I thought the US was the most capitalist country in the world, and all things considered, maybe it still is, but Japan surprised me a bit in how privatized some parts of daily life are.

The train system in Japan consists of several private companies (and no public ones). The main company, the Japan Railways Group, used to be government-owned but has been privatized since 1987. To read my rant on the User Experience shortcomings of Greater Osaka’s train system, see my earlier post, Getting Lost.

If there is such a thing as free public Wi-Fi in Japan, I have yet to find it. I never expected to have a problem finding Internet access in a city like Osaka. in fact, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the city had municipal blanket Wi-Fi. Every network I came across was locked, except for ones that required a subscription. Maybe part of the issue is that the everyday Japanese citizen is technically savvy enough to set a password on his/her wireless router and not leave it unsecured by default, or maybe the routers in Japan default to secured. There were some ostensibly free access points in train stations, but in order to gain access, one had to request new account information by email, which is impossible to do if one doesn’t already have Internet access (!), so these don’t count. To boot, the authentication screen shows a QR code. Later research revealed that the QR code points to the email address which is also written on the screen (and does not appear to be hyperlinked). Apparently, someone decided that hyperlinks are too difficult and it would make more sense for users to find a way to keep the QR code on screen while launching a reader application for it and arranging one’s smartphone camera with an array of mirrors so that the camera could capture the on-screen QR code.

Also, I found no public garbage cans on the street (but I think there were a few in the park around Osaka Castle). Soda and coffee vending machines are all over the place (in addition to the occasional beer vending machine), and next to each one is a recycling bin but no trash can. Every store has its own garbage cans (and sometimes recycling bins). Maybe the absence of public garbage cans is partly an indication that the Japanese don’t need to have a readily available receptacle on every block in order to dispose of their trash appropriately. One thing that I love about this culture is how neat people are. Matt and I did, however, see a bunch of people wearing the same yellow jackets picking up trash from the sidewalk – we figured them to be city employees.

I hope to never take a public garbage can or public Wi-Fi for granted again. Also, for what it’s worth, the US and Japan both make high rankings on these two seemingly arbitrary lists of the world’s most capitalist countries: on Peerform and Answers.com, respectively.