Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Is It Unusual For Japanese People To Use Computers?
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FloozyGod
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So if you are an otaku and a computer scientist in japan, you're set for life
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maximilianjenus
Posts: 2891 |
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too adb that's hardly a factor, tho IT salaries in japan seem to top at 40-50k usd per year, while similar jobs make 100k+ usd in the usa; based on my job search, note that I don't know if other professional jobs that require 5-10 years of experience in japan go above 40-50k usd per year. |
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SaitoHajime101
 Posts: 285 |
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Can't really compare due to the yen to dollar conversion and the cost of living between both countries. Most ITs make that type of money starting here in the US, but it's not "great" money due to the economic and living factor. |
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lavmintrose
Posts: 90 |
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But meanwhile, their stationery is the best in the world. Everyone anywhere else who still wants to use pen and paper will get them from Japan. And there are, in fact, a multitude of reasons why pen and paper use is still important.
Seriously, fountain pens are sold in a lot of stores in Japan, not just specialty stores. That's like a dream! Not to mention things like Coleto pens, Frixion pens (which they have in America but in nowhere near as many colors), the paper quality, the variety of calendar layouts you can get (the standard American week-on-two-pages with Saturday and Sunday squished together is ridiculous), etc. |
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Mr. Oshawott
 Posts: 6773 |
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Interestingly ironic that the country that was once revered as the world-leading country as the revolution in technology is also weak in technology when it comes to computers. If only the prefectures would find some way in making access to computers simpler for lower-income folks...
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Danette-Anime-Otaku
Posts: 115 |
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 I think the last time I didn't have to type out a paper was in middle school. As far as I know in today's age kids in Elementary school already type up papers instead of write (thus all the more reason why teaching cursive writing has become unnecessary).
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cloud8100
Posts: 550 |
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I think people in places where the computer is used constantly tend to forget how to write properly by hand.
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pluvia33
 Posts: 196 Location: Dayton, OH, USA |
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Agreed. I think one of the main reasons that Japan is so far behind now is because they were early adopters to using cellphones for email and web-browsing (which was likely largely due to the PC language support issues mentioned in the article). From what I've heard, the flip-phones they were using over a decade ago were crazy powerful; maybe as good as some of the early smartphones. Although I don't think the US will ever see the numbers that Japan has now, I think we will come close in the next decade or so. |
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NormanS
 Posts: 167 |
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i recall reading somewhere (during the time of vista i think), a joke or a comment that the majority of family PCs in Japan are either on win 95 or 2000. And that if you walk into some newspaper or bank company, they are still using typewriters to type things out.
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samuelp
Industry Insider
Posts: 2242 Location: San Antonio, USA |
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Anecdotally I can definitely confirm that your average Japanese person can type faster using a touchscreen on their phone than they can using a real keyboard.
And try and get them to use an actual formula beyond "SUM" in an excel spreadsheet and their eyes glaze over... |
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whiskeyii
 Posts: 2266 |
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I'm assuming that the keyboard layouts from cell phones to computers are largely the same, so I guess the issue is mostly in technique; where phones are (probably) all thumbs, you have to use pretty much all your fingers for keyboards, or just settle for punching each key one at a time. The lack of typed papers does strike me as very odd, though. Unless the point of the paper is to grade your penmanship alongside it, I feel like it's way more important to get your ideas across in an easily read fashion. Then again, I have very little idea of how the Japanese school system works, so I might just be woefully misinformed on that front. EDIT: Also, yay for serendipity! I'm also playing Root Double at the moment, and yeah, those were really odd moments to point out computer literacy. 
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Elves
 Posts: 269 Location: USA |
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That is very surprising. I can see why early adaptation didn't take due to the language barrier, but I would have thought it had caught up by now. Hrm...
Also, I guess that all those Japanese computer-literate nerds are going to become even more of a scarce commodity as time goes on...you know, since they'll all be trapped in MMORPG games within the next decade or so. lol At least according to various anime titles anyway. hehe 
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dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 9902 Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC |
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I wonder how many teenagers and younger kids today know that for a long time a "word processor" had meant a hardware instead of a program / software (e.g. Microsoft Word or OpenOffice Writer)?
If you've heard that one way to romanize the name of the capital of Japan is "Toukyou," you might have also heard a term: "wapuro romaji." The word "wapuro" is the Japanese abbreviation and transliteration of "word processor," the hardware most Japanese companies and some families would purchase in place of IBM PC-compatible computers in 1980s and early 1990s, as the latter still had difficulties dealing with Japanese fonts before DOS/V appeared in 1990. Being native Japanese designs, those "wapuro" machines were capable handling most routine word processing tasks for offices and homes, making PC-compatibles unattractive to most potential customers except for gaming -- a market it has to compete with consoles like Nintendo's NES/Famicom. Therefore, "work with wapuro; play with console" became the belief of many Japanese; they simply didn't find a need to purchase and learn computers. Some personal observation: Back in my high school years of early 1990s, tech-savvy otaku boys would "acquire" and install DOS/V on their computers in order to play Japanese games (eroge in particular, of course), as importing a genuine NEC PC-98 series computer would be prohibitively expensive. Oh, speaking of NEC, the industry giant (roughly the Japanese equivalent of IBM) became an Internet phenomenon this February due to a Japanese Twitter user tweeted about overhearing a small talk between several young women in a cafeteria: "My BF got a job in 'Nippon Denki', like, some sort of never-heard-of small electronic retailer? I dumped and blocked him," and her girl friends even congratulated her. An US equivalent would be like "My BF got a job for a mining company in Minnesota; dumped him cause I don't want to be with a dirty miner for the rest of my life."
AFAIK Japanese resume / CV are mandatory to be handwritten in order to show perspective employee's dedication and carefulness, thus have ZERO tolerance on errors or correction. Made a mistake? Forget about correction fluid or tape; just toss it and start over. |
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SNaGem
Posts: 41 |
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It's a pretty fantastic game. Anyone who likes visual novels like Zero Escape or Ever 17 should play it. |
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4559 |
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Probably not a whole lot. The main reason I know is because my older brother had one in college. Papers usually had to be typed, and at the time, it was still pretty unusual for college students to have their own full computers, and my mom explained that even though it looked like a PC, it could only write documents.. By the time I was going to college, there was no question I would be building my own computer. But considering there are 11 years between us, that isn't so unusual. |
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