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Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

aruarian.dance

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Re: Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

#291

Post by yuye »

m-schuetz wrote: post #217
movedx wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You raise a good point here. There's a degree of trust here, too. Trust placed on the consumer to do the right thing and pay. I'd also say there's an additional consideration being put forward by the operator: sometimes people just need a ride every now and then. I've been Japan three times now and I've seen several incidents of the guards letting people just walk through without a ticket because they explained some…

I've went through gates without ticket several times for reasons like access to coin lockers or switching to the other track when I've entered the wrong one. Gate guards usually hand you a slip that explains the situation at the other gate or when leaving again.

Same in the Taipei Metro system. Stations often have facilities(like toilets, stores and lockers) within the paid area. However, getting in and out at the same station charges you the base cost: NT$20 (About US$0.66).

For example: You'd explain to the staff that you want to use the toilets, and they'll hand you a plastic NFC token coin, limited to enter and exit at the same station. You use that to enter the paid area, go to the toilet, then deposit the coin in a special slot to exit.

>Gate guards usually hand you a slip that explains the situation at the other gate or when leaving again.

That was done in the past, but it's quite nice that they just hand you a token now.

Alternatively, train stations in the Netherlands have done away with fees for entering and exiting the same station altogether. Toilets within stations often charge a €0,70 fee, though.

Re: Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

#292

Post by yuye »

eloisius wrote: post #18

I think they are even more useful in Taiwan. Every single transit system across the entire island that I’ve ever encountered accepts EasyCard (悠遊卡). Even ferries. So does every convenience store, and even a lot of proper restaurants and stores. They are also fast, like you don’t even have to break your strike while passing the turnstiles to enter the metro.

>They are also fast, like you don’t even have to break your strike while passing the turnstiles to enter the metro.

They are not slow, but it's faster in Japan, still. At least in the Taipei MRT.

The Taoyuan Metro is way worse, though. If you keep walking while going through the gate and the card doesn't scan fast enough, it'll error and tell you to step back outside of the gate area (the in-between part) and scan again. It slows traffic down quite a bit.

Re: Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

#293

Post by m463 »

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 didn't see that. All ages, including lots of school kids.

I'm just amazed at how considerate japanese society is.

Re: Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

#294

Post by makeitdouble »

lmm wrote: post #253
makeitdouble wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies paying for public transport is a matter of flooring the commute cost: (almost) nobody lives in an area with no public transportation and car commute costs more, so companies will pay the price for lowest commute and you get to decide what you do with it. Same thing if your train transit costs 440 yens at base rate but you decide to ride first class or even one of the special luxury trains at a thousand+ yen…

> Companies paying for public transport is a matter of flooring the commute cost: (almost) nobody lives in an area with no public transportation and car commute costs more, so companies will pay the price for lowest commute and you get to decide what you do with it. If that was the reason they would simply not pay for commutes at all, as is normal in most other countries. > Government has little to do with most of it…

> If that was the reason they would simply not pay for commutes at all, as is normal in most other countries.

Paying for commute is mostly a tax thing. It's the same kind of adjustement as doing BYOD or giving employees PCs that have passed their business depreciation value instead of doing leases.

It's way easier to do with train transit, as train companies will give traceability/limitations on the commute and it's way easier to explain that just paying for a week's worth of gasoline or a car's insurance, or other costs.

If a country doesn't have any arrangement to make these expenses easier to pass on the company, I see how commute would just be cover privately by the employee.

> "private" railway companies were set up with immensely valuable government funded capital assets and would never have been able to operate without them,

Fundamentally no business of significant size operates without any gov. oversight nor preferential treatment. Tim Cook shaking Trump's hand is not the outlier, and at the size of a railroad company you better be in good terms with regulators if you want anything done.

Re: Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

#295

Post by rajnathani »

aecsocket wrote: post #140
aikinai wrote: post #88

The iOS and Android part was hard to follow, so I'm not sure if the article is wrong or just unclear. All iPhones since iPhone 7 support FeliCa regardless of the phone region. This is incredibly convenient for visitors to Japan. On the other hand, Android phones only support it if they are Japan-region phones.

I didn't make this clear enough in the article, sorry for the mix-up! Yes, iPhones support Osaifu-Keitai, and it's Android phones which have this problem. I've now updated the article to clarify this.

A writing feedback: After you added the "Clarification" update, you could also have put something like "Update (read below)" in the bold part "NFC-F support is not enough to use your phone as an IC card".

Otherwise, thanks for writing this article, it is very insightful, especially the whole parallel NFC standards development process in the early days of the technology by Japanese companies like Sony.

