I honestly think we should build normal light rail stations with RGB gamer lights and crap and hype it like it's futuristic tech. it works for musk's tesla taxi tunnel so it should work for actually good public transit too. maybe make the bodywork on the trains look like some dumb sci-fi movie
I also live in an area that doesn't get served by the Al Boraq. We don't have trains in general over here and I am jealous.
I also learned about the Al Boraq's existence the hard way, because in the summer of 2022, my family had to drive me from Casablanca to Tangier and back by car, which took us like 3 hours on one trip.
Don't quote me on the exact time but I heard somewhere that they run so close to schedule that a bullet train arrived something like 18 seconds late and the company apologized for the delay. ( might have been a minute or two but I recall it was really, really short. )
Switzerland doesn’t really have a high speed rail network. In fact they design against it. Indeed the country is very small so it’s not a huge deal but then again there are flights between Geneva and Zürich so it’s large enough for that.
Their rail system is by far the best in Europe though and one of the best in the world only surpassed by the likes of Japan. They just aren’t really know for high speed rail.
Switzerland is very mountainous and has pretty fast trains too, although not Shinkansen-fast. Swiss trains are expensive and comfortable and the vista is pretty much always great.
Also, the EU just launched a new plan for railroads all across Europe! Ofc Switzerland won't get any additional upgrades, but they are still somewhat connected because of the proximity.
We've been waiting for Germany and Italy to upgrade their railways for a decade now, we invested billions in our alp transit system, but it can't get used properly without the connecting infrastructure
I'd kill for a fast track to New Orleans, Atlanta, Little Rock, Tulsa, Nashville, all that. Ply me with cheap beer, let me chill and ride. What a dream.
Kansas city... what I'd kill for a fast track to Chicago, St Louis, Denver and the like...
I mean fuck, at least we have Amtrak to Chicago and one to St Louis... however only runs once a day, takes as long as driving as long as the priority that goes to freight trains doesn't delay too much.
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.
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.
Here in the Netherlands you can pay practically everywhere electronically (even the door to door collectors for charities carry a qrcode in addition to their collection box) , but if you go next door to Germany you'd better bring cash if you want to buy anything.
And when it isn't cash only it's a completely random grab bag between credit cards, transit cards, QR codes, app payment and e money. Just hope you have the supported option of like 20 options.
They’ve made a stunning amount of progress in accepting credit cards in the past couple years though. I’m there pretty regularly and the shift has been wild. By spring 2023 I didn’t really need cash anymore. By fall, I used cash maybe twice.
There was one thing I was sure I’d need cash for— nope, the hotel paid them and added it to my tab. Back in the day, that mostly happened only if you skipped out on a reservation and the restaurant wanted to collect the cancellation fee. Which has never happened to me so I guess I’m not sure it worked exactly like that.
I know a lot of people here hate credit cards and only use cash, but it’s honestly a pretty large hassle to get cash in every country you visit. Using the same card everywhere is way more convenient and cheaper (exchange fee + no % back like with a credit card)
I've heard it's just more of a burocracy thing. A friend there once told me he always puts the date wrong on the top of documents because there is a person who's job is to double check your work. They're judged on how often they find mistakes, so it's easier to put something blatantly wrong at the top that easily fixed so they can quickly find it and he can move on.
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.
i do not understand american's aversion to the bidet. why would i want to wipe my ass with dry fucking paper rather than water? why why why. like it's somehow 'gross' to use water. but scraping at wet shit with fucking tissue paper is hygienic and normal?
I understand why you like it. I don't understand why the other person isn't allowed to dislike it. Does it harm anyone if he "smears shit into the rest of him"?
I got one with a dryer that makes that a lot better. It does take too long to fully dry it though, so it's this middle ground of not too wet to dry off, and not waiting forever for the dryer.
OK guys -- Think about this -- What if you got shit on your hands or anywhere else on your body. Would you make this argument? Would you think that would be OK if someone told you they just wiped it off with a paper towel and went on about their day? no.
Somebody once said it to me like this: "If you faceplant into a pile of shit, would you rather wipe your face with a dry paper, or use water for cleaning"
I don't understand this either, toilets already require running water and have plenty of room to integrate bidet function. It's not fancy tech or anything... in North America that's sort of how they're marketed though, with an emphasis on the settings, like its something you have to learn to use.
Pretty much every thread we have in this community, someone comes along to say "you should pressure-wash your asshole". I'm mildly bemused that this is what Lemmy obsesses over.
I own a BioBidet 2000. My friend Brian has one at his house and he convinced me to just try it. I did. And then I ordered one for myself before I left the bathroom.
Cultures who use bidets and not the bum gun will always confuse me. Ones a robot strapped to the toilet that does a medicore job at one thing, then other is a cheap water gun you can use for all sorts of shit (pun intended).
Uhhm, I'm not a doctor and this is not medical advice, but. You should talk to a proctologist about hemorrhoids or other blood circulation issues. Anuses are not supposed to itch when lightly sprayed with water, or ever for that matter, and that sensation might be a sign of tissue inflammation. Don't ask me how I know this.
It's like having a second toilet seat. Takes more room.
Not from the US and live in a condo, so I'm speaking from a purely practical standpoint. My condo is not that big and having a bidet would mean that I have no place to put my washer and dryer at.
Some of them have it, but that complicates the installation. I bought one without a heater ages ago, thinking I’d hate it. I actually hardly notice the cold water. Your butthole isn’t great at sensing hot vs cold.
My butthole is pretty good at sensing temperature. During the winter I have to try and use the bidet fast with the room temp water before the cold outside water gets to my turd cutter.
Here, it was below -25C (-13F) last night, and it has generally been below -20C at night for weeks now. Our water is now very cold. Believe me when I say your asshole will notice that.
I will say tap water at this temperature is fantastic to drink though.
Water coming from the nastiest thing in the building in contact with the part of my skin that's got a low barrier to things passing through it? Get fucked.
As I understood, lots of Japan is rural, and travel between places outside of the main cities and tourist spots is limited. It'd be like saying the US has good public transport because of the NY subway...
I got out to the middle of fucking nowhere on a mountain by taking the Shinkansen, then a local small train, then a bus, and finally a taxi because I didn't want to wait 20m for a shuttle bus
Compared to California (home, comparable size and layout tbh) it's way easier to get to remote places period thanks to the public transit system
Quite literally to do the same trip I did in Japan in CA I'd have Maybe a slow ass Amtrak line to get me close-ish in twice the time of the Shinkansen and still have an hours drive of my own rented car to get there
I’ve traveled from tiny towns in northern Japan to major cities like Tokyo. All on public transportation. Bullet trains, local trains, they’re very well connected to each other.
