Dial-Down

Contrary to what you might believe, the majority of Japan doesn't understand or like technology. When you realize that 40% of the population is over 65, you start to realize that even something as simple as sending an email is beyond most of the people living here.

But I figured at least high schoolers would know!

I was sorely disappointed.

Through some great difficulty, I was finally able to get all the classes on the same page with themselves, but then one of the classes got moved because of something and the whole schedule got jumbled in a new way.

I had come up with an idea. I figured American pen pals would be the coolest thing ever. The students could write an email in English, get an English one back, and the American could get the same practice in Japanese. This seemed like a good idea. However, the teachers were cautious. They asked what if the students didn't have email addresses. This was baffling to me. I checked the calendar to make sure we were, in fact, living in 2013.

Through some difficulty and confusion, I was able to track down some American pen pals. Some. Unfortunately, as I had realized, finding 161 students to reply to mine would be difficult. So we formed groups. Giant groups.

I rapidly realized just how low tech non-Tokyo Japan is when I asked who had an email address. In a class of 40, I couldn't even guarantee 5. I was baffled. 

Most of them had smart phones, which in a country outside of Japan, comes with a full-fledged email address if you don't already have one. Not Japanese phones apparently. They can't be logged in to from outside the phone and no one knows the login info anyway.

The other difficulty was the fact that to the Japanese "email" means you use your phone, it's their equivalent to texting. They don't send emails from their computers. There are still businesses in Japan that don't own a single computer. People still use fax machines here. Fax machines!

I had hope for the new generation, but it was quickly dashed. We stuffed them into groups based on who had an email address and I tried to dish out email addresses for them.

They took forever to send their emails and when the Americans didn't reply the next day, some of them began asking me why they didn't reply as if they didn't realize it took them two weeks to write their own.

I'm curious if any of them carried on some kind of correspondence, but my hopes are as high as the bulk of the Japanese people's knowledge of technology.