Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

aruarian.dance

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 302 posts

Re: Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

#201

Post by perching_aix »

astrange wrote: post #181
perching_aix wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people discuss Japan being a homogeneous society, that typically refers to it being a very ethnically uniform society. I really, really don't see how that connects to... payment systems. Surely you're not trying to claim that what people actually mean typically is that Japan is homogeneous in every arbitrary way possible, right? That's a bit too much even for a strawman, even if I factor in the kind of forum thi…

> When people discuss Japan being a homogeneous society, that typically refers to it being a very ethnically uniform society. Even if you ignore tourists that's not really true of Tokyo either. Japan doesn't collect ethnicity statistics though - the numbers for this you may have seen are misreadings of something else. > Surely you're not trying to claim that what people actually mean typically is that Japan is homoge…

> Even if you ignore tourists that's not really true of Tokyo either. Japan doesn't collect ethnicity statistics though - the numbers for this you may have seen are misreadings of something else.

Which is all very interesting, but remind me, how does this tie into payment systems again?

> That's absolutely what people online think about Japan, they think it's a stuffy collectivist society where everyone agrees with each other

... and then they play the latest Yakuza and wash that down with a few episodes of Tokyo Revengers? It'd would appear that one generalization doesn't beat another.

> and there are no immigrants.

YouTube has been overflowing with thinly veiled grifts lately about how everything in Japan is going to shit right now, and how it's because of the damn tourists and immigrants (heavily peppered with false crime rate figures and false immigration statistics of course).

Still, pretty unrelated to payment systems. I can't shake the feeling that this is the exact same type of conflict sowing one can see under more mainstream topics. Vague mention of something, then a massive tangent, and all of a sudden we're discussing deeply controversial political topics. If you're not doing this with malicious intent, you might be in an unhealthy loop that I'd advise you try quitting. This is not helping anyone, which is what I intended to be my point.

Re: Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

#202

Post by Tijdreiziger »

lxgr wrote: post #191
Tijdreiziger wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is perhaps more of a ‘New York’ problem (i.e. high passenger volume + small stations + slow turnstiles). In the Netherlands, there are cases where this can happen too (notably, Amsterdam South station), but generally there are less passengers and/or bigger stations (= more fare gates). https://i.ytimg.com/vi/35qeaOD7haw/maxresdefault.jpg

The problem is definitely exacerbated by human behavior. There are almost always multiple turnstiles, but I've seen groups of people managing to block all of them simultaneously , figuring out how to use them...

The last time I was in NYC was 10+ years ago, but from what I recall, operating the turnstiles correctly required some experience: you need to know that they require manual operation (not obvious to first-time users), and then you also have to operate them at the correct speed (going too fast doesn’t let you through).

Systems with fare gates (i.e. most systems worldwide) don’t have these problems, because it’s obvious when you can pass through.

Then factor in lots of tourists/visitors (who aren’t used to this system) + aforementioned small stations.

Re: Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

#203

Post by astrange »

brigandish wrote: post #46
astrange wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, Tokyo trains have air conditioning, whereas the Underground is so hot and stuffy I'm pretty sure I got brain damage from it. Also^2, Japanese train stations have ads for B2B services, whereas almost every ad in London stations is for a musical. I'm not sure what this means. (Also fondly remember the surprisingly numerous signs at Kings Cross about how you shouldn't assault any train employees, and how teenagers…

Japan's trains have aircon but often it's not cold enough, and at the parts of the year when the climate moves from hot to cold or cold to hot you might find yourself on a train with heating still on because the calendar date is still "winter" even though it's a hot and sunny day, while you sweat profusely and feel irritated about the seemingly widespread inherent inflexibility of the Japanese. Osaka's Hankyu trains…

Well, London obviously does have one of (the most?) vibrant cultural scenes in the world.

(Last time I was there I saw a singer from Mali, which I thought was interesting mostly because all of her backing visuals were StableDiffusion AI art and I don't know if anyone else noticed.)

But it's also the capital of a country that should have an industrial economy and increasing doesn't have one anymore, because they've decided it's all sort of beneath them.