They have a device which progressively shines a light on a piece of paper while moving across the page and converts the brightness of the reflected light into an audio signal. Once it reaches the edge the paper is incremented and the process repeats. Each of these segments of sound are sent via a standard telephone connection to a similar device on the other end which uses the sounds to reproduce the image on the original paper on a new sheet of paper. This can be used to send forms, letters, black and white pictures, and even chain letters. It also forms the basic underpinning of a significant fraction of formal communications with landlords, employers, medical systems, government offices, and so on.
Japan's current fiber-optic commercial internet connections use optical fiber transmission windows known as L and C multi-core fiber (MCF) bands to transport data long distances at record speeds. Meanwhile we (USA) have fiber back to copper and Cat3 for the last few hundred feet in most cities at best making the entire idea into a bottle neck.
There are a lot of very good reasons to switch back to copper for the last portion of a run. I highly doubt that consumer internet in Japan is terminating fiber directly into peoples' computers. Fiber is a lot more expensive both for the line, to run it, more prone to breakage, the network cards are more expensive, etc. It's really not needed for most purposes.
Also no one uses cat3 for data and it can't be run for 'hundreds of feet'. And LC fiber IS used in the US - that's a kind of connector not the kind of fiber.
I highly doubt that consumer internet in Japan is terminating fiber directly into peoples' computers.
You run fiber to the home and gigabit ethernet or whatever internally in the premises. All your other complaints re: cost and etc aren't really an issue for last mile consumer grade fiber.
I have seen installers run a fiber drop cable across from a power pole, bring it down an outside wall , then staple it to joists under a house, cleave off the end and stick a mechanical splice on it, bang it in the power meter, all good, plug it in the fiber modem, good to go in less than 20 minutes. All this stuff uses standard components and technology that's been available for 10+ years now.
Also no one uses cat3 for data and it can't be run for 'hundreds of feet'. And LC fiber IS used in the US - that's a kind of connector not the kind of fiber
It's probably the standard "last mile" half assed solution where they decide to use existing phone lines and VDSL from a box down the street instead of biting the bullet and running fiber.
They are arguing that inside the nlhouse ople don't use fiber, they use the ethernet copper cable from the router. Which is like, fine, okay, that's true, but also not at all what people are arguing and not something that should be required to be pointed out in this context.
People are arguing that in some US cities the Internet distribution is done through copper for the whole building/complex, and just like you, in my home there's a fiber port into my router, which then I use cat7 copper cables for my stuff. But up until my router there's fiber, which is awesome.
Typing from my Tokyo fiber-to-the-home connection now. They ran it off the pole, installed a little thing in my house, ran the fiber to the modem they make me rent, and it works like a charm.
I don't think I understand unless you're expecting me to buy some router and network cards that natively support fiber to go from the modem (which is fiber in from the pole outside).
No, the average internet download speed in the United State is about 171 Mbps. Though disclaimer, I'm not sure of the exact reliability of that number, different sources are reporting quite a range of speeds, though I don't see any under 100 Mbps average and I see many reporting well above this. You'd also have to consider median vs average since people with fiber sitting at gigabit speeds may be dragging that number up, median may be lower.
There are certainly some areas, especially rural, that struggle though. And upload speed is often much worse unless you have fiber. Major cities are definitely getting much better than 10 Mbps down though.
Cat 3 is a thing and is basically unshielded twisted pair. You can abuse it quite a bit from its voice grade days to cram a few hundred megabits of VDSL over it if it's only from your house to the curb.
If you have a large suitcase or other parcel it may be unwieldy to walk around Tokyo or another city with it. Subways only allow one suitcase of a certain size, so you might have to take a much more expensive taxi.
Instead you can go to a desk at the airport and have your luggage delivered same day or next day to ~any hotel, subway station, or convenience store. It will be insured and kept safe for you there to pick up. And at the end of your trip, you can send it back. The price for this convenience? Around $10.
This is not only a good demonstration of Japanese trust and customer service, it's also a legitimately hard logistics problem. I daresay that such a business could not succeed in the US both because of our defensiveness and sprawling cities.
I've tried it, and I ate the whole plate, but I wouldn't do it again.
Raw chicken tastes like it smells, and it's just inferior to every other sashimi - not outright repulsive, but just not as good.
I honestly don't understand how those specialty chicken sashimi places stay in business. I guess there must be an audience for it, but I can't imagine why.
You have to be in the South. Now that I think about it, Florida sushi sounds like a euphemism for gator roadkill. Florida gas station sushi sounds terrifying.
This is what we heard. So when visiting my brother, the whole group tried it. Everyone got salmonella poisoning and had explosive diarrhea for two days. That was an interesting shinkansen trip.
Your intuition is right on this, don't eat raw chicken.
"When cooked, chicken can be a nutritious choice, but raw chicken can be contaminated with Campylobacter, Salmonella, or Clostridium perfringens germs. If you eat undercooked chicken, you can get a foodborne illness, also called food poisoning."
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.
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.
Everything has traces of faeces on it, this fixation on it seems irrational when you put it into context. The burger meat comes from a dead animal that spent it's life wandering in a field and trampling it's own shit. The fries come from the root of a plant grown in the dirt. The bun is made from wheat which was probably infested with mice. You yourself are a biological machine that turns food into energy and discards the waste. Your body has a tube filled with faeces right now.
Yes, we try to keep waste separate from food, but the world is not a clean-room.
All of those things are cleaned before being consumed. The touch screen menus are one of the last things you touch before touching and eating your food.
The world may not be a clean room, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to deliberately interact with someone else's faeces, especially when I'm about to eat.
Strangely enough, you've made me realise that I haven't for a while. Not a deliberate thing, it's just that everything I've bought in person recently has been with a contactless method.
Doesn't matter. There's feces everywhere. When you smell a bad bathroom, a fart, your own poop it is because it is in the air all around you. You're nose is actually detecting the particles of shit in your nostrils. It is on your clothes, on your skin, on your face, on your hands.
The test used to detect trace amount of feces would likely find feces on door knobs, stove dials, clothes or anything else often touched in your house right now.
Please be one of those people that washes their hands instead of this functioning as some broad, sweeping excuse because "it's already everywhere." I don't know how else fecal matter would be expected to travel to a stove dial.
I wash my hands all the time. I'm not voluntarily gross. The tests will find trace amounts but if you don't wash your hands after going to the bathroom, you are a gross person passing on loads of bacteria that is exponentially more than the testing will find.
