Alternate title would be…life in the early 2000’s in Japan compared to now. What things have changed about daily life? how different would you say things are now? Would you say Japan is more globalized right now vs. back then, or was it already very much like that already at the time? I know they currently still use a lot of technology that is considered obsolete in many parts of the world, but is there anything that was used at the time that isn’t used anymore, or, on the contrary, still is? etc. Ty.
https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/wzhiy8/how_was_life_in_japan_in_2006_vs_today/
14 comments
Why did you choose 2006?
Much less public smoking now than then
No smart phones back then, remember rocking with my flip phone and cruising iMode for information or NaviTime for train information. Some people I knew chose between Docomo, au, and SoftBank solely based on emoji icons they wanted to with friends! Also, Sony laptops were insanely expensive but very thin and I remember really wanting one. PHS was very popular for companies and salarymen used to have the fashion of a PHS handset with a lanyard around the neck and the phone in the white shirt or 作業着 pockets. Most of my coworkers did not have a computer at home or even an email address and depended solely on their 3G phone. Made it hard to keep it touch with people over the years!
At the time I remember being impressed about 1) tablets at the table where you can order food, like at Warawara or Izakayas, 2) ringers buttons at the table to call a server to your table, and 3) buying something at the vending machine with a Suica card.
In 2006 almost no where took credit cards. Before taking a client out my team would all hit the ATM to withdraw 100,000 yen and pool our money to pay for the dinner—yes my employer in 2006 was cheap and reimbursed afterwards. I remember thinking how much easier it would have been with a credit card like back in my country…
I came in 2007 and though of the following.
Back then,
1. No smartphones
2. Paper/card tickets for the train were still fairly used
3. Amazon wasn’t free shipping, prime made it free
4. People watched tv dramas more
5. You would rent CDs from tsutaya to put them on your minidisc or ipod. Movies were either the movie night on tv or renting as well.
6. Less English on signs
As far as being more or less globalized as well as how foreigners are being treated I haven’t noticed much change but I guess it’s harder to see the big picture when you live here.
hasn’t Japan been living in the year 2000 for about 40 years now?
> I know they currently still use a lot of technology that is considered obsolete in many parts of the world
You don’t actually know that, you just think you know it because you’ve seen people joke about fax machines a few times.
>Would you say Japan is more globalized right now vs. back then
Oh yes, leaps and bounds.
Context: I first lived here as a study abroad student in 2004 and moved here permanently at the end of 2006.
– Mid-2000s feature phones (aka flip phones, garakei, etc) were about cramming as much as possible into your device – mobile payments (FeLiCa), TV (Oneseg), radio, apps/web services (all gated through your mobile provider’s platform of choice like iMode), whatever. The Japanese internet was nearly impenetrable by the west because everything was formatted for these phones. When the iPhone emerged in 2009ish it was revolutionary; a few update cycles later and smartphones were dominant.
– English signage inside train stations was very hit-and-miss outside major stations. Tourism facilities *in general* were not terrific. Tokyo was really inconsistent on universal access. It’s still not perfect, but there have been lots of improvements as buildings have been torn down and rebuilt – way more elevators, escalators, disabled bathrooms. Most bathrooms in train stations have switched to Western style, back in the day it was a coin toss. Suica/Pasmo are nearly universal.
– Tourists have access to more of Japan than they’ve ever had. Each prefecture/region puts a ton of effort into marketing (though in many cases they’re doing far from enough, or not doing it the right way), but the barrier to entry is lower than ever, even if you’re going off the Golden Route. Now you can easily get a data SIM (though it’s frustratingly hard to get a voice SIM compared to Europe), public wifi, you name it. English menus everywhere when they were a rarity in the mid-2000s!
– Vegetarian menu options did not exist, nor did halal-friendly. Nobody knew what veganism was, or gluten-free. Many restaurants have added such options over the years in response to the tourist boom, although things like GF and allergy-friendly menus are still hit and miss.
– There was a lot more openly shady stuff out there – the Iranians selling phone cards in Shibuya (and other things if you knew how to ask), the head shops that were just out there in the open, the stores in Akihabara where you could buy not only import games but R4 carts for your DS, or satellite descramblers, or Really Questionable Pornography, or all at once at certain places.
– Much, much easier these days to order stuff from overseas. Even with shipping costs factored in, I can order books and even things like kitchen appliances from Amazon US and it’s still cheaper than Amazon JP.
– No more geoblocking for games and BluRay, way less guesswork about whether or not a game you buy in Japan will have English. Similarly, shorter waits for Hollywood blockbusters, and for big releases like MCU/Star Wars/etc you’re often getting it the same day as the rest of the world. More streaming services available for sports.
