Tokyo Blog

The capsule hotel concept has been familiar to the Japanese for several decades, but still hasn’t taken off in the west. This may have been because of the often tacky and unrefined nature of the capsule hotels themselves, or an inbuilt response to unfamiliar concepts such as these as being weird and uninviting. Japan has never had any such problem embracing novel or strange solutions to everyday life, but when I was living in the UK, I certainly couldn’t have imagined them taking off. Even so, they would make great alternatives to expensive inner city hotels, could prove extremely useful in airports (as we saw during the recent disruption caused by the Icelandic volcanic eruption), and could even provide shelter for late night revelers in urban areas, maybe even reducing drink driving.

If it ever were to cross the continents and make it to the west, let’s hope it arrives in the form of Kyoto’s new 9h Capsule Hotel designed by Fumie Shibata of Design Studio S. The name 9h comes from the concept of having 1 hour to shower, 7 hours to sleep, and 1 hour to rest (a total of 9 hours), although you can actually stay anything up to 17 hours in one day. The thing that really sets this capsule hotel apart from all the others that have gone before are the futuristic minimalist interiors, excellent facilities and the technologically advanced features, such as the biorhythm-aware Panasonic pod management systems that wake guests individually with simulated dawns of controlled lighting instead of noisy alarm clocks. Really though, it’s the industrial design that I love about this project. It is perfectly aligned with the discerning tastes famous in Kyoto with sleek black, dark wood and brilliant white being found throughout. The design of the electronic elements, the shapes of the capsule windows and the tasteful graphic design further reinforce the Japanese feel and serves to firmly set this apart from the awful Yotel at London Heathrow and makes the Nite Nite hotels look distinctly average.

I’m thinking of taking a trip to Kyoto soon, so I’ll make sure I spend one night here. I’ve never been so excited about the idea of sleeping in any other type of accommodation. That means something, surely.

UPDATE: Insiders at NTT Communications (in the same groupd of companies as Docomo) tell me the viral could be a build-up to Docomo’s launch of Micro SIMs sold without handsets, or even the release of its first unlocked handset (legislation in Japan has ruled that carriers must now sell phones unlocked so the customer can switch carrier and keep their existing handset).

There’s a new campaign taking place right now for Japanese mobile phone carrier Docomo, and it has a really crappy URL: www.docomo-1-1.jp. However, despite Docomo’s inability to choose a good web address for their viral, they have certainly poured a lot of money into this campaign, with posters literally all over the city and even taking over the huge screens at Shibuya crossing. If you check the website, you’ll see that it’s counting down to something which is going to happen on the 11th May 2010. What could it be? And why is Darth Vader involved? And why is it called ‘Who is my Boss’? Tune in for an update on the 11th (Tuesday).

Now showing in the Nissan Gallery Ginza is Nissan’s new concept car, and I got this snap of it (above). It seats just one person, is zero-emission and has a steering wheel like a yoke from an aeroplane cockpit which, as you turn it, causes the car to lean into corners. The vehicle is practically silent and looks graceful in this YouTube video:

Often it’s the mundane, easily taken for granted things I find in Japan that fascinate me most. Sometimes it’s the small differences but, in the case of the Japanese ATM, it’s a world apart from the UK equivalent I’m used to. You can probably tell by looking at it that it’s pretty unique in the world of ATM’s, but this is the ATM at the bank I bank with, and I’ve got some interesting facts about it.

The first thing you’ll notice is the screen. There’s an animated male and female teller that welcome you to the machine with a bow and a robotic ‘irasshaimase’ (’welcome!’ - lit. ‘come in’). Then, you’ll get a bow every time a request is received or when you finally end your ATM session. Finishing said session can take time depending on your Japanese reading skill and general ability to decipher unfamiliar screens filled with flashing messages, numeric matrices and any number of other offers for services and information superfluous to your requirements.

Having navigated the touch screen successfully, you might then have to get comfortable with the other hatches, slots and gadgets outside your current schema. The interface to the right of the screen (near to which is a complimentary calculator - not chained to the counter) looks like a smaller secondary keypad or possibly cup holder but is, in fact, a biometric scanner for your palm. In a super-security-conscious modern day Japan, a 4 digit ID number is too risky for some people. If this is the case, they can go into a branch during business hours and get their palm scanned in order to make use of this secure, labour-saving feature (it might be preferable for visually impaired customers too).