I appreciate the distinction though. There are definitely people that live like that. There used to be a guy at a place I used to work who used to dig in those big trail mix jars people put out sometimes instead of dumping them into something or even dumping them into their hands. Once I was in the bathroom (washing my hands) and saw him leave the stall and just walk straight out. Now I can't see those without thinking about that. I'll never touch those things again.
That's because there's feces on every person all over them. Your nose works because it detects chemicals of something. If you smell feces it is because it is inside of your nose. Feces is in the air. Smell a fart? It's now on you. Bathroom smells like shit? It is in the air around you and on you.
Just about 20 years ago when all those soda fountain dispensers tested always had feces detected on them, it wasn't because some bandit was going around the world smearing shit on them every day, it is because it is always every where.
According to the BBC article that talks about the McDonalds touch screen, they say the same thing.
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.
That's a good point. I could be in the restaurant for an hour trying to order, and as long as there are other kiosks available, it wouldn't make a difference to them.
i just want to pay cash, otherwise i prefer kiosks... but i see a future of hostile, nagging UI design...
like at some stores self checkout, you have to click 80 different confirmations and give your phone number, email and social security number...
Because I don't want to be bombarded with ads and "did you consider this offer" shit and take 5 minutes to use some usability nightmare? Because I do not want to touch a greasy screen that 362 people used today without washing their hands after taking a shit?
Because I do not support corpo greed that will not rest until every employee has been fired?
"Paying by card? Type your pin into that well used machine. Cash? OK hand me the piece of paper that have touched hundreds of hands and maybe nostrils"
Maybe my people are bad at their jobs but my fast food people just take the order without any real upsell most of the time. PIN is only for debit. I almost never have to actually touch payment controls these days. NFC tap and away.
Why should I have to do everything myself when I'm at a commercial establishment? Why is interaction with a human a bad thing? I absolutely hate self checkout for the same reasons. Quality of service is valuable and humans benefit from interaction.
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!
Water (hot and cold) tapped straight to your dining table for self serve drinks.
This in particular sounds awesome, speaking as a heavy water drinker who always feels like a bit of a heel having to pester busy wait staff to come over and refill my water glass a bunch of times.
I often see buildings in Japan that have a manual sliding door followed by either a push button or proximity automatic door. If I am going to have to open one door myself, I might as well open both. If one is automatic, the other might as well be too.
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.
Automatic opening doors but they don’t open by a proximity sensor, they open when you press the button.
I think it would be cool to have a hybrid system where you can wave/nod/bow to a sensor to activate it, but also implement an open standard frequency that can trigger it so people with reduced mobility can mount a transmitter on a wheelchair/cane etc. or just use their cellphone. Would eliminate having any external equipment that would be exposed to weather or vandalism and is one less common surface for the public to have to touch.
I work in a pharma research facility, so people can have literally any disease or chemical on their hands, so we have a lot of doors with hand wave sensors.
Just wag your mitts in front of it, and the door opens. They're on the wall a few steps before the door, so the door is usually open by the time you get to it.
Refrigerators that make way less noise than the ones we have here. Japanese more often live in small apartments so noise is a bigger nuisance. But, those refrigerators are ridiuclously expensive by our standards. I had been interested in buying one, oh well.
When I looked into it a few years ago, I found that, contrary to the stereotype, Japanese homes are surprisingly big. Smaller than the US or Canada, which are some of the biggest in the world, but actually bigger than most of Europe.
The result of a quick search: the average Tokyo apartment is 65.9 sq m (710 sq ft). The modal apartment size is 19.7 sq meters (212 sq ft), so maybe that's what you're referring to. But that's only 21% of Tokyo apartments.
Please tell me this is something you can customize. I didn't realize until now that I need a toilet that plays John Williams' "Olympic Fanfare" when I take a dump.
Can't believe noone has mentioned the hot beverage vending machines.
Its so fucking nice to spend $1-$1.50 and just get some hot tea or coffee right there without issue. And they're everywhere so you can pretty much rely on them.
So much more convenient than having to go to a coffee shop so you can pay $5 for the same thing, and the vending machine version still tastes great.
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.
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.
Well it's moot anyway; I'm in the US where Nestle sold all their confectionary brands. I just noticed all the kitkats at the store I shop were branded by Hershey now and had to look up wtf. I noticed this before with another candy not too long ago, too. Didn't realize it was literally all their candy brands in the US.
They have more drink vending machines than you'll believe, with a huge variety ofcold and hot drinks and even soup, but essentially no food vending machines.
One that I haven't seen mentioned ever was neat flashlights in every hotel room I stayed in. They were all mounted to the wall, and had no power switch. The wall mount had a tab sticking out that separated the batteries, so when you went to use it, the batteries touch and make the circuit. They were always low power, so that you didn't disturb others in the room, and you have to keep it in its location to turn it back off. They worked well for going to the bathroom at night and not messing up night vision too. I tried finding one in the US, to no avail, but they're all over in Japanese 100 yen stores. A clever, cheap design.
It's just a slightly different design on a standard flashlight. I was able to find this, seems to be a manufacturer of them. Hotel torch they do seem to be mostly for emergencies, but would work well enough to be a night light
Similar in that it's mounted, different in that it has no buttons/switches and wouldn't be on, or even able to be on when mounted. Those look pretty cool though.
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.
Not overly high tech but such a good fit for the culture and extremely convenient:
Self-filling, self-warming baths
Put the plug in during the day, press the button to fill the bath at the remote keypad in the kitchen. Baths fills and a little jingle announces that the bath is ready at the perfect temperature.
Not Japan specifically, but I've got say I'm jealous as hell about the snack scene in east Asia.
I generally don't have a sweet tooth, and things like potato chips don't have that umami I like. I try to keep snacks around because I forget to eat, but nothing appeals to me. But man... all those pre-packaged tofu squares, various bits of marinated meat... that's my deal. There's one solid "Asian Mart" near me, I'll stock up a few months worth at a time.
Closest you get in the US is basically jerky/slim jims, which are great but expensive and kind of one note for flavor.
People from the US will be surprised how far the rest of the western world, and high tech eastern Asia, are ahead of the states in terms of recycling and infrastructure.
Eh, we separate a lot of our trash, but what actually gets recycled (and whether you consider incinerating waste to generate electricity as 'recycling') can be disappointing.
