4 ms·
Nah, man, I first came to Japan (from the Bay Area) in 1989 and it totally was like a science fiction movie. I then moved to Tokyo in 1994. • weird giant TV sc
by veidr 12y ago
Nah, man, I first came to Japan (from the Bay Area) in 1989 and it totally was like a science fiction movie. I then moved to Tokyo in 1994.
• weird giant TV screens all over the city, bleating ads at you while you ate in a grubby hand-built noodle shop next to a skyscraper (Blade Runner)
• super-advanced mobile phones COLOR SCREENS that you could PLUG INTO YOUR PDA AND DIAL INTO BBSes WITH! (Star Trek)
• toilets that sensed your motions and flushed for you (never saw this in a movie but I always imagined after seeing them that the toilets on the Death Star had to be like this)
• elevated trains and highways that passed through buildings and let you peep into tiny apartments so small they might as well have been Battlestar Galactica living quarters
• the badass cassette walkman i bought with an extra D battery attachment
• robotic vacuum cleaners doing the airports and stations while playing a creepy melody so they didn't scare you
... plus tons more like that. I had never seen any of that stuff in the USA in those days. It just doesn't really sound high-tech and futuristic anymore.
- free2rhyme214 12y agoCorrect it WAS high tech but not anymore. I went to Tokyo in 2013 and 2014. That probably was cool in the 90's but lately Japan hasn't done anything new in over a decade.
- tim333 12y agoThe Honda uni-cub is new and quite cool (not released yet): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCwzaTPARtU&feature=youtu.be&t=25s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCwzaTPARtU&feature=youtu.be...
- DannoHung 12y agoIt's a mobility device for the elderly.
- ekianjo 12y ago> That probably was cool in the 90's but lately Japan hasn't done anything new in over a decade. Living in Japan and this is dead right. I'd say two decades actually.
- kentosi 12y agoA friend of mine who recently went on a trip to Tokyo said that it looked like how people in the 80s/90s thought the future would look like. I guess he was spot-on.
- A_COMPUTER 12y agoI was living in Japan 22 years ago (Yamanashi), and I agree with your two-decade assessment.
- ekianjo 12y agoThanks for your confirmation - I've been almost a decade in Japan and been following its unfortunate technological decline for a while before I moved here.
- Animats 12y agoThat's sad. Futuristic stuff often gets to the prototype stage in Japan, such as maglev trains, mobile robots, and vertical/horizontal elevators, but large scale deployment isn't happening. If you have a cool idea for Japan, there is now a well-funded "Cool Japan" venture capital fund.[1] The government of Korea is funding K-pop, and the government of Japan wants to catch up. So far, they've bought a translation/subbing company, started up an anime streaming site (daisuki.net), and are funding a food court in Singapore and a green tea restaurant in the US. They need more advanced concepts to fund. [1] http://www.cj-fund.co.jp/en/ http://www.cj-fund.co.jp/en/
- ekianjo 12y agoCool Japan is just ridiculous. A concept started by politicians to make it seem they are doing something but they don't even understand why their culture is attractive in the first place. They are completely oblivious to it, and then you get these companies sucking money from them for easy profit and no oversight under the "Cool Japan" brand. Another good example of silly Japanese politics.
- 12y ago
- ArekDymalski 12y agoI faced exactly the same disillusionment when I visited Japan in 2007.