Back From Japan
As I’ve alluded to a couple of times, I returned last week from a trip to Japan (a brief moment of which was captured by Deanna). I haven’t gone into a lot of detail on my own background with Japan, but I began studying Japanese over 10 years ago in college, and lived in the Osaka area for a couple years in the early 00’s. Now that I visit on an semi-regular basis, I find my trips to Japan to be a blend of light culture shock and familiarity, depending on how long I’ve been away. This time, it’s been a busy three years since my last visit, and here’s what I noticed:
- Japan’s mobile phone ecosystem is still way ahead of the US’s. Apple’s iPhone is available in Japan, and it’s a market leader, but there are far more competitive offerings from Docomo and au than we anything we have here in the States.
- The Back to the Future II-ish Mitsubishi i has apparently been rolling in Japan since 2006, but I don’t remember ever seeing one on the road before this trip.
- Despite its age, I saw a favorite car oddity of mine, Toyota’s WiLL vi, continuing to occupy Japanese streets.
- After all these years, the more subtle differences are what catch me off-guard. It’s things like train ticket machines with animated characters that bow to you; the menus in coffee shops being placed on the counter, rather than posted behind the server; and placing your money in a dish rather than handing it to the cashier that really reminds me that I’m in a foreign country.
- I fell asleep watching NHK’s Kohaku music program on New Year’s Eve. That show is meant to be a pretty big deal, but the live studio audience always looks bored to tears when they are shown on tv.
- Daisuke Matsuzaka? “No good, too fat,” in the words of a distinguished baseball fan I happen to know.
We’ll return to regularly-scheduled programming tomorrow. And as an official announcement, I’ve joined Fangraphs, so look out for more there.
22/01/2010 at 2:44 pm Permalink
Regarding the most recent Fangraphs article, There is indeed an arbitrator or its equivalent. GG Satoh tried to bring an arbitrator in the past. I think the League’s president’s office went between Satoh and the club.
22/01/2010 at 4:26 pm Permalink
Surprised to hear that about the mobile phones—I was there a few months ago, visiting my girlfriend, and I thought the exact opposite. Her phone, and others like it, has very impressive hardware, but the software is proprietary, phone-specific, and incredibly labyrinthine; the iPhone doesn’t have a 12 megapixel camera or a TV tuner, but all of its features and apps are upgradable and easy to find.
My favorite car out there was the Nissan March—it’s a very elegant design for such a small car.
23/01/2010 at 11:54 pm Permalink
Yeah, the iPhone wins on app ecosystem and UI, but the Japanese makers win on network bandwidth and hardware specs. Docomo phones have some pretty good apps too thoughl
24/01/2010 at 12:12 am Permalink
And on the arbitrator equivalent, how often do contract negotiations get to that point? I’m not exactly a fan of the MLB arbitration system, but having a final deadline and an agreed-upon way of resolving deadlocks would prevent negotiations from dragging out, a la Kyuji this season.
Also, the commissioners office didn’t step in and help Satoru Komiyama a few years ago, when the BayStars wouldn’t offer him a contract, and none of the other NPB teams wanted to pay out the compensation fee he would have cost.