For more information, read Google’s announcement, peruse our application template, and see our list of project ideas. The application period beings April 22nd—just two short weeks away!

We always encourage our users to brainstorm and share your ideas on improvements you would like to see in Pidgin, Finch, and libpurple. Feel free to share thoughts and ask questions on our devel mailing list.

It was a great way to spend a day. The main exhibit walks you through the evolution of computers: abacuses, slide rules, many other mechanical basic math machines, punch cards, early vacuum tube computers, early transistor-based computers, memory, storage, mainframes, personal computers, video games. With examples on display of all of these.

My favorite parts:

• A real Enigma machine.
• A few racks of equipment from ENIAC.
• A demonstration of a modern construction of Charles Babbage‘s Difference Engine No. 2. This thing is amazing. The operator winds a crank and the machine calculates 7th degree polynomials purely mechanically. Gears and springs and sprockets, oh my. There are videos on YouTube.

• A demonstration of the only working PDP-1 by Steve Russell and Peter Samson. The two met at MIT 50 years ago, where they wrote code for a PDP-1. Specifically, Steve Russell created Spacewar! and Peter Samson wrote a music program, among other things.

  We stood by as they loaded programs from paper tape onto the machine and ran them. They ran Peter’s music program first. Interesting story: They had paper tape copies of the music data Peter encoded in the 1960s, but the music playing program had been lost. As part of the PDP-1 restoration effort, sometime in the last few years Peter reverse engineered the data format of the music and rewrote his music playing program. We got to hear Bach’s Organ Concerto No. 1 in G Major, 3rd movement, BWV 592. It sounded amazing.

  Next up was Spacewar! The museum has connected arcade buttons to the PDP-1 for controlling the two ships. Emily and I actually played the original Spacewar! game on a real live PDP-1 while standing next to the guy who wrote it—crazy!

HTC Dream

The first Android phone. Sold as “T-Mobile G1″ in the US. It was clunky and had a rickety slide-out keyboard. The OS was immature, but it got the job done. I liked that the back half of the phone was a grippy rubber material, to keep it from sliding out of your hand. The OS had little (possibly no) modifications from T-Mobile, which I liked.

The phone wasn’t for everyone, but I was happy with it (I’m an Android fan).

Nexus One

HTC hit it out of the park with this phone—well done, boys.

My second Android phone. Also manufactured by HTC. This phone is fantastic. I used it happily for three years. Solid build. Good battery life (I easily made it through the day without having to recharge). Good size (although it could be thinner). Satisfactory speed. No modifications to the OS by wireless network companies because it was sold directly by Google. The back of the phone is a mildly grippy felty suede-like polymer.

It does have some flaws:

• Only 192MB of internal storage. This is not enough! This is a severe problem! Many apps can only be installed on the built-in storage and not the SD card. After three years of evolutionary updates, if I update every app on the phone I’m basically out of space. This leaves no room to install 3rd party apps. Bad foresight.
• The Amazon MP3 and Facebook apps are pre-installed. I don’t use them and can’t uninstall them.
• If the phone is off it’s easy to accidentally turn it on, because just tapping the power button turns it on (newer phones require holding down the power button). This is a problem if you want to turn your phone off and put it in your hiking pack in the middle of the woods, or in your pocket on a plane, in a movie theater, etc. It also means that there is no way to check whether the phone is off (normally you would tap the power button).
• Years of pocket dust made the power button difficult to operate. Sometimes it doesn’t trigger. Sometimes it triggers twice.
• Some dust worked its way under the bottom left corner of the screen, making it “foggy.”

Nexus S

Manufactured by Samsung. It’s ok. The case is hard plastic and has always felt like it would crack easily. And since plastic is slippery, it tends to be easy to drop. Emily dropped her Nexus S and the screen cracked. This phone doesn’t have the power button problem from the Nexus One, which is good. No carrier modifications.

Flaws:

• The GPS. It’s bad. Sometimes it works fine. Other times it takes minutes to get an inexact location. Sometimes the location is just plain wrong (usually by not more than a few miles, but enough to be inconvenient if you’re trying to navigate). Sometimes the GPS loses the location while navigating. Hopefully Samsung has fixed these issues in their newer phones.
• “Exchange Services” in Android 4.1 (used by the Email app for an Exchange-based email account) consumed lots of battery. This started when Emily added an Exchange-based email account and went back to normal as soon as she removed it. Her battery would usually not last through a day when the Exchange email account was added, otherwise it was fine.

Nexus 4

Manufactured by LG. This is the current Nexus phone, and it’s terrific. The battery life is normally good. I normally make it through the day without having to recharge, but occasionally a rogue process (sometimes related to Maps) will be abnormally active and chew through the battery. I speculate that this bug lies in the OS or an application bug and not the hardware.

The screen on this phone is great. The surface is thin, so your finger is closer to the stuff you’re touching. It subconsciously feels better to use. The glass also satisfyingly rounds at the edges.

