When talking about Japan, people imagine an evolved, technological and futuristic place full of robots and technologies. Is Japan really like that? In this article, we will see that Japan is not evolved as people think.
Japan does absolutely everything to simplify people's lives through Convenience Stores, escalators, and elevators in public places and other places like train stations, along with various other uniquely quality services.
Yet Japan is not what people think, you can't find technology everywhere and things don't always happen in a productive and futuristic way. In fact, Japan is still very old-fashioned.
Japanese people don't know how to use computers. The power is still on poles rather than underground. Offices are outdated, with fax machines and huge shelves filled with file folders. Did you get a taste of what we are going to see in this article?
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Japan has a lot of technology
Japan's technology impresses all foreigners with its robots, toilets full of buttons, vending machines everywhere and trains that link the entire country.
Japan also produces a lot of technology. About 75% of hard drives are made in Japan's share of electronic components is 80%, more than half of Apple's components are Japanese.
Despite Japan being one of the biggest manufacturers and inventors of technology in the world, Japan has been stagnant since the 1990s because of the economic bubble and is losing out in many areas involving technology.
Japan is still a master at creating inventions that are useless due to its strong capitalism.
Japan does not use its technology
In Japan, many still do not use smartphones but flip-phones, those phones that open and close, and it is not just the elderly but even some young people use this type of phone. Sometimes some even embrace the idea of not having any cell phone.
Despite Japan having NFC, credit cards, and other forms of digital payment, a large part of the stores only accept cash, and Japanese people are not so accustomed to using cards. Even though Japan is a safe country, it is annoying to carry a wallet full of coins, but Japanese people prefer it.
Japan still uses many things that Brazil no longer uses such as CDs, Blu-rays, fax machines and impractical kerosene heaters. It's not easy to buy everything online, paying bills online is even more complicated, often you have to go to a convenience store.
Banks are also super backward and don't offer all the facilities through apps like we have in Brazil. Some banks only allow you to withdraw cash from their tellers and not from ATMs found in stores like Seven Eleven.
The Japanese prefer to do things the old-fashioned way
Not all Japanese people usually have emails. If you ask for an email, it will end up passing what the cell phone operator creates to send SMS. If you browse Japanese sites you will see a lot of layouts and designs resembling blogs from 2006.
In fact, most Japanese people don't usually use computers, they do everything on their cell phones. Even so, things are not so practical in the workplace, where paper is still the main way to store data.
Not even certificates or test results, entrance exams or JLPT can be issued on the internet, cell phone or mail. What's worse is that some were still forced to use FAX to receive certain documents from Japan's big agencies.
If you need to get something, be prepared to sign more forms and forms even though they have all their information on a computer. Banks, offices, schools, government agencies… No matter where you go, Japan prefers to have everything on paper.
If you're kidding, you'll still find people with Windows 98 installed on their computers, not to mention that XP is still very common. When it comes to software things are bad. Even though Japan has all the current technology, the Japanese don't seem to care.
Why does Japan have so many inventions but not fully evolved?
This is mainly because more than a quarter of the Japanese population is elderly and traditionalist. Even though Japan is one of the countries that most invent technology, its population is not fully prepared to make full use of most of them.
Japanese construction engineering, transportation technology, logistics and city engineering are all excellent, but when it comes to the rest, most of the time the technology is just made to look pretty and sell. If you don't sell it, you don't have it anymore.
The Japanese create new technologies and implement them in society, but only in areas that are important to the Japanese. Unfortunately every culture is different, you can see that the Japanese prefer the colorful and simple games from Nintendo over the realistic games from Sony.
So I come to the conclusion that these things mentioned in the article are that way because the Japanese either want it or not yet become popular or viral in a way that forces everyone to use it. Technology does evolve in Japan, but the Japanese are not obliged to evolve with it.
What do you think about technology in Japan? Did you know that Japan wasn't that advanced? Do you think Japan's technology has been overrated? If you liked the article share it and leave your comments.