It's kind of a relic of the past now since everyone uses a streaming service of some kind now but right at the end of physical media's lifespan, Japan had some key advantages over the US specifically because it was legal to rent albums and I believe individual songs, just like a Blockbuster. Eventually they had the music purchasing equivalent of Redbox in the form of kiosks as well with the advent of recordable Net-MD minidiscs, which only really ever saw success in Japan.
High-speed rail
don't tell America. pretend it's multiple automobiles welded together and they'll like it
I honestly think we should build normal light rail stations with RGB gamer lights and crap and hype it like it's futuristic tech. it works for musk's tesla taxi tunnel so it should work for actually good public transit too. maybe make the bodywork on the trains look like some dumb sci-fi movie
Some LED strips, diffuser channels, and an ESP32 are all you need to RGB anything. It's shockingly simple to do this now.
Just tell them they run on coal.
Fixed for 'murican tastes
Duh, we have high-speed rail in Morocco. It's called Al Boraq and is the best way to blast from Casablanca to Tangier.
And it is not overpriced like in France, where the tgv is more expensive than a taxi to the airport, your plane ticket, and then another taxi.
I thought I was the only Moroccan on Lemmy.
I also live in an area that doesn't get served by the Al Boraq. We don't have trains in general over here and I am jealous.
I also learned about the Al Boraq's existence the hard way, because in the summer of 2022, my family had to drive me from Casablanca to Tangier and back by car, which took us like 3 hours on one trip.
Tgv is awesome but I do agree that it is quite expensive
Don't quote me on the exact time but I heard somewhere that they run so close to schedule that a bullet train arrived something like 18 seconds late and the company apologized for the delay. ( might have been a minute or two but I recall it was really, really short. )
Confirm. That's Japan. The driver is in trouble when it's a minute or more
We're doing fine with that in Switzerland thanks.
Switzerland doesn’t really have a high speed rail network. In fact they design against it. Indeed the country is very small so it’s not a huge deal but then again there are flights between Geneva and Zürich so it’s large enough for that.
Their rail system is by far the best in Europe though and one of the best in the world only surpassed by the likes of Japan. They just aren’t really know for high speed rail.
Switzerland is very mountainous and has pretty fast trains too, although not Shinkansen-fast. Swiss trains are expensive and comfortable and the vista is pretty much always great.
Also, the EU just launched a new plan for railroads all across Europe! Ofc Switzerland won't get any additional upgrades, but they are still somewhat connected because of the proximity.
Link to picture of railroad plan.
We've been waiting for Germany and Italy to upgrade their railways for a decade now, we invested billions in our alp transit system, but it can't get used properly without the connecting infrastructure
In other words, no need, we're already far ahead
I'd kill for a fast track to New Orleans, Atlanta, Little Rock, Tulsa, Nashville, all that. Ply me with cheap beer, let me chill and ride. What a dream.
Kansas city... what I'd kill for a fast track to Chicago, St Louis, Denver and the like...
I mean fuck, at least we have Amtrak to Chicago and one to St Louis... however only runs once a day, takes as long as driving as long as the priority that goes to freight trains doesn't delay too much.
Private sleeping room. I'd never fly inside the US again.
smug TGV noises
Would love to be able to take a sleeper train to the border with Canada, then have one of my friends from Toronto pick me up so I can visit them.
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.
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.
I think Shanghai/China fits it even better. The convenience and technological advances are moving crazy fast.
That might be true, I have no idea but for day to day stuff, is amazing.
I was there in the last few years and couldn’t believe how much of the country was still cash only!
Germany is very much the same way, in terms of paperwork and cash only.
Germany is the same as Japan in more ways than i could have thought.
I'm there right now from Australia, which is often considered one of the most cashless societies and yeah, it's really a shock.
To be honest I kind of like it, and the way they manage it.
Here in the Netherlands you can pay practically everywhere electronically (even the door to door collectors for charities carry a qrcode in addition to their collection box) , but if you go next door to Germany you'd better bring cash if you want to buy anything.
And when it isn't cash only it's a completely random grab bag between credit cards, transit cards, QR codes, app payment and e money. Just hope you have the supported option of like 20 options.
They’ve made a stunning amount of progress in accepting credit cards in the past couple years though. I’m there pretty regularly and the shift has been wild. By spring 2023 I didn’t really need cash anymore. By fall, I used cash maybe twice.
There was one thing I was sure I’d need cash for— nope, the hotel paid them and added it to my tab. Back in the day, that mostly happened only if you skipped out on a reservation and the restaurant wanted to collect the cancellation fee. Which has never happened to me so I guess I’m not sure it worked exactly like that.
I know a lot of people here hate credit cards and only use cash, but it’s honestly a pretty large hassle to get cash in every country you visit. Using the same card everywhere is way more convenient and cheaper (exchange fee + no % back like with a credit card)
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.
I've heard it's just more of a burocracy thing. A friend there once told me he always puts the date wrong on the top of documents because there is a person who's job is to double check your work. They're judged on how often they find mistakes, so it's easier to put something blatantly wrong at the top that easily fixed so they can quickly find it and he can move on.
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
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.
Oh, that's in the US isn't it?
Ja
sorry this is gross:
i do not understand american's aversion to the bidet. why would i want to wipe my ass with dry fucking paper rather than water? why why why. like it's somehow 'gross' to use water. but scraping at wet shit with fucking tissue paper is hygienic and normal?
American with bidet for 2.5 yrs. I hate shitting anywhere else now. Need a shower to get a new ass. Day is ruined.
pro tip: get a mobile one. Its basically just a plastic bottle with a nozzle screwed on. Some even come with little travel bags.
Pro tip: Those are called douches, pretty sweet huh?
I am not carrying around a tube for my asshole
Certainly not a 2nd one!
Yeah, I have one of these for backpacking. Works great.
Same.
My ass is squeaky clean at home.
I think we got our bidets at the same time
Woot deal?
Installed one for my Filipina wife. Never used it myself. I have shit on that pot for months, still forget it's there. Old habits die hard.
Dude. Do it. Go. Right now. Don't even need to drop heat. Just go freshen up.
Yeah I gave it a go. Not a fan. Took a lot of drying and I'm not very messy.
I love how you're being downvoted for having a personal opinion that harms no one but dares to go against the circlejerk.
Yeah 2 of my close friends told me it was the greatest thing they've ever bought. I was very disappointed to say the least.
Because dry wiping doesn't actually clean your ass, it just picks up most of the shit and smears the rest into you.
I understand why you like it. I don't understand why the other person isn't allowed to dislike it. Does it harm anyone if he "smears shit into the rest of him"?
