5 ms·

You are confusing 'different' with '10 years behind'. Let's just stipulate that fiber-optic and mobile internet infrastructure is light-years ahead of the US,

by veidr 14y ago

You are confusing 'different' with '10 years behind'. Let's just stipulate that fiber-optic and mobile internet infrastructure is light-years ahead of the US, since you say you are only talking about utilization. So no, Japanese people don't tend to do Facebook. On the other hand, they have 2channel, which was launched when Zuckerberg was still jerking off to Asian porn at prep school, and which 1 out of 10 Japanese people use. It's completely anonymous and pretty much the opposite of Facebook, but it's still the Internet. Just about everybody you see on the train, old grannies included, is sitting quietly, not talking, accessing some type of Internet-delivered content on their phone -- and we doing so well before "smartphone" was a word and when people were still stocking up on canned goods for Y2K. (I was a "PDA" developer back then.) My Japanese mother-in-law, as is typical, is fully conversant in using Skype, Flickr, Google+ or whatever... to check our the latest baby pics. Not to post her own stuff, because she certainly wouldn't want to do that. So if by 'the internet' you mean 'moving large aspects of their lives online' (in public, where others can see what they are up to), then no, people aren't really into that here. Privacy is a way deeper concept in Japan, both pre-Internet and in the present day. Even if people write blogs, they are often totally anonymous. They avoid putting their names on their apartment mailboxes and shun transparent garbage bags so that their neighbors can't see what's in their trash, too. That's different, but it's not '10 years behind' any more than Japan is '10 years behind in watching Survivor and Hardcore Pawn reality shows'. (Disclaimer: I'm not Japanese, but I don't use social networks either, and I like it that way.) [1]: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2010/04/06/reference/2channels-success-rests-on-anonymity/ http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2010/04/06/reference/2chann...

w1ntermute 14y ago
You're forgetting about digital media: http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/15/3628376/japan-digital-content-ecosystem-hulu-country-future http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/15/3628376/japan-digital-con... There's a lot more to moving your life online than social networking. I'm not big on social networking either. But that doesn't mean I still rent my videos at the corner store or go to the local record store to buy albums on CD.
- veidr 14y ago
  I don't think I am forgetting about those things -- read the closing paragraph of the article you link: The real question, however, is whether or not Japanese consumers even want these services that we from the West can no longer imagine life without. Hulu and Sony are making good starts, but they certainly have their work cut out for them in Japan. As far as I can tell, most people are pretty happy as long as they live within bicycle distance of a Tsutaya — that’s basically everyone in Tokyo, by the way — and its convenient, cheap access to rented media. Which, of course, can be copied and kept forever; a practice that Tsutaya has gone out of its way to encourage by actually selling burnable discs and drives alongside its J-pop CDs. And for casual consumers, maybe it is a better solution. No DRM, no extortionate prices, and a sense of ownership. That’s the thing about Japan — for better or worse, you can always count on the place to march to the beat of a different drummer. Like I said: different. It reminds me of how Japan kept (and keeps) using fax machines. It seems archaic, but fax machines are dramatically easier to use and far more reliable than any email system every devised. Part of what is going on here is that all the digital solutions suck too much ass. It took Apple ten years from when they launched iTunes Store to make the legal digital music scene actually better than CDs (when they finally shitcanned all DRM and stopped sucking more than the process of driving to Best Buy). It took an Amazon to make digital books not suck balls. Nobody has done that with movies and TV yet (other than the bootleg torrent scene, I mean). But I note the article mentions Hulu is doing well in Japan. Well, the suck-ass Hulu that they have in America wouldn't do well here -- they had to make Japanese Hulu significantly better (no ads, faster speeds, subtitles, etc). It's still not good enough that I can say walking down the street to Tsutaya is Doing It Wrong. I'm not saying the Japanese are the masters of the Internet, either. It turns out that the reason all Japanese websites look like shit is because that's how the Japanese want 'em. I spoke to an engineer for Rakuten at the last HN Tokyo meetup -- turns out Rakuten actually does have some designers and they've A/B tested their current 450-blinking-mini-banners-per-6MB-page against some clean and modern designs. The horrific eyesores won. The people had spoken. And what they said was, well, different.
  - w1ntermute 14y ago
    > It seems archaic, but fax machines are dramatically easier to use and far more reliable than any email system every devised. Are you kidding me? I have never had issues with reliability of email, but fax machines are always breaking down, running out of toner, and lord knows what else. That's why services like HelloFax exist. > It took Apple ten years from when they launched iTunes Store to make the legal digital music scene actually better than CDs (when they finally shitcanned all DRM and stopped sucking more than the process of driving to Best Buy). Uhh, no. Most Americans I know stopped buying CDs from Best Buy some time around 2005 or 2006. And those were the latecomers. The younger people stopped pretty much after Napster became big in the late 90s. > Nobody has done that with movies and TV yet Have you never used Netflix? > It turns out that the reason all Japanese websites look like shit is because that's how the Japanese want 'em. I spoke to an engineer for Rakuten at the last HN Tokyo meetup -- turns out Rakuten actually does have some designers and they've A/B tested their current 450-blinking-mini-banners-per-6MB-page against some clean and modern designs. The horrific eyesores won. The people had spoken. And what they said was, well, different. A/B testing is not the be all and end all of website design: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/07/groundhog-day-or-the-problem-with-ab-testing.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/07/groundhog-day-or-th... And I wouldn't use Rakuten as an example of shining engineering (or design) talent. I interviewed with them and quickly realized that it was a place where engineers went to get super shitty. Not to mention that Mikitani's famed "B2B2C" model is just plain idiotic. Surprise surprise, give people too much control over their "store pages", and they turn to shit. In America we'd already learned that lesson from MySpace, but it apparently never translated over to Japan. And if the Japanese like crammed and messy designs so much, why have the iPhone and iPad been such big hits? Shouldn't they have just kept using their Galapagos keitai, with the horribly confusing byzantine UI and tons of features that no one ever used?

