Things that I learned about driving in Japan

[Steve Bildermann]

Note A nice little article choca block with tired cliches, misunderstanding and misconceptions. Par for the course for a MIT geek.

Just as Japanese society is more intricate, if less varied, than U.S. society, the topography of settled Japan is more intricate than the U.S.

Where we would say "this area is too broken up by mountains and inlets so we'll build towns elsewhere" the Japanese don't have that option. The result is an amazing number of bridges and tunnels. I have driven through more tunnels in three weeks and 4000 km. here than in my previous 24 years of driving cars. If you're a fan of civil engineer you'll giggle with childlike wonder every 20 miles or so as you come across a new suspension bridge, elevated road, or new tunnel.

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2004/08/20#a5611

[maraboutslim]

"The price in Japan includes two attendants who ...walk into the street to stop traffic as you're leaving, and bow from the waist as you drive away."

How could I have forgotten about this! Japan in a nutshell! Making 10 cars wait so one can pull out instead of making the one guy wait. It makes perfect sense to the gas station staff since the customer is part of their scene while the other strangers basically don't exist since there is no connection and thus who cares what they experience (just like you have to be polite to the old lady across the street but not the unknown old lady that wishes to sit down on the subway).

[Taro Toporific]

A nice little article choca block with tired cliches, misunderstanding and misconceptions http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2004/08/20#a5611

Let's problematic paradigms!

1. He comes to Japan in August.
That is, he intentionally came to global-warming, record hot, Land-of-Concrete(tm) during the O-bon rush. Obviously, he can't be bothered with either weather sites and guidebooks.


2. He drives to see Japan.
He doesn't know anybody and can't read or speak but he's on a Japanese driving vacation.
The problematic paradigm is that Japan is centralized society built around urban centers linked by rail. Japan is meant to be visited by train as much the blogwriter Greenspun's America is meant to be experienced as a road trip.
-->Consider the inverse.
An illiterate Japanese tourist decides to take a 9-day rail vacation only visiting the areas around American train stations on foot.
THE TRIP IS IRRELAVANT.



No wonder Philip Greenspun's weblog has only two posts:
First 24 hours in Japan 8/9/04]
[url=http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2004/08/20]Things that I learned about driving in Japan 8/20/04; 10:39:39 AM

[maraboutslim]

His blog may only have two posts, but this guy has been online forever. I remember reading his Bill Gates Wealth Clock pages in the early-mid 1990s and reading various photography how-to articles and bbs posts by him back in the day.

Ah, the good old days. I was an early member of Twics (japan's real first public isp/bbs. don't believe gol's hype about being first). At first we just had the BBS stuff and international email link and finally got a real internet link in '93. These were the days before the first graphical web browsers (mosaic) and we used lynx, gopher, archie, and junk like that! I think the system was running vms!

-Slim

[Taro Toporific]

His blog may only have two posts, but this guy has been online forever....
Ah, the good old days. I was an early member of Twics (japan's real first public isp/bbs....

Man-o-man, NAZUKASHII ... the bad old days!
Twics was for rich people since we had to pay blood by the second to use NTT phone lines to access the Internet. My bills used to way over 15,000 yen a month to NTT. I was on Japan 1stClass BBSes back then and a ton of text-only mail lists in 80s. Then at work I started to SHARE one Internet CAPTAIN terminal to access sites like "The Dead Fukuzawa Society" in the 90s.

[Steve Bildermann]

Ah, the good old days. I was an early member of Twics (japan's real first public isp/bbs. don't believe gol's hype about being first). At first we just had the BBS stuff

I was member #1 of Twics. I installed the first 1200 baud robotics modem they used there.

I was also founder and sysop for three years on *the* first BBS in Asia prior to Twics or Janis.

Good god, some long dormant memory synapse firing there....

[maraboutslim]

Ah, yes, I certainly don't miss those NTT bills! $27.99 for dsl is much better. I also shouldn't have said I was an "early" user of twics (i suspected you guys would have been even earlier) since it was around way before I got to japan but i got on it when I got to japan in '92 before there was a world wide web. I had used a few other online services in like 89-91 for "alternative" news for the college radio station i worked at and eventually managed but we didn't really use email for anything then. But when I got to japan, the local bbs and email became a good way to still have some English in my life and some connection to my home country.