general is about 10 years behind the western world In which areas is Japan behind? What are some of your observations?

robjan 6y ago
When was the last time you used a fax machine? We maintain one specifically for communicating with Japanese companies.
- cbzbc 6y ago
  It's possible this is for legislative reasons rather than anything else.
  - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    If that's the case, then a fax isn't too bad (compared to some of the bureaucratic contortionism in the west).
  - andi999 6y ago
    At least until a few years back only fax was considered 'in writing', so if like a lawyer wanted to submit an appeal to a court it either had to be a letter or a fax, no email. Now the government invented a new authenticated email system which supposedly is like 'in writing'
- mrob 6y ago
  Japanese has the most complicated writing system of any language. For a long time handwriting was the easiest means of written communication, and faxes can transmit handwriting. There are good Japanese IMEs now, but if faxes already work why change them?
  - morceauxdebois 6y ago
    Really, what's makes Kanji so complex compared to Mandarin that it originated from?
    - mrob 6y ago
      Chinese is second most complicated. Japanese has all the Chinese characters, and hiragana and katakana in addition.
      - ginko 6y ago
        Japanese also having commonly used phonetic writing systems makes it easier than Chinese in my book.
        mrob 6y ago
        But Japanese has fewer phonemes than Chinese, and no real tones, which results in a large number of homophones, which makes phonetic writing harder to read. It's not appropriate for business communications.
      - gsk22 6y ago
        This is not true at all. Japanese Kanji comprise only a few thousand characters (~2000 being considered sufficient for functional literacy). Chinese has well over 50000 characters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_characters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_characters
        mrob 6y ago
- nipponese 6y ago
  Recently I have began to wish we still used them, and I say that as a consumer and a UI designer, as I think about all the designs I have made and discarded that could have easily been solved with pen and paper. It may not scale for an Amazon-sized business, but it totally works for small restaurant.
  - giantDinosaur 6y ago
    What do you mean? You can still print at the other end if you really needed certain designs to be somewhere on paper, no?
    - nipponese 6y ago
      I mean, the design never needed to be designed in the first place. We should have created some manual process until it it becomes so cumbersome to process the requests that it needs to be someone’s full time job.
- asdff 6y ago
  Last month when I had to fax my social security number to HR. Still in full force if you work in any sort of bureaucratic organization in the U.S...

chrischen 6y ago

I’ve stayed there for extended periods (months) and while I may not live like a poorer or even average income Japanese, I can say day to day life quality is pretty ahead in Tokyo/Osaka/ surrounding areas at least (but then most people live in and around Tokyo or big cities).

growlist 6y ago

> Japan in general is about 10 years behind the western world and in some places even more Sounds good to me Edit: because the West is such a utopia in 2020? Please...

everdrive 6y ago

What does it mean to be "10 years behind the western world" ? Are they behind in technology, values, policy? Can you give some examples? I'm not disagreeing with you, just curious for more info. (I don't know much about Japan myself.)

jhanschoo 6y ago
A partial answer: Googling 'japan fax' would give you many articles attesting that faxes are still a stable for communication in offices. e.g. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/coronavirus-japan-fax-machine-online-hanko-a9501906.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/coronavirus-ja... > Japan’s health ministry has said it will allow health centres to report new coronavirus cases online, instead of by handwritten faxes, after a doctor lambasted the legal requirement. Another very externally visible example is that the Japanese have taken a long time to transition from SHIFT_JIS to Unicode on the web, and on Windows.
- kiliancs 6y ago
  I appreciate this is a partial answer, but by those standards the US is also similarly behind. For example, still commonly use checks and they are nowhere near transitioning to the metric system.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - T-R 6y ago
    While I don't think Japan should be judged solely on its fax machines (they're ahead in some places and behind in others), there is a difference with fax machine usage in Japan vs the US - they're a trailing indicator of another bottleneck. Fax machines are so widespread in Japan largely because they ease the process of physically stamping documents with a registered stamp (a hanko), which is used instead of a signature. So far they've failed to digitize them, and it's often cited as a huge cause of bureaucratic slowdown, especially in the pandemic. One of the goals of the new prime minister is to finally start phasing them out.

asdff 6y ago

Are you currently in the western world? I live in Los Angeles, which is a city that feels like it's trapped in the 1990s. Our highways were never finished and the city is fundamentally crippled as a result. We are building rail faster than any other city but it's still far too little and much too late, and what we do build is littered with compromises and further issues that hobble its utility, such as a failure to develop grade separations, until the project is redone entirely. The local government is corrupt. The FBI is indicting councilmen and city hall officials left and right. We are zoned for a smaller population than we were in the 1920s, with 4x the population living here today compared to the 1920s. This isn't just LA. Development across the U.S. over the past 20 years has been largely stagnant, and this is reflective in our huge shortage of housing supply that has come to bite us in the rear in recent decades with homes increasingly out of reach for working people, not just in California, but increasingly in flyover places like Idaho and Ohio too. Of course, maybe it's the U.S. that is 30 years behind the western world.

reducesuffering 6y ago
The part about U.S. development is partially true. Idaho has been developing immensely, with Boise Area 10x'ing since 1930 and averaging 30% YoY population increase the past few decades.[0] If you go there, there's immense construction with frequent road closures and cranes everywhere. So while Idaho may still be dealing with the second-order effects of California's underdevelopment, I would struggle to find anywhere that's been building as much as Idaho is. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boise_metropolitan_area#Demographics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boise_metropolitan_area#Demogr...
- asdff 6y ago
  I'm willing to bet Boise is still not building nearly enough housing to put a dent in increasing cost of living.
  - reducesuffering 6y ago
    While that could be true, it wouldn't point to the root cause. There exists a limit to how fast an area can physically develop by modern construction speeds and government permitting procedures, orthogonal to the area's willingness to develop. It's possible that 600k population Boise area is unable to build as fast as California's 700k yearly exodus would like to be accommodated.