Three Monday Observations

WHILE AT LUNCH ...

PRONTO is a city-wide franchise operation found all over the city. It maintains a casual sophistication in its Italian-flavored menu, its dark-green-and-polished-wood interior design and its wine bar cafe atmosphere. One orders at the counter, pays, picks up one's beverage of choice, then sits down at one of the cafe's small, tightly-packed tables to await one's meal.

While I was sitting in one of the chain's several branches in Shibuya in the early afternoon eating my mushroom and scallops in creamed sauce over spaghetti and sipping my sweetened iced coffee, a pair of young women settled into the table next to mine.

As they chatted away, one pulled out her cell phone and passed it to her companion. The recipient exclaimed over and over again her approval as digital picture after digital picture flashed by from the proud owner's digital album featuring her two year old son.

Who needs a wallet or small purse album anymore to store precious family photographs when a cell phone will do the trick?

Technology marches on ...

SHOPPING IN SHIBUYA ...

I wandered into the watch department of LOFT, a huge house wares and interior design department store just up the hill from Shibuya Station, in search of a replacement watchband for the strap that had snapped apart a day or so earlier. I stepped up to the first counter (behind which two young salespeople stood) and pulled out the damaged watch, asking if anyone could suggest what I should do to get it fixed.

Immediately one of the two clerks placed the watch on a small tray and ushered me off to the department's replacement watchband expert a few steps away. He in turn whipped out his ruler to ascertain the strap width, then unlocked a nearby cabinet to pull out a tray of possibilities. When asked, I said I preferred a black band from among the proffered choices, and he at once produced another, larger tray full of the appropriate color in every possible combination and price (ranging from 2400 yen to over 7000).

I chose one of the cheaper bands -- after all, we were dealing with a Timex here! He first ascertained that all was in order, then quickly wrote up the Bill of Sale and sent me off to the Cashier (about twenty feet away). The two clerks behind the cash register handled the credit card transaction expeditiously and taped the receipt to the original bill -- which I then returned to the watch department.

Having ascertained meanwhile that the metal clasp on the original band was of better quality than that on my replacement, the watchband expert had asked the two technicians charged with putting the new band in place to replace the clasp as well. He apologized when I returned for the unexpected delay; I didn't much mind as it gave me a brief opportunity to look through the dozens of cases displaying watches of every kind imaginable (with a price range to match).

Within minutes, a technician appeared at my side; he watched carefully while I strapped on the newly reconstituted wristwatch and smiled approvingly, noting only that the "old" clasp still moved a millimeter or two and asking if that was OK with me.

I walked out of the store in something of a daze. The whole operation had taken less than fifteen minutes, during which time I had been taken in hand by four different salespeople (out of a possible seven), treated with the utmost courtesy and assured my complete satisfaction before being ushered on my way.

Next stop: the HMV store across the street. Here I approached a pair of young women at the Information Counter about the availability of a CD by CHAPPIE (a totally nonexistent musical entity about which I had first heard at the ASCJ conference, the imaginative product of an electronic recording studio and a design group from Kyoto). I knew from looking on the 'Net that their last recording had appeared in 1999, but I hoped the CD might still be available. Both women immediately began tapping away on their respective computers, seemingly in competition with one another to find the information first.

Yes, the album was available and in the store; would I like to see it? Off both scurried to locate the CD in the bins a few feet away. Within a minute one was back. I liked what I saw, thanked them both and went off to pay for my purchase ... Elapsed time? Less than five minutes!

Sure, Japan -- especially Tokyo -- is an expensive place to live, but the service is to die for!

How could TARGET ever survive in a consumer-oriented world like this one?

ON THE YAMATE LINE ...

Taking the surface train line from Ikebukuro (where the Hotel Clarion I am staying in is located) across the city to Shibuya, I encountered yet another technological break through, one contributing enormously to transportation efficiency. Above every entrance / exit door on every car on every train in the system passengers can find, not one, but two flat screen electronic display monitors.

One displays the route being taken station-by-station, alternating in both Japanese and English, indicating the minutes before arrival at each impending stop, the number of the train and the car, the current time and the name of the upcoming station; upon arrival at the scheduled stop, the display indicates on which side the platform will be. The second screen displays information about the local weather (broken down by neighborhood!), plays catchy little ads (which pay for the system, I'm sure) and teach a bit of English along the way -- a little creature asks the reader to translate various phrases, then supplies the correct response for everyone's edification.

Merrily we roll along!

With technological innovations like this readily employed, it's no wonder Tokyo can still move such vast numbers of its citizens around the city so efficiently and effectively and not choke on its own population excesses.

- June 23, 2003