I got one with a dryer that makes that a lot better. It does take too long to fully dry it though, so it's this middle ground of not too wet to dry off, and not waiting forever for the dryer.
Do you not use any toilet paper? That's gross. You need at least a tiny bit, it helps to dry too
Sorry my bad. Yes a little toilet paper. Much less because of the dryer.
Just use 2 squares of paper
OK guys -- Think about this -- What if you got shit on your hands or anywhere else on your body. Would you make this argument? Would you think that would be OK if someone told you they just wiped it off with a paper towel and went on about their day? no.
For the sake of your septic system, please don't flush those! Not even the ones that lie and say they are "flushable"...
Somebody once said it to me like this: "If you faceplant into a pile of shit, would you rather wipe your face with a dry paper, or use water for cleaning"
they're afraid they'll enjoy it...
I enjoy mine...
scary
This is also gross. There's a lot of men in the US that thinks touching there ass is gay so they never clean them.
So they don't even jerk off?
That's gay
Surely that's an urban legend, like truck nutz and decent beer.
It is serious, and don't call me Shirley.
N O-
It's not a problem to touch there ass. It's touching here ass that makes someone gay.
Where ass?
I don't know! Wherever the there ass is that the other guy was talking about, I guess
I'd argue anything past the first knuckle is on the spectrum.
Why are we getting my ISP inolved in this imaginary ass play?
$5/mo credit on your bill if you let them install a toilet cam.
Is that $5 per knuckle?
Its a sliding scale.
I don't understand this either, toilets already require running water and have plenty of room to integrate bidet function. It's not fancy tech or anything... in North America that's sort of how they're marketed though, with an emphasis on the settings, like its something you have to learn to use.
Pretty much every thread we have in this community, someone comes along to say "you should pressure-wash your asshole". I'm mildly bemused that this is what Lemmy obsesses over.
I live in Japan. My wife and I recently went to visit my family in the US and I hated every minute of the toilet situation.
I own a BioBidet 2000. My friend Brian has one at his house and he convinced me to just try it. I did. And then I ordered one for myself before I left the bathroom.
Fear of the Koch bros?!
Completely agree. I was raised with bidets/ water cleaning. TP That's just a dry off or catch those last few drops
They've become increasingly common in recent years. I don't think there's as much of an aversion as you appear to imagine.
Cultures who use bidets and not the bum gun will always confuse me. Ones a robot strapped to the toilet that does a medicore job at one thing, then other is a cheap water gun you can use for all sorts of shit (pun intended).
I used them while visiting Europe. They made my ass incredibly itchy. I'm good with the paper and washing my hands.
How does water make your butt itchy?
He was applying the water with a dildo 😞
Like someone at the bar whose seat is too far from the counter, he was trying to push his stool in
Ahh yes, deep cleaning.
A very itchy dildo?
Uhhm, I'm not a doctor and this is not medical advice, but. You should talk to a proctologist about hemorrhoids or other blood circulation issues. Anuses are not supposed to itch when lightly sprayed with water, or ever for that matter, and that sensation might be a sign of tissue inflammation. Don't ask me how I know this.
This was many years ago. The itching didn't happen immediately. Good advice to not take medical advice in social media comments.
It's like having a second toilet seat. Takes more room.
Not from the US and live in a condo, so I'm speaking from a purely practical standpoint. My condo is not that big and having a bidet would mean that I have no place to put my washer and dryer at.
the bidet is an attachment to your toilet, not a separate thing
That's not really traditionally true. Modern ones are integrated into the toilet seat, but they used to be a standalone fixture.
Yes, I was thinking about the old designs, haven't brushed up on new designs.
Sure, in that case, I would consider it, why not.
Oh... well, it was a sparate thing back in the day, haven't looked up new designs.
Check out the new ones. They fit right between the toilet seat and the bowl lip. Super slim. Plus, always clean ass.
You know those poops you take when you wipe once and it's already clean? It's like that but ALL THE TIME.
Damn... this does seem like the way to go.
I will most definitely look this up, seems like a real time and money saver 👍.
You'll enjoy this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=crDMkN8TZ8k
I suppose there's also a mini electrical boiler in there somewhere, so the water's not cold when it hits my ass.
Cool though, will look into this, seems like a nice soltion, toilet paper is getting more and more expensive.
Correct!
Some of them have it, but that complicates the installation. I bought one without a heater ages ago, thinking I’d hate it. I actually hardly notice the cold water. Your butthole isn’t great at sensing hot vs cold.
My butthole is pretty good at sensing temperature. During the winter I have to try and use the bidet fast with the room temp water before the cold outside water gets to my turd cutter.
I call dibs on first shit
Really? Hm... might try that as an experiment 😂.
Here, it was below -25C (-13F) last night, and it has generally been below -20C at night for weeks now. Our water is now very cold. Believe me when I say your asshole will notice that.
I will say tap water at this temperature is fantastic to drink though.
Water coming from the nastiest thing in the building in contact with the part of my skin that's got a low barrier to things passing through it? Get fucked.
Excellent public transportation
WITCHCRAFT
Is is a joke I'm too European to understand?
As I understood, lots of Japan is rural, and travel between places outside of the main cities and tourist spots is limited. It'd be like saying the US has good public transport because of the NY subway...
I got out to the middle of fucking nowhere on a mountain by taking the Shinkansen, then a local small train, then a bus, and finally a taxi because I didn't want to wait 20m for a shuttle bus
Compared to California (home, comparable size and layout tbh) it's way easier to get to remote places period thanks to the public transit system
Quite literally to do the same trip I did in Japan in CA I'd have Maybe a slow ass Amtrak line to get me close-ish in twice the time of the Shinkansen and still have an hours drive of my own rented car to get there
I’ve traveled from tiny towns in northern Japan to major cities like Tokyo. All on public transportation. Bullet trains, local trains, they’re very well connected to each other.
We have trains out to hubs in the countrysides here as well. Generally, they only run hourly the in a lot of the countryside.
They have a device which progressively shines a light on a piece of paper while moving across the page and converts the brightness of the reflected light into an audio signal. Once it reaches the edge the paper is incremented and the process repeats. Each of these segments of sound are sent via a standard telephone connection to a similar device on the other end which uses the sounds to reproduce the image on the original paper on a new sheet of paper. This can be used to send forms, letters, black and white pictures, and even chain letters. It also forms the basic underpinning of a significant fraction of formal communications with landlords, employers, medical systems, government offices, and so on.
