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Guessing in Gizmoland
!
15th October 2002
It was a fateful day in May 2001 when I heard that
I would get to spend a few days of my life in Japan. Almost everybody I knew
had as much (or as little) knowledge of the country in the far -flung east,
made of four tiny islands dotting the Pacific. The initial reactions ranged
from “What the hell would you do in Japan?” , “I have heard it is a bloody
expensive place”, “Would you grow shorter and get a flatter nose when you get
back to India?”…. Don’t ask me whose idea of “sense of humor” it was to have
asked the last question – I seldom remember the trivialities of life. As it
turned out, I landed in Japan with very less advice and a plane-load of
curiosity. I was sure of only one thing – the sun would rise early – or so
somebody had told me when I was growing up. I would soon discover that the sun
actually rises at midnight, by anybody’s standard! At 4:30 AM I could actually
see the rays of the sun stealing into my hotel room making it impossible to
sleep anymore.
I guess people don’t sleep much in this country.
After all, don’t they have to make ‘affordable yet durable but not stylish’
cars for the world, catch all the sea-stock in the Pacific, and …… make gadgets
to surprise the rest of the world? It seems Japan has a penchant for
automation, or at least devising a mechanical solution for almost anything as
bizarre as you could think of. This is the birthplace of the VHS, walkman, digicam, robots, devices that can be tugged to your
nostrils so that you don’t have to blow your nose (I did not make that up!)
I guess anybody interested in gadgets and gizmos
would freak out here. You have every known device that does “something else”…a
watch that could double up as a camera, or a cell phone that could play MP3
music, a telephone that could turn into a cooking grill (OK, I made that up…!)
I have had a few interesting experiences with the electronics here. It all started in my hotel room, when I tried to figure out how to run
the air conditioning system. One remote control unit, elaborately labeled in
Japanese, was all that I could locate in my room. I aimed the remote control at
the air-con and hit the button, which to my knowledge had a picture of air
blowing…the windows in my room opened. Habit told me to quickly look around to
see nobody watched me…luck was with me (or was it?!)…I was the only person in
my room. Unfazed by the initial setback, I resumed my guessing game,
supplemented by random button pushing (hey what happens if you do this?). For
all my abilities (for which I was sent to Japan in the first place), I gave up
in fifteen minutes and called for help…
What I really need is a guide to a ‘foreigner cooking in Japan’. I
wonder if there is a ‘Lonely Cook’ series out there! Figuring out how to work
the microwave took longer than actually cooking dinner. It turned out to be one
of those multifunction devices with loads of presets. It would have helped if I
knew what the presets would actually do to my food! There is a handy little
guide for the appliances with key buttons explained, sort of. There's one helpfully
translated as "grain", I suppose I could try some porridge on that
setting and see if it explodes.
And did I tell you that all these appliances keep talking to you…Hell,
even the elevator talks – there is the friendly voice that thanks me for taking
the elevator from the 3rd to the 7th floor. I am sure it
also says something like “I look forward to serving you again…” Then there's
the combination telephone, answering machine, fax, copier in kiosks. Not the
spaceship-launching device that I mistook it for, once I figure out where the
‘Send button’ is. But it keeps talking to me in Japanese. I think it might be
giving instructions, on the other hand, like the elevator, it might just be
saying "Thank You" for sending a fax. Or maybe it says, “I was not
made for a moron like you”. Well, who cares? As long as nobody is watching, I
can continue guessing in gizmoland …….