For my students: starting off 2019
Tech things I saw traveling to Japan
Since I intend this to be more of a ‘notes to self’ journal than a personal blog I'm not going to go into a lot of details about the terrific experience my wife and I had while traveling to Japan at the end of 2018. It was beautiful and rewarding, so let's just leave it at that. What I would like to do is post a few observations about technology from the trip.
Google Maps
Navigating in a foreign country is a source of a lot of stress for me, and I try really hard to plan things out ahead of time as much as possible. Something I usually assume will be a thing we will just have to figure out when we get there is public transportation and, in particular, the subway system. While we were in Japan, however, it became immediately apparent that Google Maps was going to essentially be our tour guide.
In Tokyo taking a taxi can be prohibitively expensive if you're going to try to get out and see as much of the city as we wanted to see, so the subway is the way to go. It's a complicated system, however, with many different lines operating independently and requiring transfers. At first we would use Google Maps primarily to find the closest subway station to get started, but it quickly became obvious that we could get much more information, including directions from one platform to another, indications of which named exit to take from a station, and precise fare for each leg of the trip. By the end of our vacation I was dependent on it.
Google Translate
This is a tool that I was aware of before, but which my wife really introduced me to. We used it on our trip to Mexico City, as a matter of fact, although for that vacation I didn't install it on my own phone.
We used Google Translate in two ways. First of all we used it to translate text on signs and (sometimes) food packages using the iPhone's camera. For example, there were a few times when we were approaching a shrine or a temple (we visited many) and found ourselves in front of several signs written only in Japanese. (This was rare, by the way, since the vast majority of the signage we saw throughout our trip was in both English and Japanese.) So we simply pulled out a phone, opened the app, and switched it to camera mode. Immediately we could see if the sign said something like “No Vehicles Past This Point” or “Closed from 12:00pm to 1:00pm.” Really, really handy.
Also useful when you pick up a bag of chips at the 7-Eleven and can't quite tell what flavor they are.
The second way we used the app was in a rare situation where we were trying to communicate with someone who did not speak English. Rather than struggling with hand gestures and pointing we could open the app and speak into it, or ask the other person to speak into it, in order to get an instant translation. Each person we tried this with already knew how to use the app, so it was typically an easy thing to do.
Pocket Wifi
The one unexpected stumbling block we encountered upon arriving in Tokyo was to find that our Verizon international coverage simply did not function in Japan. We have two different models of iPhone, and while both connected to networks there was no service. I looked into this briefly after the fact and there are reasons for this, and to be honest if I had called Verizon to ask if our phones would work I likely would have been told no.
No problem, however – we just needed to get a pocket hotspot for the trip. I though this would be far easier, and so my first attempt was at one of the ubiquitous camera stores near our hotel. No luck. I got a SIM card cheap in case that would work, but that was a no-go either. I asked for some help from the concierge at our hotel, and was directed to a place that was within easy walking distance.
We picked up the hotspot and were on our way. It came in a little pouch and had its own charger, and was easy as pie to use. Throughout our trip it got pretty good coverage, even on the train between Tokyo and Kyoto. And we got about twelve hours of battery life on it too.
We did this same thing when we visited Australia a couple of years ago, and I think this is going to be my go-to plan in the future for Internet access. Our international plan costs about $10 a day per phone, so it can get expensive fast. This pocket wifi hotspot cost around $80 for fifteen days. Well worth it.
Hotel Self Checkin
A cliche I had in mind as we were planning this trip is the notion that the Japanese have it all over everyone else when it comes to gadgetry. I don't think this turned out to be true, but we did find that just about every toilet was a Toto Washlet. If you don't have one at home, you need to get one. Seriously.
Anyway, the only other bit of gratuitous gadgetry that we ran into was the reception for the Knot Hotel in Tokyo, where we stayed the last few nights in Japan. This hotel uses a self-service checkin / checkout process, and it turned out to be really clunky. The interface was awkward, and I'm guessing it is often problematic because a staff member came over and chaperoned the machine as it checked us in and gave us our key. An option here as well was for us to use a passcode instead of a key, which just seems really problematic for no clear reason. No sir, I just don't like it.