Japan's current fiber-optic commercial internet connections use optical fiber transmission windows known as L and C multi-core fiber (MCF) bands to transport data long distances at record speeds. Meanwhile we (USA) have fiber back to copper and Cat3 for the last few hundred feet in most cities at best making the entire idea into a bottle neck.
There are a lot of very good reasons to switch back to copper for the last portion of a run. I highly doubt that consumer internet in Japan is terminating fiber directly into peoples' computers. Fiber is a lot more expensive both for the line, to run it, more prone to breakage, the network cards are more expensive, etc. It's really not needed for most purposes.
Also no one uses cat3 for data and it can't be run for 'hundreds of feet'. And LC fiber IS used in the US - that's a kind of connector not the kind of fiber.
You run fiber to the home and gigabit ethernet or whatever internally in the premises. All your other complaints re: cost and etc aren't really an issue for last mile consumer grade fiber.
I have seen installers run a fiber drop cable across from a power pole, bring it down an outside wall , then staple it to joists under a house, cleave off the end and stick a mechanical splice on it, bang it in the power meter, all good, plug it in the fiber modem, good to go in less than 20 minutes. All this stuff uses standard components and technology that's been available for 10+ years now.
It's probably the standard "last mile" half assed solution where they decide to use existing phone lines and VDSL from a box down the street instead of biting the bullet and running fiber.
This is how it works in the UK too. I've got Fibre To The Premises (FTTP), and the installation was pretty much exactly as you described.
I'm in Italy and I have a fiber internet port inside my home
Not on your computer though
This is like arguing that SMS is still a good messaging platform.
Which US-americans will happily argue for
No it's not? Fiber is a bad solution for short runs for residential use inside people's homes. Copper can pull 10 gig speeds or more.
Well, almost all apartments in the city I live in has fiber. They all have a box in a corner somewhere.
Then we pull a standard ethernet cable to our router and we run full speed.
Maybe I'm not knowledgeable enough on the area, but why is that bad?
They are arguing that inside the nlhouse ople don't use fiber, they use the ethernet copper cable from the router. Which is like, fine, okay, that's true, but also not at all what people are arguing and not something that should be required to be pointed out in this context.
People are arguing that in some US cities the Internet distribution is done through copper for the whole building/complex, and just like you, in my home there's a fiber port into my router, which then I use cat7 copper cables for my stuff. But up until my router there's fiber, which is awesome.
Anyway I hope this clarifies it.
Typing from my Tokyo fiber-to-the-home connection now. They ran it off the pole, installed a little thing in my house, ran the fiber to the modem they make me rent, and it works like a charm.
Yeah, it's not terminated in your computer though for all the reasons I said.
I don't think I understand unless you're expecting me to buy some router and network cards that natively support fiber to go from the modem (which is fiber in from the pole outside).
And you would be wrong.
I have fiber to home in Canada
Have fiber to home here in Arkansas in the US
Yeah, it's not terminated in your computer though for all the reasons I said.
And so what? I have 1.5 Gb symmetrical with latency to many sites and game servers under 10 ms (on Wi-Fi!)
Sweden is also quite well connected with fiber.
Yes, but nowhere compared to the Netherlands and Denmark
Ofc the size of the countries makes it easier.
Cat3? As in most cities in the US are limited to 10mbps?
No, the average internet download speed in the United State is about 171 Mbps. Though disclaimer, I'm not sure of the exact reliability of that number, different sources are reporting quite a range of speeds, though I don't see any under 100 Mbps average and I see many reporting well above this. You'd also have to consider median vs average since people with fiber sitting at gigabit speeds may be dragging that number up, median may be lower.
https://www.highspeedinternet.com/resources/fastest-slowest-internet
There are certainly some areas, especially rural, that struggle though. And upload speed is often much worse unless you have fiber. Major cities are definitely getting much better than 10 Mbps down though.
Cat 3 isnt actually a thing, but people call house phone wiring that. Runs DSL quite well.
Cat 3 is a thing and is basically unshielded twisted pair. You can abuse it quite a bit from its voice grade days to cram a few hundred megabits of VDSL over it if it's only from your house to the curb.
Takkyubin.
If you have a large suitcase or other parcel it may be unwieldy to walk around Tokyo or another city with it. Subways only allow one suitcase of a certain size, so you might have to take a much more expensive taxi.
Instead you can go to a desk at the airport and have your luggage delivered same day or next day to ~any hotel, subway station, or convenience store. It will be insured and kept safe for you there to pick up. And at the end of your trip, you can send it back. The price for this convenience? Around $10.
This is not only a good demonstration of Japanese trust and customer service, it's also a legitimately hard logistics problem. I daresay that such a business could not succeed in the US both because of our defensiveness and sprawling cities.
Good livestock conditions so that food is actually edible raw
There are places in Japan that actually serve chicken sashimi.
I've tried it, and I ate the whole plate, but I wouldn't do it again.
Raw chicken tastes like it smells, and it's just inferior to every other sashimi - not outright repulsive, but just not as good.
I honestly don't understand how those specialty chicken sashimi places stay in business. I guess there must be an audience for it, but I can't imagine why.
You have to be in the South. Now that I think about it, Florida sushi sounds like a euphemism for gator roadkill. Florida gas station sushi sounds terrifying.
It's completely normal for stores to keep cooked, deli style chicken on non-refrigerated shelves all day. I don't trust it.
This is what we heard. So when visiting my brother, the whole group tried it. Everyone got salmonella poisoning and had explosive diarrhea for two days. That was an interesting shinkansen trip.
Your intuition is right on this, don't eat raw chicken.
I googled.
"When cooked, chicken can be a nutritious choice, but raw chicken can be contaminated with Campylobacter, Salmonella, or Clostridium perfringens germs. If you eat undercooked chicken, you can get a foodborne illness, also called food poisoning."
Yeaaaaaah, no way I'll try it.
Then I think I would like to try cookie dough sashimi
What if you get salmonella!?
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.
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
Every US McDonald's I've been to for the last...5+ years has had the kiosk system.
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.
Everything has traces of faeces on it, this fixation on it seems irrational when you put it into context. The burger meat comes from a dead animal that spent it's life wandering in a field and trampling it's own shit. The fries come from the root of a plant grown in the dirt. The bun is made from wheat which was probably infested with mice. You yourself are a biological machine that turns food into energy and discards the waste. Your body has a tube filled with faeces right now.
Yes, we try to keep waste separate from food, but the world is not a clean-room.
You also have a skeleton inside you. The body is a terrifying place.
It's amazing that there's still room in there for the two wolves.
All of those things are cleaned before being consumed. The touch screen menus are one of the last things you touch before touching and eating your food.
