Ever since ditching car culture and joining the urbanist cause (on the internet at least but that has to change), I’ve noticed that some countries always top the list when it comes to good urbanism. The first and most oblivious one tends to be The Netherlands but Germany and Japan also come pretty close. But that’s strange considering that both countries have huge car industries. Germany is (arguably) the birthplace of the car (Benz Patent-Motorwagen) and is home to Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and BMW. Japan is home to Toyota, Honda, Nissan and among others. How is it that these countries have been able to keep the auto lobby at bay and continue investing in their infrastructure?
“Japan” doesn’t necessarily have great urban planning; some Japanese cities have it. It also is somewhat getting worse in the countryside due to depopulation out here. I ended up having to buy a car where I live now (though it is a 660cc kei car) in part because I do some farming and need to buy bigger things, but also because cycling to the supermarket/drugstore/train station (all in the same place) would involve crossing some busy roads where people are speeding constantly. When it’s just me, I take my motorcycle, but often it’s both the wife and I. It’s not all Tokyo, Osaka, etc. Even Nagoya, one of the biggest cities, is super car-centric.
The Shinkansen is absolutely great and I love traveling in Japan by train, much better experience overall than Germany. That said, there are still so many things that are oddly outdated. Like, why is there no app to book tickets? Even when booking online, physical tickets are still needed and have to be collected at the train station.
Now with the typhoon a lot of connections were cancelled. Hundreds of people had to go to physical counters to exchange their physical tickets to cash. Because there’s an emergency schedule on some lines, the ticket machines don’t work and customers have to go to counters to get tickets. Even Germany is more digitized than that. Granted, Germany has a lot more experience with cancelled train connections…
It’s like, Japan was ahead of everyone else and just stopped there. Still a great experience but it could be so much better with relatively little effort.
You can book through the JR app (EkiNet, though it is kinda shit), IIRC. Definitely through their website. I don’t believe you need a physical ticket anymore, either, if your phone functions as your IC card (I’m not sure about actual IC cards, but I assume it’s the same). I do end up getting physical tickets most of the time because my local train gets shut down somewhat regularly and doesn’t run for hours at a time making it hard to know when to book in advance.
That said, we definitely need to do better at digitalization here in Japan. Even what is there for the government is pretty limited and, when it works, has an abysmal UX.