Technophilia

Michael The Japanese infatuation with technical gadgets is also evident in everyday life: When you open the hotel wardrobe, the light turns on inside just like in a refrigerator. Or the bathroom mirror is heated from the inside, so you can still admire yourself even when you've taken such a hot shower that everything steams up. Department stores like Takashimaya offer lockers for purchases — and they are refrigerated, so you can store perishable groceries you just bought there.

The taxi drivers can open and close the rear side door from the driver's seat, so when the passenger gets out, they don't need to close it. The driver presses the button, and the door quickly folds in. Our travel guide mentioned that the authors, after several years of living in Tokyo, got so used to not closing the taxi door that they did the same in New York -— which, of course, resulted in the driver throwing a hissy fit.

The mobile phone industry in Japan is a step ahead of the rest of the world. There are already mobile phones with built-in cameras that allow you to send pictures to the person you're talking to! Additionally, I find it remarkable that phone conversations in Japan are much more discreet. No one loudly shouts into their phone on the train or lets it ring with annoying melodies, unlike what Americans do (Rundbrief 07/2001). No, on the train or in a restaurant, the phone is set to vibrate mode, and for making calls, one steps outside (in the train to the vestibule) and speaks quietly and with one hand (!) covering the mouth, so that you can hardly hear anything. That's what I call manners! The etiquette prize is going to Japan this year!

But it's not just phone calls that are made on the go. Anyone who frequently surfs the internet is probably familiar with what AOL calls "Instant Messages" (AIM). Similar to the German SMS, young Japanese people, in particular, tap away on the tiny keyboard to send short messages to their friends. Each phone, in addition to the number keypad, has a dial that allows users to select terms suggested by the phone's computer. In America, no one does that. Here, you can even surf the internet and order books from Amazon using cell phones, but this is criticized as being far too cumbersome.