Hey all,

You know, last August I went to Japan on business for a week. Honestly, I was SO busy I didn't get to pay much attention to little things, but this year I was there for a full two weeks, so I got to notice LOTS of little things.

There was a LOT of comment on how Japan would collapse when Y2K hit because they were spending so little money on it. But here are some things I saw between 8/2/01 and 8/16/01:

A news vendor using an abacus

Every bank I went to to exchange money did all the conversions by hand, by simple calculators or even one used an abacus.

A high end CD shop using their cash register as nothing more than a calculator. All inventory is handelled by the little slips of paper inside the outer bag they have on each CD

A VERY high end DVD shop doing the same as the CD shop. They did however ring stuff in by category, but not inventory stuff.

A conveyer belt sushi shop (I ate at 3 different ones, each used a similar system) where the sushis were on different colored plates. Each plate represented a different price. When I was done, they would yell across the shop (in Japanese) "6 of this plate, 7 of that plate, 1 green tea". Some cashiers used a calculator, another would just tell me the total and write it down, and another just used a calculator.

That's just a few things, but here we are, almsot a 2 full years after Y2K, and people wonder why I was not worried about how little money Japan spent on Y2K. For having cell phones that our light years ahead of ours (the one I rented was 2 ounces, color, had e-mail, played a full version of Tetris, has a music mixer, dancing icons and backgrounds, and 400 hours of standby battery, 140 minutes of talk time) they are still comfortable in their old ways.

Just thought I would share:)

-- Anonymous, August 18, 2001

Answers

You forget the most important thing. Like many other countries with a superior public education system, most of the citizens of Japan can do arithematic, make change, convert their currency to dollars, yen, pounds, Swiss, German Franks or Marks AND read and write the results on paper if they have to.

Rack up a bill of $10.83 in the USA, give the server 21.08 and wait to see what you get back if they don't have a "change" result cash register.

-- Anonymous, August 18, 2001

$10.25;) (and yes I did it in my head in about 10 seconds or less, I didn't check)

However, besides being a writer, I have also worked in retail for 15 years now, but I agree 110% with you about the Japanese and USA workers. And btw (as a general note to everyone), for a "collapsing" economy, go into any retail store, on any day, any hour, and see just how "collapsing" it looks to you.

-- Anonymous, August 18, 2001

Darn clever, those Japanese.

-- Anonymous, August 18, 2001

You mean ??? . . . . . Do you mean to say that their electric utilities were NOT run by all these defective chips that had to have workarounds that will surely collapse Any Day Now?

But what about the Aged and Wise IT guru who speculated that all the rollover celebrations were being powered by emergency generators?

He said his sources told him that Japan was, well, toast. How could he, the Sage of Sages, be wrong?

BTW, am struggling through Capers-Jones Estimating Software Costs. It's a great piece of research. Many solid conclusions. Of course, if you've ever managed a large project, most of this is restating the obvious except with substantial statistical backup.

I can see how he would be scared spitless about Y2K. Except he didn't realize it was really thousands of little projects, all of the maintenance. That's something he didn't cover at all in his research.

Good book, tho. I recommend it highly.

-- Anonymous, August 18, 2001

That's just a few things, but here we are, almsot a 2 full years after Y2K, and people wonder why I was not worried about how little money Japan spent on Y2K.

Gee, how refreshing, most people here worry about how much money was spent fixing Y2K two years ago. Maybe, due to cultural differences, the Japanese are infected with tightwad memes...

-- Anonymous, August 20, 2001