At one time or another on your travels, the chances are that you’ve seen a cute animal or two. Depending on your view of zoos, circuses or nature reserves – and on which animals you think are cute - you may have got up close and personal, and enjoyed the chance to stroke or cuddle them, and feel them respond. I’ve done it myself, but never before in an office block… and definitely not with an animatronic baby seal. After a few days in Japan, you come to take strange events like this as the norm.
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| Paro, the therapeutic seal |
It was the first floor – or, as the Japanese count it, the second floor, as our ground floor is their first floor – of a tower block owned by a TV company in the new developments in Fukuoka, on the north-west corner of Kyushu, the southernmost of the four main islands. Paro, the robotic baby harp seal, is responding in apparent contentment to the touch of admiring visitors in the Robosquare centre, a local government initiative to familiarise people with robots in various forms, to encourage the study of robotics technology in schools and to support the efforts of local robotics firms.
Paro has been made for more than show. Hospitals and nursing homes in Japan are reluctant to use animals in therapy exercises, despite the psychological and physiological effects. Animals can scratch, bite and pass on infections. Paro does none of this. Beneath his soft white artificial fur are seven ‘actuators’ as well as tactile, auditory, visual and posture sensors. Paediatric wards, nursing homes and day centres use animatronic seals like Paro to relax patients, and to encourage them to communicate with carers and fellow patients by passing the seals around. Analysis of patients’ neural patterns has shown improving brain activity levels as a result. Robosquare reports one estimate that 84 million people round the world may be suffering from dementia by 2040. So Paro’s fame may spread beyond Japan.
He was by far the most widely used of the robots on display at Robosquare that day. One four-foot-tall model could project local maps onto nearby screens to help visitors in shopping centres – and could vacuum the floor when not otherwise engaged – but, we heard, was only in use in one shopping centre in Japan. Aibo, the small disco-dancing dog which can respond to human commands, is no longer in production. Perhaps the local authorities were nervous: in order to dance, he cocks his back leg in a manner which would alarm any nearby lamppost.
An array of sensations, controls and instructions adorn the most modern Japanese toilets. Male visitors sit down to a welcome every bit as warm as the one they receive elsewhere. However, unlike the streets, hotels, railway stations and airports in the major cities, where signage is in English as well as Japanese, there is no translation to help explain which switch sets off which spray, and so on. (None of them is anything to do with flushing, which happens with the aid of a small lever at the back.) Some public facilities incorporate a holding device, halfway up the wall, into which you can place a small infant safely while you do what you have to do. Not all Japanese public toilets are high-tech: some are of the traditional urinal variety. They are all a vast improvement on some of the truly disgusting examples we found in China in 2007 (though perhaps the planning of the Beijing Olympics has helped to improve things there).
Back on the streets, you can get hot snacks, such as fried chicken or rice triangles in soy sauce, from vending machines outside railway stations, as we did in Kyoto. It isn’t haute cuisine, but it’s filling enough if you’re bracing yourself for the long walk to your hotel. In the evenings, one floor of a shopping centre is often devoted to restaurants and noodle bars. In some of the latter, you order your food by vending machine, passing the ticket you receive to the bar staff. This avoids any worries about how long it will take the staff to bring your change, overcharging, undercharging and so on. (To add to the simplicity of things, tipping is not the done thing in Japan.) A low-tech alternative to the vending machines is the now-familiar plastic replica of menu dishes, in the restaurant window or on a table outside. Point, choose - simple. It’s a practical alternative to display and menu photographs. I’m not convinced it would transfer with complete success to the West. Based on their generous interpretation of airport locations, a Ryanair equivalent might display sushi with rice but dispense a hamburger and chips.
Mention of technology in Japan has to include the trains. The ones we used – whether intercity bullet or city subway service – arrived at the same position relative to the platform, on time, every time. There were no pauses on the subway while the doors opened, closed, opened again, closed again, opened yet again and closed yet again (travellers on the London Underground, read this and weep). The seats on the first train we boarded, in Osaka, turned 180 degrees at the press of a button, to enable a thorough cleaning operation before departure. The technology is not ubiquitous: on a train to Kitakyushu, we had to rotate the seats ourselves.