– The LGBTQ community was still largely shut away in Nichome, now Tokyo Rainbow Pride exists and was experiencing remarkable growth pre-pandemic. Understanding and acceptance of social issues is ｓｌｏｗ but there is far more awareness than there was 15-20 years ago.
I came here in 2003, but my first year was in middle of nowhere inaka, and subsequently I’ve always been in the towns / cities (and now I’m in Tokyo), so my perspective has to be seen from that angle.
The first thing I thought when I read your question was: when I got here, the staff in convenience stores were nearly all Japanese, or at least that was the impression I got. Now, going by the various convenience stores and mini-supermarkets in my area, it’s a 50-50 split between Japanese and non-Japanese (mainly other Asian nationalities; Chinese and Vietnamese).
The computers that the teachers used at school were using incredibly old operating systems and Yahoo / Internet Explorer were the norm. Come to think of it…yeah, that’s not much of a difference from now!
I MOVED to Japan in 2006, and became a PR in 2010.
When I first came here:
* old men would constantly spit on the ground as they walked down the street
* the same old men would openly piss on the side of the streets, anywhere they went
* many people smoked cigarettes as they walked through the middle of crowds of people
* all izakaya (Japanese pubs) were filled with wall-to-wall smoke clouds all evening
* there were NO non-smoking restaurants, not even fast food joints
* people openly threw trash on the ground as they walked down the street (much more litter was seen than now)
* people would sit on the train with their FEET up on the seats next to them
* sometimes they would *squat* on the train seats, with their feet up under them
* no smartphones existed, people were using “flip-phones”
* even people using only flip-phones walked into the street and got hit by traffic
* convenience stores and department stores took credit cards
* small stores ONLY took cash (often so they could fail to report profits and pay taxes)
* credit cards were seen as a “dangerous” trend that would cause massive debt (like happened in the USA—it hasn’t happened here)
* almost everyone carried 30,000 yen cash OR MORE in their wallets
* direct deposit of salaries to your bank was already ubiquitous (it wasn’t yet common in the USA when I left)
* personal checks were already unknown, having not been used for decades
* Japanese studied foreign languages (especially English) in HUGE numbers, intending to find good work overseas. This has now decreased significantly
* fax machines were actually useful
Those are the ones that instantly came to mind. Feel free to ask if you have a question about something specific having changed…
K-pop wasn’t nearly as universal. Young Japanese people were still more starry-eyed towards USA. Girls styles were more edgy and sexualized than today. Cigarettes were mainstream along with cute mascot lighters. Since the internet was not mainstream and very few people had computers and NO smartphones, the weekends were much more active in drinking districts. Muzousa casual was the hairstyle of 2000s for men. Longish hair cut unevenly and sprayed up kind of like early 2000s Rod Stewart. Especially for ALTs, showing up to work hung over was not uncommon and no one would reprimand you for it. Most foreigners in Japan at that time were in better mental health and more adventurous/adaptable to drastic change.
2006 seems quite random.
Anyway, top of my head:
* as many (international) tourists as now
* there were no smartphone, but contactless was already a thing and becoming quite big (included in flip phones). Subway was not on Suica, only JR was.
* 3/11 had not happened, so a bit more insouciance and phlegm all around
* A couple differences in Tokyo, e.g. no Midtown, no Skytree, no Takanawa gateway, no Fukutoshin line, that sort of things
I visited in 2007 and moved here in 2008. Apart from the points already mentioned, one thing I found was striking was the number of adults playing Nintendo DS on the train.
More multicultural today than 20 years ago. A lot more Japanese people can speak broken English today.
Maniac Love still existed
I wonder how one quantifies being more or less globalized.
At one of my schools, there was a special CD player that cost hundreds of thousands of yen because it came with a bar-code reader wand that controlled which track it played off the CD. It was for a textbook that was littered with bar codes for every listening exercise – the idea was that rather than have an ALT in the school being a human tape recorder, they would swipe the wand over whatever exercise the teacher wanted and let the CD player do the work. It had a fine layer of dust covering it and was in a corner of the resource room that was difficult to get to for all the stacks of unused textbooks in the way.
Most classrooms didn’t have projectors. If I wanted to use one, I had to borrow the school’s only model and wheel it on a cart into my classes. My schools didn’t have whiteboards either – dusty green chalk boards were the order of the day. So when I needed the projector, that meant borrowing a magnetic screen that I could unroll and slap onto the chalk board.
So for the vast majority of my classes, any digital materials I made needed to be printed out, and if I expected to use them more than once, laminated. It got to the point after a couple of years teaching at elementary schools that the bottom of my locker had a stack of plastic and paper flash cards that went up to my knees. Searching for the exact 8 cards I wanted to use out of that set was a complete PITA.
My students in those days were more likely to have favorite western music artists, like Linkin Park or Mariah Carey. Right now there are almost no international artists on the Japan Billboard charts, BTS being the exception. Also no Line in those days.