10 sats \ 8 replies \ @john_doe 3 May \ on: How Japan succeeds BooksAndArticles
In the past when I went to a dentist in Tokyo, he told me I was lucky not to have to do what my father did. It is quite common to have the elder son take over what the father did.
You can find in Japan old historical texts that you don't find anymore in China. So not even professional activities but also objects are also better transmitted in Japan, e.g. compared to China.
The contrarian view of your post could be: why not improve what can be done or perfect something instead of expanding and in the end just make crap?
I think countries like the US are quite liberal, whereas Japan is more conservative (not liberal like in CNBC English with Biden but like in common English in the sense of how people take risks). Related to risk taking I don't think there THE best answer, there are trade-offs in both cases.
Very true.
In the article, it told about how new companies have a hard time breaking into the market.
Japan has been able to keep a lot of traditions because it is an island, which is good and bad.
But it is important to learn from different cultures, seeing how others approach problems.
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Indeed. It translates also into Bitcoin as well. I pay with cash and I don't expect to be able to pay with Bitcoin before 5-10 years in Japan. The advantage being it is unlikely that suddenly someone will mess up with the infrastructure which makes social interactions possible. So long term we can expect more stability.
With my job I saw many times foreigners failing where Japanese people don't, just because in Japan we don't change the version of libraries like that and we have to test everything to make sure there are no regressions. The bad side is upgrading becomes rare. The good side is it is not failing unexpectedly and we are confident it should work.
I am not sure if the geographical aspect has anything to do with that though. For example Indonesia is composed of multiple islands and is quite different in this respect. For me the geography has more to do with the Everything-is-done-here kind of mindset. I was impressed to see that even small things like drivers for printers were done domestically. We see innovation which happens just here, and wouldn't take off outside of Japan (typically the toilets).
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The toto toilets are bomb.
Especially with the heated seats, its so nice!
They can be a little delicate though, especially if you dont use the features correctly.
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For sure.
I especially like their suica card.
And the trains that run on time.
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Im pretty sure its on time all the time.
Rarely do you hear of a train being late in Japan.
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Interesting. I looked for some statistics and found that my experience of trains always late matches the rush hours (and I was always taking the train during the rush hours). More than 1 time every 2 days statistically the train was late in 2018 in Tokyo, during the rush hours.
Based on the numbers from:
https://toyokeizai.net/articles/-/330619?page=2
Based on the data here:
https://www.mlit.go.jp/report/press/content/001328948.pdf
I see a lot of suicides, which matches also my experience (I often read "passenger accident").
I guess you didn't take the train between 08:00 and 09:00.
At 08:55 at Shinagawa with the sound of people walking at the same pace during the rush hour, the first time, I got dizzy and had to slow down.
But indeed after work I don't remember having heard the train was late. Maybe you worked at 10:00?