Good food in convenience stores.
That technology just hasn’t made it to the US yet.
Do gas stations count? Because Kwik Star and Kwik Trip in the Midwest offer excellent food options.
Casey’s breakfast pizza is another. There is zero reason for a gas station to have good breakfast pizza at a reasonable price. But they do.
Their regular pizza is also decent for the price.
not like made to order food like in 711 prepackaged – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVG-3Yug4XA&themeRefresh=1
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.
I’m so jealous of those deep soaking tubs they have too. SO jealous
Yeah, I’ve got a self filling one. Nice to run a bath without even getting out of bed. Although if you forget to put the plug in first, you’ll arrive to an empty bath.
haha why would they make the solenoid for the water running but not for the drain? that’s weak
Medicare for all
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Bathroom mirrors that don’t steam up after taking a shower.
Vending machines that are competent at accepting cash. Everywhere else that I’ve been to, you have to smoothen the bill and make sure it has no wrinkles or bended corners, and even then the machine would sometimes give you a hard time. In Japan, you just insert a stack (!) of bills, and the machine will count them within seconds, and also give you change in bills, and not a gazillion of coins.
Gates at the train stations are also better than everywhere else. You don’t have to wait for the person in front of you to pass the gate, you just insert your ticket and go. You also don’t need to look for arrows or notches or whatever on the ticket to insert it correctly.
Electric kettles that are very quiet and keep the water hot for a very long time.
Trains where all seats face the front, so you don’t have to sit against the direction of travel.
Trains where all seats face the front, so you have to sit against the direction of travel.
I recently took a ride on a historic restored railroad where they run sightseeing tours on period accurate trains with period engines and coaches from the turn of the century. The trip was an out-and-back, and there is nowhere for the train to turn around before the return journey. Everyone was immensely surprised, then, when the conductor came down the aisle and demonstrated to everyone that the seats in those old coaches are reversible, and you can flip the backrest to the other side so you’re facing the right way regardless of which way the train is going. They’re otherwise 100% symmetrical.
Apparently this arcane technology of the reversible seat has been lost somewhere in the intervening 100 years, never to be discovered again. (In America, anyhow.)
Reversible seats sound marginally more expensive to install and maintain. The benefit is to make the customer’s experience better while adding no revenue.
Sounds like some anti-American euro-commie bullshit to me!
Are people really thst bothered about which way they are facing when travelling?
Probably not. But life is full of minor inconveniences like that, and they do add up.
That reminds me. All of the change machines I had the pleasure of using were very gentle when taking your money. Felt kinda jarring coming back to the US where they fucking jank the money our of your hand the second you insert it.
90s web design?
Our Japan group’s website is such a complete early 90’s train wreck.
The odd time I’ve tried to research something in japanese it always felt like going back in time
i miss file
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.
And they are not manly enough for the very manly men in 'Murica.
Bidets. General cleanliness everywhere, kinda like what we had when everyone was cleaning like crazy during the pandemic, but even more so.
Probably helps that kids are instilled with a sense of cleanliness at a very young age. Kids help cook school lunches on a rotating schedule, and everyone helps clean up afterwards. Litter is also a big social taboo (which is funny because public trash cans are basically nonexistent. You’re expected to carry your trash with you until you get home.)
The cleanliness of Tokyo is mind blowing.
Saw a video from Denmark I think where everyone is biking everywhere and the metro station has an enormous numbered rack for depositing bicycles for storage. The entire thing is spotless, well maintained, and has zero graffiti.
All I could think is that in the US the fabric of our society and the integrity of the social contract is so degraded that even if we somehow had the political capital to build it - it would be destroyed by individual anti-social behaviors. And we’d certainly never have the wherewithal to maintain or repair it.
I think the problem would be not considering the upkeep. Just look at the roads in the US, individual anti-social behavior didnt graffiti those potholes.
I believe the bidet is actually French. I assume that counts as the “Western world.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
If you select the wrong floor on an elevator, you can deactivate it by pressing the button again.
🤯
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.
Japan’s been living in the year 2000 since 1980
but they’re still in the year 2000…
Useable transit
Would definitely blow minds in the US, but most of the rest of the western world is pretty much up to par.
They have this crazy machine… Slide paper into it and then a hundred miles away a copy of that paper slides out.
I feel like sarcasm is a really strong attitude to have about fax machines.
Also used by doctors here in the Netherlands.
Vending machines with hot drinks like tea and coffee, that also sell cold stuff.
And beer.
Their vending machines are great and reasonably priced. Which is what keeps me from using any here in the US.
cat cafes?
We have cat cafes in Utah.
We have one here in Canada and it’s really nothing special
I recently saw a post where they have slots in bathrooms that clean your phone if you insert it
Dirty dirty phone.
Go use the bathroom hole!
I really dunno how I feel about inserting my phone into a slot in the bathroom if I’m being totally honest
I stick all sorts of things in holes in bathrooms. Keeps things interesting
Why were you downvoted? Because they had no sense of humor?
