Updating Japan's hi-tech image

Phil Muncaster

It's only 11 hours on a plane, but the Land of the Rising Sun has come to represent a stereotyped vision of a super-advanced sci-fi future ever since the days of the bubble economy.

Ridley Scott famously modelled the landscape of Blade Runner on parts of the Tokyo skyline. But does Japan really deserve the label? Taking a trip back there last week, I found some surprising contradictions.

Technology in all its shiny, showy glory is hard to miss walking through the insanity of Tokyo's Shinjuku or Shibuya districts. It's in every glaring neon sign and giant plasma screen towering over you in the street.

It's in the Yamanote line trains with their LCD displays over every door pushing out travel and weather updates and endless advertising, it's in mobile phone networks that seem to be five years ahead of our own and, yes, it's in those Buck Rogers toilets which do everything but flush.

Then there's the lower tech stuff, ingenious Heath Robinson inventions which have become near-ubiquitous, like the automatic beer pouring machines which manage to pour the perfect pint every time, or the train seats which swivel 180 degrees on their axes allowing passengers to always face forwards.

Then there are the coin-operated noodle restaurants, where the customer buys a ticket from a vending machine to hand over at the counter for a no-nonsense speedy service.

But that's all what we kind of expect, isn't it? What you'd expect a little less is that, in this apparently technologically advanced nation, most homes still do not have central heating or double glazing despite harsh winters in many parts of the country. Most still rely on kerosene heaters and table-like contraptions with built in electric heaters called kotatsu.

Japan is also guilty, at times, of an almost comical over reliance on manpower in business-to-business and business-to-consumer situations, where automated IT systems could help cut costs and improve efficiency and customer satisfaction for many organisations.

In a Kanazawa street, for example, a council worker stood by the road holding a sign which read: 'bus lane'. Who knows why an electronic sign updating drivers with real-time information was deemed unsuitable in this instance.

Anyone who has ever been to a bank or a post office in the Far East will be forgiven for thinking they have travelled back in time; even a simple money transfer or direct debit payment requires the furious stamping and passing of paper from teller to teller. You'll be lucky if you're in and out within 20 minutes.

ATMs, meanwhile, can carry out an impressive range of functions, but usually close at the same time as their parent branch, while chip and PIN services are far from ubiquitous.

This is a big contrast from the UK, where banks have invested millions in online services, increasing their breadth while streamlining and downsizing high street branches.

Meanwhile, a trip to a local Kyoto supermarket with two Japanese friends found them gawping with child-like wonder at the check-out. The reason? Their first ever sight of self-service machines, which are currently almost as uncommon in Japan as they are ubiquitous in the UK.

Now, these are all pretty anecdotal examples, and we can't underestimate the rate of innovation and appetite for new technology in Japan, but there is still a long list of reasons why we should update our stereotypes of the country to something more appropriate. After all, Blade Runner is nearly 30 years old now.