A better tomorrow

Remember how disappointed you were when the year 2001 came and went and we still didn’t have jetpacks or instant-turkey-dinner pills?  You’d be less disappointed if you lived in Japan.

The taxicabs in Tokyo have passenger doors that automatically open and close, and big GPS systems that display real time traffic levels on the map.  For all these years, I’ve been opening cab doors with my own hands.  Like a sucker. 

Carwashes are fully automated and only about the length of a single car.  You park under it, and the carwash moves back and forth over your car bristling with nozzles and brushes and wipers and other, less identifiable, cleaning apparatus.  At subway and garage exits, there are machines that suck up your paper tickets or cash at impressive speeds and regardless of the input angle; then they bow at you.  The forced-air hand driers in public bathrooms actually manage to dry your hands with a speed and efficiency that show severe disrespect to the ornamental driers found in American bathrooms.

Don’t even get me started on the unforgivable lack of heated water jets on our toilets. 

A Japanese visitor to the US must feel like I feel while walking through the Neanderthal man dioramas in the Museum of Natural History. 

[This blog entry was filed during a Tokyo cab ride where the ubiquity of wireless broadband doesn’t quite make up for the oppressive distance and traffic.]