Re: Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

#296

Post by lmm »

maxgashkov wrote: post #287
lmm wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan hugely subsidizes public transport both directly and indirectly, e.g. almost all employers will pay for employees to commute by public transport but not by car, because the government heavily incentivises them to do so. The Japanese transport providers are indeed more entrepreneurial about this kind of stuff, but I think that's more a case of Japan having high trust in government and quasi-governmental entities…

> almost all employers will pay for employees to commute by public transport but not by car, because the government heavily incentivises them to do so Could you clarify this? To my knowledge only 2 things that could qualify as incentive exist: - commuting allowances are not considered taxable income for employee - commuting allowance could be used to reduce tax base for the business But this is not something I'd call…

> To my knowledge only 2 things that could qualify as incentive exist:

> - commuting allowances are not considered taxable income for employee

> - commuting allowance could be used to reduce tax base for the business

> But this is not something I'd call 'heavily'.

They do both those things, so commute costs are a free tax discount. But they also just tell companies directly that they want them to act in a certain way, and the companies generally fall into line. While the zaibatsu have nominally disappeared, there are still very close ties between the politicians and big businesses in Japan.

Re: Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

#297

Post by kormax »

aecsocket wrote: post #116
socalgal2 wrote: post #68

I think I must be mis-understanding something > Since there's no point in generating keys for a device which will not be used in Japan, non-Japan SKUs don't have Osaifu-Keitai functionality. AFAIK, all iPhones from all regions since like iPhone 10 (internet says iPhone 7) support Osaifu-Kaitai unless I don't understand what that means. My USA iPhones works everywhere Suika, Pasmo, Icoca, etc work. Every station, bus,…

Author here, this is my fault for not proof reading this part properly! The part about non-Japan SKUs is generally true for Android phone manufacturers, but Apple eats the cost and gives all phones Osaifi-Keitai. You do not need to root an iPhone to get this functionality, even on a non-Japan unit. I will write a correction for this section to clear up the confusion.

Author of the "Osaifu-Keitai-Google-Pixel" article here.

There's a big chance that Apple does not eat the cost for Osaifu-Keitai actually, as they may have a sweet-heart deal, hinted by an article from watch.impress [1], which I found a very long time ago via Twitter.

So the fee is either waived by FeliCa networks, covered by Japanese Carriers, and (as an educated guess) paid only upon enrollment of the first FeliCa-compatible card to device.

I think it would be naive to believe that Apple, of all companies, would be the one willing to pay a couple of cents per device in order to offer a feature that, at best, only a single digit percentage of their users would use.

[1] https://www.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/series/suzukij/1297656....

Re: Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

#298

Post by Tijdreiziger »

lxgr wrote: post #258
Tijdreiziger wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 obviou…

That’s true for Metrocards and paper single ride tickets, but no longer an issue for OMNY. Most delays with OMNY seem to be due to the fact that people need to unlock their phone or pick a card because they don’t have express transit enabled.

MetroCard was definitely a confounding factor too, but isn’t it still the case that you have to manually push the turnstile within a certain time frame?

(idk, maybe I was just a clueless tourist who didn’t know how it worked :P)

To your latter point, perhaps the MTA should work together with Apple and Google to improve the experience.

Re: Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

#299

Post by phatskat »

mlinhares wrote: post #208
astrange wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yep, it puts the “F U” in fun!

Along the public transit line (ha!), the person primarily in charge of NYC’s road design and public transit planning back in the day made several anti-poor design choices, like ensuring overpasses crossing roads to less-poor (I.e. more-white) areas were just low enough that public busses couldn’t pass under them, as well as planning off-ramps that dumped a majority of the smog-ridden traffic into poorer neighborhoods, and let’s not forget how public parks in poorer neighborhoods had little monkeys adorning the fences. If you’ve ever wondered why a dangerously busy road with little in the way of safety measures for pedestrians cut between a neighborhood and a shopping district, you can thank Robert Moses.

Re: Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

#300

Post by hakfoo »

UncleEntity wrote: post #273
mmooss wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said in another comment, I've used US systems where you board the vehicle (bus/train) before paying, and bus drivers wave you past if you can't pay. On the train, you get a free ride to the next stop.

On the Phoenix area light rail the only way they (used to, at least) tell if you have a valid ticket is random security patrols checking everyone on the train. No gates, no nothing. During covid they even stopped checking the validity of the tickets and all you needed was to be in possession of 'a ticket' -- I used the same one for a couple years and still have the thing in my wallet in case I ever go back there agai…

They went to a stored value card in the last year or so. It's the ugliest one I've seen (big ugly UPC code on the front, I guess maybe for convenience to sell them at retailers outside the transit stations)
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