I've touched on this in this blog before but surprisingly Japan is relatively behind the curve when it comes to technology in everyday life. It may be synonymous with high-tech advances and robotic everything, but generally speaking day-to-day life in Japan is rather devoid of technology. Let me explain how...
1) It could be done on computer, but let's use pencil and paper! Oddly enough, many office and menial tasks in Japan are still completed using old fashioned pencil and paper. My teachers rarely use email for example, and when they do everyone logs on to an archaic shared computer as if email exists solely on that one machine. My JTE's have often expressed surprise when I deliver a ready-made lesson plan not 10 minutes after speaking to them about the day's lesson - as though the idea of finding exactly what I need on the internet is some kind of insane wizardry. In fact, I distinctly recall one of my teachers being completely in awe at the concept of Google Earth and even more taken aback when I explained that yes, I had seen and used it before. The pen and paper theme continues throughout office-life with vacation requests needing to be filled in on paper and stamped by a million different people before they can be approved, paper memos and schedules being the norm for information dissemination, internal mail document-forwarding existing in lieu of email communication and sending faxes between businesses still rather commonplace.
2) ATMs close and EFTPOS isn't a thing. This is something that caught me by surprise when I first came to Japan, but rather than running servers 24-7 and allowing people access to their money at all times, banks shut down their servers rendering ATMs essentially useless outside of office hours. Getting paid today but stuck without cash before 8am? Too bad, the ATM won't "open" until 9am. Need cash at 7pm saturday night for a weekend out? Nope, the ATM "closed" at 6pm. Want to pay for your groceries by card? Um, what? No can do, you must have cash! I have been caught out by this a couple of times, but soon learned from my mistake! Basically, everyone makes it to the bank at some stage during the week to withdraw a ridiculous wad of notes which they carry around with them to pay for everything. You must pay cash for groceries at the supermarket, electronics at big department stores, food at restaurants, petrol at service stations etc etc. The only places you can use card (and I mean credit card, not bank card!) is at large hotels and some of the more tourist travelled places like airports etc. Talk about inconvenient!
3) Nobody uses internet banking. Let me say first of all that you CAN get internet banking. You just can't DO anything with it other than check your balance. There's no such thing as BPAY, no transferring money between accounts, no paying money into other people's accounts by online means and hardly anyone uses credit or debit cards to pay for purchases online. If you want to do any of those things, you must go to a branch or use an ATM (during office hours of course!). On the plus side, cash-on-delivery is major business here and one can order just about anything from Amazon.co.jp and opt to have it delivered to your door for a small fee, with nothing to pay until you actually collect the item.
4) Smartphones aren't the norm in Japan. Most of the population get by with these little flip-phone thingies. Don't get me wrong, if you can read and write in Japanese then these cheap little mobile phones are endlessly useful - you can use the internet, send mails, watch TV, listen to the radio even - but if you can't it's just calls and texts for you! Only recently however have smartphones really become an "in-thing" in Japan, with iphone and android model sales taking off.
5) The land of the squat toilet AND the automatic washlet. Toilets in Japan are a bit of a contradiction. On the one hand, some are Western-styled seats with fancy electronic feature additions such as deodorising, washing facilities, heated seats and privacy sounds. While on the other hand, squat toilets are essentially a bowl set into the ground with a pull handle to flush. All rather bizarre and something I won't miss at all - at least until I have to park my behind on a freezing-cold seat in the middle of winter anyway.
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