Moving in an anti-clockwise direction around the machine, directly above the palm scanner is the bill hatch. This is the hatch that not only dispenses, but also accepts deposits of Japanese bank notes. Of course, it’s capable of counting banknotes and verifying their authenticity, and even unfolding, uncreasing and flattening them out if need be, but what I find most useful about this hatch is that it’s almost impossible to leave the money behind. It makes a pretty loud noise when opening to dispense notes, but also continues to do so until it finally closes automatically and returns the money to the customer’s account, in the event of the notes not being taken. It made a novel change from the usual slot from which notes, in a variety of ages and conditions, are ejected from in the UK or Europe. Suffice it to say, the notes that come out of a Japanese ATM always look like they’ve been freshly minted. Any other condition would simply be unacceptable here.

So onto the card slot, which is unremarkable - but then you have its wider counterpart on the left labeled ‘passbook’. This slot does indeed accept a passbook, or bankbook. You insert this in order to get your statement recorded. Transactions in and out, charges, transfers and so on. First, you find the correct page to insert it on. It doesn’t matter if the previous printout of your statement finishes halfway down the page, the machine will detect the point to continue printing from and will even turn the page in order to continue printing records that span pages. Upon running out of pages, you will be prompted to order a new passbook through the ATM touchscreen, or you will just be given the book back once printing is completed, whichever comes first.

Beneath the passbook slot is the coin hatch. As you may have guessed, this dispenses coins and accepts the deposit of coins too. It’s pretty unusual to draw coins from an ATM, but it’s even more suprising to find you can pay them into your bank. However, don’t go pouring thousands of ¥1 and ¥5 coins into the hatch as they won’t be accepted. However, if you do test this rule and your coin hatch ends up spasmodically chewing on 6 months worth of shrapnel, you can use the handy telephone embedded directly in the bottom-left of the ATM to place a maintenance request, but make sure you leave before they get there.

I’m a little upset about this, because I just got back from a visit to the UK, and it looks like I’m going to miss Micro Men, the new BBC Four drama series telling the story of the life and inventions of the legendary ZX Spectrum creator, Sir Clive Sinclair. I had a ZX Spectrum 128k when I was a kid (that was to be my second computer, the Oric 1 was my first) and it was important in cultivating my love for electronics. I also know that Clive Sinclair was an erratic megalomaniac and genius, so with all the retro technological geekery piled on, this looks set to be an unmissable show.

UPDATE: Maybe you can watch it in BBC’s iPlayer (only supposed to be available to people in the UK) if you’re a wizzkid.

Ever wondered what it’s like to drive a Tokyo JR train? Actually, I hadn’t until I got a rare chance to see the driver doing his thing. Usually the glass is smoked or there’s a screen obstructing your view, and I’ve never seen this again since. Check out the illegible display on his computer screen!

Romance Car VSE 50000 to Hakone from Stephen Smith on Vimeo.

But, this time, I’m riding the weird Romance Car from Shinjuku to Hakone. In this train, passengers see through the front window and not the driver. Actually, he’s in a cockpit on the roof, not dissimilar to the shape of that on a fighter jet. If you go onto my vimeo now, there’s a bunch of other videos taken from the train. More views of the outlying areas of Tokyo and beyond.

It looks a little bit like a Shinkansen train, but it’s not quite as fast. It will do 99mph and get you to Narita airport from Tokyo in just 36 minutes. And when the Japanese say 36 minutes, they mean 36 minutes. Exactly. You won’t be able to ride it until sometime in 2010, but it’s going to make a lot of people’s lives a lot easier. The train is designed by Kansai Yamamoto, a leading Japanese fashion designer. See the videos and download the wallpaper at the official site. Information courtesy of Shibuya246’s tweet.

