752 sats \ 4 replies \ @Dash_1971 OP 11 Sep 2023 \ parent \ on: Introduction to the Bitcoin only scene in Japan. bitcoin
I don't think it's unique to Bitcoin. If you think about it, when was the last time you heard of anything new and interesting coming out of Japan? The golden age here was the 80s/90s and it's all been downhill since. Japan sort of missed the boat when it came to the Internet. Programming/ Software engineering /IT in general is not as respected here as it is in the west. The cantilionairs also suck up all the capital and talent and misallocate it meaning Japan majorly under-performs when it comes to creating unicorn businesses. There was a government minister of IT a while back who caused somewhat of a scandal when he admitted to have never used email before. Also, businesses all try to copy Toyota and apply hard engineering/production line principles to coding such that they don't do move-fast-and-break things well and have trouble shipping and iterating code. Hours / days / weeks will get wasted doing pointless meetings going over some RCA that has been demanded as a response to even a minor bug. Then "preventative measures" will be put in place such as burdensome manual testing of 1000s edge cases further and further delaying shipping new code. It makes sense with cars--lives are at stake and recalls are expensive. With mobile apps and websites not so much. Things are changing to the point where the Japanese have noticed they have fallen hopelessly behind. However, things move slowly here and with the average age of the population being high, and the average computer literacy being low, it's really hard to roll out new and smarter ways of doing things. As for bitcoin in particular and unique criticism, I don't think there's anything so unique. What worries me more is that Japan is pretty indifferent to bitcoin and also macro economics compared to the US. It's very much the frog slowly boiling out here.
That's a great summary. What culturally about Japan are you attracted to most now that you've been out there?
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It's still a clean and orderly society. The people are great, for the most part. The food is great. The society is conservative in a good way. I guess the "being decades behind" works both ways. Not good for IT. But good for social cohesion and common sense. It's also a country with a lot of natural beauty and blessed with many natural resources such as rice, fruit, fish. The government is weaker than its G7 counterparts, again in a good way. There was no lockdown in Japan during covid--they couldn't legally do it. There was no vaccine or mask mandate. Now, as it happened, most people went along with both masks and vaccines, but the point was nobody was forced to. Cash is also still widely used here. You can withdraw 3000USD worth of JPY from the ATM and nobody bats an eyelid. You can pay in cash everywhere. There is no nonsense laws on maximum cash transactions like Europe. The trains, buses and planes all run on time. The police are reasonable, for the most part. Also there is always a feeling like Japan could be back any day now. Just waiting for a few things to click and who knows. Probably not going to happen, but at least there is the hope.
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I highly agree with many points you mentioned. Just food, I may be to picky compared to you, but the corona virus money led to a sudden highly felt shrinkflation (almonds imported from Vietnam, nattô with worst beans, no plastic bags given in conbinis, etc the list doesn't end).
Yet, are may country where we have the best beaches in the world (Okinawa) and at good ski courses (Nagano and Hokkaido)?
I left Japan since April to travel in Asia, and in every country I go, there is always a moment when I feel like Bruce Lee ("it is better in Hong Kong") and am thinking this and that was better in Japan.
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I think you are right about shrinkflation, not just since covid but it's been going on for decades. Not only in goods but also in services. You can still pay for quality, though, although of course that price tends to track actual inflation. (by my reckoning goods have doubled in price in the last 10 years)
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