by veidr 14y ago

w1ntermute 14y ago

You're forgetting about digital media: http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/15/3628376/japan-digital-content-ecosystem-hulu-country-future http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/15/3628376/japan-digital-con... There's a lot more to moving your life online than social networking. I'm not big on social networking either. But that doesn't mean I still rent my videos at the corner store or go to the local record store to buy albums on CD.

veidr 14y ago
I don't think I am forgetting about those things -- read the closing paragraph of the article you link: The real question, however, is whether or not Japanese consumers even want these services that we from the West can no longer imagine life without. Hulu and Sony are making good starts, but they certainly have their work cut out for them in Japan. As far as I can tell, most people are pretty happy as long as they live within bicycle distance of a Tsutaya — that’s basically everyone in Tokyo, by the way — and its convenient, cheap access to rented media. Which, of course, can be copied and kept forever; a practice that Tsutaya has gone out of its way to encourage by actually selling burnable discs and drives alongside its J-pop CDs. And for casual consumers, maybe it is a better solution. No DRM, no extortionate prices, and a sense of ownership. That’s the thing about Japan — for better or worse, you can always count on the place to march to the beat of a different drummer. Like I said: different. It reminds me of how Japan kept (and keeps) using fax machines. It seems archaic, but fax machines are dramatically easier to use and far more reliable than any email system every devised. Part of what is going on here is that all the digital solutions suck too much ass. It took Apple ten years from when they launched iTunes Store to make the legal digital music scene actually better than CDs (when they finally shitcanned all DRM and stopped sucking more than the process of driving to Best Buy). It took an Amazon to make digital books not suck balls. Nobody has done that with movies and TV yet (other than the bootleg torrent scene, I mean). But I note the article mentions Hulu is doing well in Japan. Well, the suck-ass Hulu that they have in America wouldn't do well here -- they had to make Japanese Hulu significantly better (no ads, faster speeds, subtitles, etc). It's still not good enough that I can say walking down the street to Tsutaya is Doing It Wrong. I'm not saying the Japanese are the masters of the Internet, either. It turns out that the reason all Japanese websites look like shit is because that's how the Japanese want 'em. I spoke to an engineer for Rakuten at the last HN Tokyo meetup -- turns out Rakuten actually does have some designers and they've A/B tested their current 450-blinking-mini-banners-per-6MB-page against some clean and modern designs. The horrific eyesores won. The people had spoken. And what they said was, well, different.
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  > It seems archaic, but fax machines are dramatically easier to use and far more reliable than any email system every devised. Are you kidding me? I have never had issues with reliability of email, but fax machines are always breaking down, running out of toner, and lord knows what else. That's why services like HelloFax exist. > It took Apple ten years from when they launched iTunes Store to make the legal digital music scene actually better than CDs (when they finally shitcanned all DRM and stopped sucking more than the process of driving to Best Buy). Uhh, no. Most Americans I know stopped buying CDs from Best Buy some time around 2005 or 2006. And those were the latecomers. The younger people stopped pretty much after Napster became big in the late 90s. > Nobody has done that with movies and TV yet Have you never used Netflix? > It turns out that the reason all Japanese websites look like shit is because that's how the Japanese want 'em. I spoke to an engineer for Rakuten at the last HN Tokyo meetup -- turns out Rakuten actually does have some designers and they've A/B tested their current 450-blinking-mini-banners-per-6MB-page against some clean and modern designs. The horrific eyesores won. The people had spoken. And what they said was, well, different. A/B testing is not the be all and end all of website design: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/07/groundhog-day-or-the-problem-with-ab-testing.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/07/groundhog-day-or-th... And I wouldn't use Rakuten as an example of shining engineering (or design) talent. I interviewed with them and quickly realized that it was a place where engineers went to get super shitty. Not to mention that Mikitani's famed "B2B2C" model is just plain idiotic. Surprise surprise, give people too much control over their "store pages", and they turn to shit. In America we'd already learned that lesson from MySpace, but it apparently never translated over to Japan. And if the Japanese like crammed and messy designs so much, why have the iPhone and iPad been such big hits? Shouldn't they have just kept using their Galapagos keitai, with the horribly confusing byzantine UI and tons of features that no one ever used?