I’m watching TV on my mobile phone right now - just because I can. I can’t do this in the UK, and so it’s a big novelty for me! It kills my battery though. My new phone is a Sony Ericsson and so it uses Sony’s Bravia screen technology, but I can’t see how it makes much difference on the small screen and with 1seg bandwidth being what it is. It comes in handy if you’re out of the house and there’s something on the TV you don’t want to miss which is rare for me in Japan (although the World Baseball Classic has been sucking me in recently).

OK, I finally got my new DSi in black. I checked out the white one, but it soon looks dirty due to the fact that it’s a handheld and you’re constantly toting it around in your bag, pocket, etc. I was really amazed by it. I can really appreciate the hours that have gone into the UI and interaction design. The graphics will never be as good as on the PSP, but I bought this to help me study on the train. I’m using Tadashii Kanji Kakitori-kun (lit: Correct Chinese Characters Little Writing Bird), which is designed for school kids to use to brush-up their Kanji. It’s therefore about the right level for me, so I use it on the train on the way to work. You use the pen device to draw Kanji on the touchscreen and it has a built-in recognition system that enables it to gauge the quality of your Kanji writing. It also has meaning and reading practice. The next game I buy will be Devil Survivor.

There’s a special place in my heart for the old Macs - I used to use Apple computers throughout university, back in 1996, and the boxes were still beige and the logo multi-coloured even then. Well, Macs have come a long way since, but the retro Apple look is ever popular - so one enthusiast (or team of enthusiasts, I’m not sure) has created this! It looks antiquated but it’s running Mac OS X Tiger! That must have been tricky.

When I was in England over Christmas, I saw some old photographs that reminded me of a computer my parents bought me when I was younger. It was the mid to late 80’s and I was probably around 9 or 10 years old when I got my first computer, this Oric 1 you can see above the text. Compared to all the breeze-block fashioned personal computers of the time, I think this was a design icon. Smaller and thinner than its counterparts and packing the same sound card as the one found in the Atari ST.

The computer used to be kept on a drawer that slid out from the video cabinet beneath the TV. In order to use it you had to squat or kneel in front of it. I used to play Hunchback or Zorgon’s Revenge when no-one was using the TV, or try to program it by guessing at the syntax. Zorgon’s Revenge used to give me the creeps in much the same way as Quo Vadis and Jet Set Willy. The games themselves were very surreal, and when you mixed this with the garish graphics and garbled, contorted sound there was something disturbing about it. A bit like the old Vectrex at my nan’s house.

I experimented with many of the early personal computers during the 80’s. My friends all had a different one: an Acorn Electron, a VIC 20, an Acorn BBC, a Dragon 64, an Amstrad, Commodore 64. They all sucked, but without them I probably wouldn’t be where I am now, so I have a right to be sentimental.

Have a look at this crazy cybertronic vegetable picking exoskeleton in this video newscast from Japan. Is there really a market for this suit in the farming fraternity here? it seems unlikely to me, but it does demonstrate well just how much more comfortable the Japanese are with the union between technology and the human body than any other culture in the world.

I was holding off upgrading to Mac OS X Leopard (v10.5) because I thought some versions of my installed software would cease to function in the new operating system, namely: Cinema 4D and my aging copy of After Effects. I had some time over Christmas, so I finally got it installed and, suprisingly, everything continued working! I upgraded After Effects anyway as this also needed doing, and cleaned up my files and folders. It feels so much better with my machine cleaned down and up-to-date. Better put it to use I suppose. Leopard is incredible by the way, and I advise everyone using an older version of OS X to bite the bullet. It’s not as dangerous as you might think.

Some bad news for children of the 80’s: The VHS format has finally officially died. There were loads of VHS tapes in my house when I was growing up, most of them had stuff recorded off TV. The ones that got the most rotation were Watership Down, Wind in the Willows, Ghostbusters and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. These were not allowed to be recorded over. The little tab had been broken using a bic biro to copy protect them! The fondest memory I have of VHS is the Manga range of UK released Japanese Anime features. I remember Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Perfect Blue, Fist of the North Star and Ninja Scroll with the bad dub and garish colours adding to the VHS tape feel of blurry images and white line interference. Wonky sound was also hilariously lo-fi. VHS died on Christmas Eve, 24th December 2008.