Technology

(Big Danger in Little Osaka #23, 2009)

There was a brilliant headline in parody newspaper The Onion a few years ago that read “Earthquake Sets Japan Back To 2147”. The headline nicely sums up how the rest of the world sees Japan: some kind of futuristic wonderland where flying cars and robots that put your pants on for you are just around the corner. And, to a degree, this is about right. Japan has some hugely advanced technology, partly out of necessity: in the densely-packed cities, things need to be streamlined to ensure society doesn’t descend into chaos. Every day, trains deliver commuters to their destinations with jaw-dropping accuracy – if a train comes even a minute late, you know that some serious shit must have gone down. If you drive to work, you can get a card put in your car that automatically deducts money from your credit card whenever you drive past a toll booth. None of this stone-age ‘stopping and paying’ crap.

On the other hand, some stuff just seems to exist to make life more awesomer. On mobile phones it is standard to be able to watch TV, free of charge. Broadband speeds here are through the roof, much faster than my pitiful Western-style laptop can handle. A lot of cars have a mini-entertainment system mounted in the dashboard, which is both entertaining and terrifying if you’re riding with someone who’s absent-mindedly channel-surfing while driving. When the car goes into reverse, the screen changes to show a camera feed of what’s behind the car, overlaid with a grid-system that lets you reverse into a tight space with pin-point accuracy. And hey, let’s not forget the talking pen I mentioned a few weeks back.

However, Japan does have some areas where technology has stalled for some reason. The most glaring example is a lack of EFTPOS: if you want to use money at all you have to go to an ATM, which are surprisingly rare. I’m sure Japan could integrate EFTPOS technology if they wanted to, but for cultural reasons people prefer to deal in cash. However, this doesn’t really explain why ATMs are only functional for certain hours of the day and closed on Sundays. Apparently the concept of internet banking doesn’t exist, either. Bizarre. In the business world, many jobs that could be taken care of quickly by computer are instead done with an endless stream of paperwork, all needing to be stamped, as the inexplicable need for inefficient bureaucracy trumps the use of available technology.

Not everyone can afford state-of-the-art technology, either. The school I teach at isn’t exactly rolling in cash and the equipment there can be pretty outdated. Some of the computers are at least ten years old and on their last legs, and listening exercises are given using old-school ghetto-blasters. I was surprised to find that some of my students were unfamiliar with even the basics of using a computer. And let’s not forget the large proportion of people who live in rural areas of Japan, where things are generally done in a more traditional way. It’s not all bullet trains and talking stationery, people. Why, there are some families that don’t even have a pants robot.