The world may not be a clean room, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to deliberately interact with someone else's faeces, especially when I'm about to eat.
Hope you're not touching cash
Strangely enough, you've made me realise that I haven't for a while. Not a deliberate thing, it's just that everything I've bought in person recently has been with a contactless method.
Doesn't matter. There's feces everywhere. When you smell a bad bathroom, a fart, your own poop it is because it is in the air all around you. You're nose is actually detecting the particles of shit in your nostrils. It is on your clothes, on your skin, on your face, on your hands.
The test used to detect trace amount of feces would likely find feces on door knobs, stove dials, clothes or anything else often touched in your house right now.
Please be one of those people that washes their hands instead of this functioning as some broad, sweeping excuse because "it's already everywhere." I don't know how else fecal matter would be expected to travel to a stove dial.
I wash my hands all the time. I'm not voluntarily gross. The tests will find trace amounts but if you don't wash your hands after going to the bathroom, you are a gross person passing on loads of bacteria that is exponentially more than the testing will find.
I appreciate the distinction though. There are definitely people that live like that. There used to be a guy at a place I used to work who used to dig in those big trail mix jars people put out sometimes instead of dumping them into something or even dumping them into their hands. Once I was in the bathroom (washing my hands) and saw him leave the stall and just walk straight out. Now I can't see those without thinking about that. I'll never touch those things again.
That's because there's feces on every person all over them. Your nose works because it detects chemicals of something. If you smell feces it is because it is inside of your nose. Feces is in the air. Smell a fart? It's now on you. Bathroom smells like shit? It is in the air around you and on you.
Just about 20 years ago when all those soda fountain dispensers tested always had feces detected on them, it wasn't because some bandit was going around the world smearing shit on them every day, it is because it is always every where.
According to the BBC article that talks about the McDonalds touch screen, they say the same thing.
As someone that has to work in very close proximity to feces, smelling it is a good sign. Not smelling it is the alarm bell.
I didn't even consider that, America is just filled with 'people' who barely even qualify as such. it's no wonder we can't have nice things.
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.
That's a good point. I could be in the restaurant for an hour trying to order, and as long as there are other kiosks available, it wouldn't make a difference to them.
This is not a good point. This is just a company making us their unpaid employees.
Yes, that's the point that TAG made. It's something that I hadn't considered, and it's a good point.
The fact that it's something shitty that businesses do doesn't affect the fact that TAG made a good point.
i just want to pay cash, otherwise i prefer kiosks... but i see a future of hostile, nagging UI design...
like at some stores self checkout, you have to click 80 different confirmations and give your phone number, email and social security number...
The auto kiosks in Japan take cash and they are also mechanical and not touch-screen based (at least in most stores). They are tactile buttons. :D
That's why you have GDPR.
Because I don't want to be bombarded with ads and "did you consider this offer" shit and take 5 minutes to use some usability nightmare? Because I do not want to touch a greasy screen that 362 people used today without washing their hands after taking a shit? Because I do not support corpo greed that will not rest until every employee has been fired?
"BUt I LiKe tOucHy fLaSHy SCreeNy!!"
What are you, morons?
"Would you like fries with that?"
"Would you like to supersize that?"
"We have an offer on..."
"Paying by card? Type your pin into that well used machine. Cash? OK hand me the piece of paper that have touched hundreds of hands and maybe nostrils"
Maybe my people are bad at their jobs but my fast food people just take the order without any real upsell most of the time. PIN is only for debit. I almost never have to actually touch payment controls these days. NFC tap and away.
Why should I have to do everything myself when I'm at a commercial establishment? Why is interaction with a human a bad thing? I absolutely hate self checkout for the same reasons. Quality of service is valuable and humans benefit from interaction.
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 :-)
There is just an one time fee... that you pay annually.
Since I don't speak Japanese, it was definitely a much preferred setup that made things very simple for me when I visited.
This in particular sounds awesome, speaking as a heavy water drinker who always feels like a bit of a heel having to pester busy wait staff to come over and refill my water glass a bunch of times.
I love places where you can just get it yourself. Rare here in North America, but all over the place in Korea
I often see buildings in Japan that have a manual sliding door followed by either a push button or proximity automatic door. If I am going to have to open one door myself, I might as well open both. If one is automatic, the other might as well be too.
I see those all the time over here in my European country.
The hot and cold water thing is not common at all. A few sushi places and bars have it. But it's quite rare tbh.
I think it would be cool to have a hybrid system where you can wave/nod/bow to a sensor to activate it, but also implement an open standard frequency that can trigger it so people with reduced mobility can mount a transmitter on a wheelchair/cane etc. or just use their cellphone. Would eliminate having any external equipment that would be exposed to weather or vandalism and is one less common surface for the public to have to touch.
The need to push a button everyone else pushed, is how you get covid :p
I work in a pharma research facility, so people can have literally any disease or chemical on their hands, so we have a lot of doors with hand wave sensors.
Just wag your mitts in front of it, and the door opens. They're on the wall a few steps before the door, so the door is usually open by the time you get to it.
I work in a hospital, we use these long vertical elbow buttons or rfid readers with a badge which is also touchless.
And if I need to push a button like in elevators, I use the knuckle of my ring finger.
Some even have this little touch tool on their Keychain to touch screens or buttons.
A mindset of quality.
CNC Machines that are built in Japan are so much Mount Betterest than their 'Made in America' counterparts. Even under the same company name.
Visit any shop that requires quality around the world and you'll see Japanese made machines almost everywhere.
Refrigerators that make way less noise than the ones we have here. Japanese more often live in small apartments so noise is a bigger nuisance. But, those refrigerators are ridiuclously expensive by our standards. I had been interested in buying one, oh well.
Cries in NYC
Another big difference is the apartments are actually very affordable. Two minimum wage earners could afford a
32 bedroom apartment in 6 of the 23 wards in Tokyo.EDIT: 2 bedroom, not 3.
Yeah that's honestly insane.
You do realize a 3 bedroom appt is like 40-60m2 over here right?
40m^2 seems small. 60m^2 is 645 sq ft, so a bit smaller than we're used to, but not enough to make up the price difference.
An average apartment in Tokyo is less than 200sq. ft, less than a third of New York's average apartment size of ~700sq. ft.
When I looked into it a few years ago, I found that, contrary to the stereotype, Japanese homes are surprisingly big. Smaller than the US or Canada, which are some of the biggest in the world, but actually bigger than most of Europe.