To warn of an impending stop, the bilingual electronic displays in each car are supplemented with jolly two or three-bar musical jingles and a bilingual public address announcement: ‘We will soon make a brief stop at Okayama…’ The English version tends to be in an American accent, though there was an Australian lilt to the messages as we approached Kyoto.
On the intercities, a purser wheels food and drink along the cars, her hair in a bun, her sensible white blouse and black pinstriped skirt offset with an apron with diagonal tapering stripes of blue, brown, purple and green and a matching neckerchief. The purser and the ticket inspector, a young man in navy uniform with gold braid and peaked cap, bow whenever they enter or leave the car, when they acknowledge you, sell you some food, check a ticket or do anything at all for that matter.
This efficiency and punctuality and good service might lack drama or mystery: one previous VISA correspondent remarked that travelling by train in Japan is dull. But there is always the design of the trains themselves to admire. The shinkasen (bullet trains) come in varying shapes: some of the southern versions resemble a duck-billed platypus. The train to Yawatahama, to catch the ferry to Kyushu, boasted artwork inside and outside (except the inside of the first class cars) of a series of cartoon characters such as Anpanman – a round-faced, red-cheeked superhero.
So what of the Japanese – how does all this technology in public places affect them?
Passengers on the trains – and the buses and trams, too – give off a strong sense of polite compliance. As the train draws up to the platform, they queue, ramrod straight. Once on board, they consult their mobile phones – although on the bullet train, you have to go to the interstices between cars in order to make calls – or read a sports magazine, or a newspaper (to check their shares) or a comic. On the longer journeys, many fall asleep. The bullet trains include one car where smoking is allowed but, on the Fukuoka-Hijemi line, I saw four or five people smoking, at most.
Very few passengers bother with the views, even of the picturesque terraced rice fields. Some pull down the trays on the back of the seats in front of them, to eat the lunch they bought in a bento box from the station. Older women travelling together as friends may indulge in conversation; businessmen, the majority of the intercity passengers, do not. They are a study in neutrality and conformity, with their charcoal suits, white shirts (some striped), neutral ties, black socks and black shoes.
At traffic lights, pedestrians stand stock still if the ‘walk/don’t walk’ signs are red – whether traffic is 100 yards or four miles away. When the signs go green, they come to life like automatons or toys. In Kyoto, as we walked from castles to temples to cafes and back, a strange bing-bong noise followed us. We could never work out whether it emanated from public toilets or subway stations. I kept expecting the female public address announcer from The Prisoner’s fictional village to say: ‘It’s going to be a lovely day today!’
On pavements and in parks, yellow lines divide the walkways into two – one lane for cyclists and one for walkers. Fukuoka’s main park walkway had a third, for joggers. Cyclists don’t seem to honour the divide, but the polite ring-rings of their bells as they come up behind you mean there is little or no chance of an accident.
It would be hard – and presumptuous – to hope for definitive conclusions about all this, after visiting one part of Japan for just over a week. At a time when plans for new high-speed rail services in some parts of Britain are causing controversy – and some hysteria – it was interesting to note the sense of calm, and politeness, among Japanese pedestrians and passengers alike. A properly integrated, efficient, reliable transport service undoubtedly carries huge costs – some economic, some environmental. Perhaps, though, it brings physiological and social benefits: no train or bus rage; better public behaviour. On the other hand, perhaps such a system is possible in Japan, but not in modern Britain: perhaps we are simply not willing enough to change our ways. Perhaps man makes his environment rather than the other way round, and Japan’s polite traditions drive the technology. There may, of course, be a number of darker aspects to a nation where politeness often seems to tip over into deference. All I can say is that, as a visitor, the immense helpfulness of everyone we encountered in Japan, and the efficiency of the public services we used, were a refreshing, wonderful change.
First Published in VISA 99 (October 2011)
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