One of the reasons I am in Japan, it is because they are the most advanced country in mobile telephony. Apart from being the first ones in using the latest technology, and a very interesting live lab to check the different technology trends, it is also a very practical society.
One of the things I am quite surprised is the handsets market. First of all, there is not a big difference in the way the handsets look. They all look really similar, independently from the brand and the operator.
Furthermore, you may not be able to know which is your handset’s manufacturer, as they do not normally place their logo on them. For example, I have a Softbank mobile, with a clear Softbank logo on the cover, and with just the following characters: 813SH. That means, it is a Sharp (SE would be Sony-Ericsson, for example). So, the operators dominate the handsets market in a very strong way, and that is one of the reasons Nokia has left Japan for that.
But one of the most useful consequences of this is the charger. Each operator has established certain plug for all the handsets of that company. So, all Softbank’s handsets use the same plug for charging the mobile. Apart from the convenience of that, from the point of view of availability, it is also very convenient from the point of view of the price of the chargers (more simple and higher volumes per model, apart from the lack of need to buy “official” chargers).
An interesting device in this area are these portable chargers. You can buy in any convenient store (everywhere, 24/7) at a very competitive price (less than 1000 yen) this chargers with batteries, or with a certain energy on them. Cool, isn’t it?
You all know sushi, and probably many of you know what a Kaiten-Sushi is. It is a sushi restaurant, where dishes with different kinds of sushi are moving on a chain in front of you. The system is very easy: the one you like, you take it and eat it. There are different prices indicated by different colours/drawings in the dishes. When you finish eating, someone comes by and check your pile of dishes, so you can pay.
In the small town of Ito, I saw the most advanced technology for this: RFID. The idea itself is very logical: you set a RFID tag for each plate…
… and you just need a reader to get the accumulated consumption without counting.
I still have some doubts about the implementation of this in such a place (the number of dishes to count are normally between 7 and 13, and prices around 150 yen each plate) being profitable… But, that is part of this country’s philosophy: prevent errors of any kind and size.
Maybe I don’t pay much attention to the shop windows, but I had never seen these kind of dummies for trousers before… In this country, it seems to be really important how we look from behind…