The result of a quick search: the average Tokyo apartment is 65.9 sq m (710 sq ft). The modal apartment size is 19.7 sq meters (212 sq ft), so maybe that's what you're referring to. But that's only 21% of Tokyo apartments.
How much is that in communist units?
There are tons of silent and near-silent refrigerators in the US
Got a url? Not the very inefficient ammonia type, or the Peltier type that won't freeze stuff. Thanks.
Doesn't anyone check the dB an appliance makes? It's one of the first things I check, as I hate loud devices.
Those crazy toilets
New band name
No, I meant the ones with all kinds of buttons that has 5 different bidet settings and heated seats and plays music when you flush
Please tell me this is something you can customize. I didn't realize until now that I need a toilet that plays John Williams' "Olympic Fanfare" when I take a dump.
Therapist: Japanese toilets aren't real, they can't hurt you.
Japanese toilets:
I saw an ad for the Squatty Potty and decided to put 2 phone books in the bathroom instead. it worked well enough
Where did you find a phone book?
Next to the landline
I use my kids' step stool.
Can't believe noone has mentioned the hot beverage vending machines.
Its so fucking nice to spend $1-$1.50 and just get some hot tea or coffee right there without issue. And they're everywhere so you can pretty much rely on them.
So much more convenient than having to go to a coffee shop so you can pay $5 for the same thing, and the vending machine version still tastes great.
Automated underground bike storage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcZSU40RBrg
Their ability to actually build things. The amount of construction projects I saw while visiting was insane, and they get it done fast.
The bidets, of course. Ultra fast responsive vending machines for commuters on the go.
I came into this thread expecting to see toilets all the way down.
That's just the lid...usually the toilets are about knee high.
But I would never NOT have a bidet in my house ever again. And yes, I'm in the U.S.
Useable transit
I would kill for their bidets everywhere.
It’s just a small thing. The escalators don’t run continuously. They start running as you approach them.
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.
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.
KitKat is Nestle. Fuck that, never give those cunts any of your hard earned money.
I'll just use my 5-finger discount.
That's the spirit
Doesn't really hurt Nestle. The supermarket will buy more inventory, giving Nestle money
Well it's moot anyway; I'm in the US where Nestle sold all their confectionary brands. I just noticed all the kitkats at the store I shop were branded by Hershey now and had to look up wtf. I noticed this before with another candy not too long ago, too. Didn't realize it was literally all their candy brands in the US.
Too bad I want them Japanese ones... 😩
They have more drink vending machines than you'll believe, with a huge variety ofcold and hot drinks and even soup, but essentially no food vending machines.
One that I haven't seen mentioned ever was neat flashlights in every hotel room I stayed in. They were all mounted to the wall, and had no power switch. The wall mount had a tab sticking out that separated the batteries, so when you went to use it, the batteries touch and make the circuit. They were always low power, so that you didn't disturb others in the room, and you have to keep it in its location to turn it back off. They worked well for going to the bathroom at night and not messing up night vision too. I tried finding one in the US, to no avail, but they're all over in Japanese 100 yen stores. A clever, cheap design.
Forgive me if I'm not understanding this correctly, but that just sounds like a fancy nightlight?
Edit: I understand now :)
It's probably for use in an emergency like an earthquake.
Bingo
It's just a slightly different design on a standard flashlight. I was able to find this, seems to be a manufacturer of them. Hotel torch they do seem to be mostly for emergencies, but would work well enough to be a night light
A nightlight is a fixture on the wall. This is a flashlight you can take into your hand and carry with you.
Isn't that there to use if an earthquake knocks the power out?
Something like this? https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BFQTH16X/?coliid=I2KHT60C9Q9JJ0&colid=3M8N8NS9I64QJ&psc=1&ref_=list_c_wl_ys_dp_it
Similar in that it's mounted, different in that it has no buttons/switches and wouldn't be on, or even able to be on when mounted. Those look pretty cool though.
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.
Good food in convenience stores.
That technology just hasn't made it to the US yet.
High quality tentacle porn.
Bidets. General cleanliness everywhere, kinda like what we had when everyone was cleaning like crazy during the pandemic, but even more so.
Not overly high tech but such a good fit for the culture and extremely convenient:
Self-filling, self-warming baths
Put the plug in during the day, press the button to fill the bath at the remote keypad in the kitchen. Baths fills and a little jingle announces that the bath is ready at the perfect temperature.
Medicare for all
Not Japan specifically, but I've got say I'm jealous as hell about the snack scene in east Asia.
I generally don't have a sweet tooth, and things like potato chips don't have that umami I like. I try to keep snacks around because I forget to eat, but nothing appeals to me. But man... all those pre-packaged tofu squares, various bits of marinated meat... that's my deal. There's one solid "Asian Mart" near me, I'll stock up a few months worth at a time.
Closest you get in the US is basically jerky/slim jims, which are great but expensive and kind of one note for flavor.
90s web design?
Kei trucks that are extremely functional and fuel efficient.
The U.S. won't ever get that because they are extremely functional and fuel efficient.
Hot coffee in a can that tastes great
If you select the wrong floor on an elevator, you can deactivate it by pressing the button again.
They have this crazy machine... Slide paper into it and then a hundred miles away a copy of that paper slides out.
Vending machines with hot drinks like tea and coffee, that also sell cold stuff.
Magical girls
And the mechas
meguca is suffering
thank you DoctorButts
You are very welcome
Fax machines are still everywhere in the medical field.
I work in the freight industry, their pretty common here too
Though primarily for specific industries we ship too which includes the medical field
In the USA perhaps, not in Europe.
I recently saw a post where they have slots in bathrooms that clean your phone if you insert it
cat cafes?
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.
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.
People from the US will be surprised how far the rest of the western world, and high tech eastern Asia, are ahead of the states in terms of recycling and infrastructure.
Seriously, even Europe is so far ahead it's not even funny
Europe is probably furthest in recycling, but again, it's very different from country to country.
I was in Toronto's Union Station during civid and they also had UV phone disinfection machines. It was impressive.
Eh, we separate a lot of our trash, but what actually gets recycled (and whether you consider incinerating waste to generate electricity as 'recycling') can be disappointing.
It's kind of a relic of the past now since everyone uses a streaming service of some kind now but right at the end of physical media's lifespan, Japan had some key advantages over the US specifically because it was legal to rent albums and I believe individual songs, just like a Blockbuster. Eventually they had the music purchasing equivalent of Redbox in the form of kiosks as well with the advent of recordable Net-MD minidiscs, which only really ever saw success in Japan.
Or South Korea