Re: Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

#205

Post by Arn_Thor »

lorenzotenti wrote: post #160

What really stands out is the difference in design philosophy. In London, the gates are normally closed and only open if your Oyster card is valid. In Tokyo, the gates are open by default and only close if your card fails. You don’t have to wait for doors to open and close every time—it just keeps the flow moving and feels way faster.

In Hong Kong the gates are closed but spring into action much more quickly than in London (though a lot of MTR stations have turnstiles still)

Re: Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

#206

Post by AnthonyMouse »

starttoaster wrote: post #149
socalgal2 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Variety is good! The fact the USA only has Mastercard and Visa and that they've colluded to keep all other forms of payments out is why their fees aren't lower. https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-s... Japan has competition in payment systems. Paypay, D-Pay, Meri-pay, Line Pay, Rakuten Pay, etc... Each tries to entice both customers and retailers by offering discounts and bonuses. Also I'm happ…

USA has Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and AmEx. Each of which try to entice their customers by offering better rewards programs. Though AmEx isn't taken everywhere (notably Costco) and Discover is hit and miss as well.

The rewards programs are the anti-competitive lock-in.

Visa and Mastercard charge high fees because their dominant market position forces merchants to accept them. Then they use part of the fees to bribe customers with rewards programs.

A new payment network doesn't have leverage against merchants so can't charge the same high fees and therefore can't offer the same rewards programs, but then they can't get consumers to use their card, which is what they would need in order to get any leverage.

The rewards programs are a grift. The price of everything goes up by 3% and if you get a rewards card you get 1-2% of it back, therefore you get one. Then you're still out the other 1-2% you wouldn't have been if the market was competitive, the people who don't get one get punished by being out the entire 3% (which inhibits competitors with lower fees), and Visa and Mastercard suck billions of dollars out of the economy into their Scrooge McDuck money bin because consumers have been defrauded into thinking this arrangement is to their advantage.

Re: Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

#207

Post by isatty »

astrange wrote: post #197
suddenexample wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's only enabled by the difference in culture though, right? Japanese culture has a much higher emphasis on order and following the rules - I don't know that this "open-by-default" system would work in, for instance, the US.

Japanese transit-using society is old and middle-class; those are the kind of people who follow rules. Americans are often more rule bound than Japanese people (we have HOAs and Nextdoor), but we just don't respect transit systems as much because we think of them as gifts we give to the poor/mentally ill/homeless. And then a lot of Americans have an anti-gentrification ideology ("rent-lowering gunshots" or "neighborh…

Japanese transit using society is not all old and middle class: it’s pretty much everyone who is not filthy rich isn’t it?

Re: Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

#208

Post by mlinhares »

astrange wrote: post #197
suddenexample wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's only enabled by the difference in culture though, right? Japanese culture has a much higher emphasis on order and following the rules - I don't know that this "open-by-default" system would work in, for instance, the US.

Japanese transit-using society is old and middle-class; those are the kind of people who follow rules. Americans are often more rule bound than Japanese people (we have HOAs and Nextdoor), but we just don't respect transit systems as much because we think of them as gifts we give to the poor/mentally ill/homeless. And then a lot of Americans have an anti-gentrification ideology ("rent-lowering gunshots" or "neighborh…

I had never noticed it like that but now I’m dead.

When I moved to my current neighborhood I asked why there was no public transportation and someone said it was so poor people couldn’t be around and I hadn’t connected this to the wider culture.

Re: Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

#210

Post by isatty »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #159
kolinko wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as for the uk train stations, the temperatures are in part due to their age - London Underground was built in 1870s, and since that time rocks accumulated so much heat that it is extremely difficult to maintain human-friendly temperatures. Japan subway is 70 years younger, so it’s easier for them to maintain temps. (And my hometown Warsaw subway is even younger - 50 years, and we don’t have AC whilst temperatures are…

What does that mean, “rocks accumulate heat”? Should be an even cool temp down there, as long as tunnels aren’t too deep. A few vents to allow hot air to rise should work, no?

More input than output in assuming and vents were probably not built back in the day.
Post reply on HN