My gripes:

• I wish it was smaller. Sure it’s nice to read on a large screen, but I’m also happy reading on a slightly smaller screen. It’s a little too big for me to hold it confidently, especially when trying to type with one thumb.
• Although the polished plastic back is beautiful, it is slippery as hell. The edges are rubbery, which is good, but not good enough. I’m an extremely careful person and I think it’s likely I’ll drop this phone at some point.

Nexus 7

A tablet with a 7″ screen, manufactured by Asus. I have no experience with other tablets so I have nothing to compare it to, but I like this. It’s great for watching movies, browsing the web, reading news, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc.

It has a front-facing camera, so you can video chat, but no rear-facing camera and no Camera app.

Summary

I’ve harped on three points:

• Slipperyness – People drop their phones constantly and sometimes they break. This sucks. Grippier phones are less likely to be dropped and therefore less likely to be broken. Shiny glass may be pretty, but it’s less functional, and function is important. Making slippery phones is a disservice to your customer.
• Carrier modifications – I hate when wireless carriers change the software on the phone. Google has many engineers dedicated to making Android great. I have little faith that a wireless carrier would be able to make any significant improvements, and I worry they would introduce problems (for example, a bug that allows someone to bypass the lock screen and Carrier IQ potential logging of keystrokes and other personal information). This is the primary reason I have continued to buy Google’s Nexus phones.
• Size – I don’t like carrying a huge paddle in my pocket. I don’t care about a large screen. I want something small and unobtrusive. Almost all current phones fail here.

Disclaimer

I’ve been a Google employee for about 8 months. These thoughts are all my own and don’t necessarily represent the opinions of my employer. I don’t think my employment has influenced this in any way, but I’ll let you judge.

Jumping into bed with Apple was a mistake for the mobile operators … because operators gave away all their apps revenue to Cupertino, and that cash would have come in handy as voice and SMS cashflow declined. … Operators have now seen the error of their ways.

From the point of view of the mobile operators, yeah, sure, maybe that was a mistake? One could argue that mobile operators shouldn’t have been charging per-SMS in the first place. Personally I’m happy mobile operators have little to do with my app store. I have no respect or faith in mobile operators.

Sound harsh? Please consider:

• room 641A¹
• NSA call database¹
• warrantless wiretapping¹
• historical tendency to charge egregious fees for overages, international roaming and breaking out of service contracts²

My wireless carrier should provide a reliable voice and data connection, and nothing more.

¹ If the NSA asks you to do any of these things, please cite the fourth amendment and refuse.
² I do appreciate T-Mobile’s efforts to move away from service contracts (by offering a cheaper service plan for customers who pay full price for their phone).

1. Around Dec. 18 someone drove through a FasTrak toll lane on the Dumbarton Bridge and didn’t have a FasTrak tag. An automated system took a picture of the front grill and license plate of the vehicle.
2. The license plate in the picture looked similar to mine. A human or a computer decided it was mine and mailed me a bill for $27.50 (the toll plus a fine).
3. The bill included a picture of the vehicle and license plate. The vehicle was clearly not mine. I drive an Acura Integra and the pictured vehicle was a Ford or Chevy truck or SUV. The license plate was not clear enough to be read with 100% accuracy.
4. I checked the box “I believe I should not pay this fine” and wrote an explanation along the lines of “this wasn’t me, my car or my plate; the pictured vehicle is not an Acura Integra, I checked my car and I still have both plates.”
5. I got a reply along the lines of “we reviewed your request and have determined that you are still responsible for the fine. If you wish to appeal this decision, you must pay the amount and complete the attached form.” WTF? Any idiot with half a brain could tell this wasn’t my car. I expected them to look at the picture and say, “ah, yeah, our mistake,” then look up the license plate again, this time changing the “4″ to a “1,” and find a Ford or Chevy truck or SUV in the vehicle database. But nope. It kinda seems like they didn’t review anything. It kinda seems like they were hoping I’d give up and pay the fine.
6. So I mailed them my money and checked the box for “I want to be present when you review this.”
7. Yesterday I got a check in the mail for $27.50 and a letter that says, “We have received your payment for the above referenced violation. Your payment was more than the required amount. Enclosed please find a refund check for $27.50 for overpayment of the violation. No further action is required by you.” I guess they finally bothered to review it, and then refund my money in possibly the rudest way possible. Also worth noting that they haven’t cashed my check yet.

I’m pretty happy with it. Only tested on Linux, and it requires the python flickrapi library.

Read more about it and download the script on GitHub.

The next stop on our trip was Bali, Indonesia. You can see all 195 pictures or the best 22 (mixed in with pictures from Japan).

We stayed at a beach-side resort for two nights, then moved inland and stayed in a bungalow on a small rice farm, then moved to a small hut near the beach.

Bali is tropical—only about 600 miles from the equator. It’s warm and sunny and rains regularly, which means they can grow pretty much anything they want. We had a wide variety of high quality fruit at almost every meal. The island is volcanic, so the landscape tends to be hilly and there are many creeks that flow from higher elevations to the coast. When you get away from the touristy areas, the island shows a relaxed, agrarian lifestyle. Rice paddies are common. People live on the land they farm. Women carry jugs of water on their heads. Houses are minimal, often with tarp or thatch walls and rooves.

But there were things I found frustrating.

In touristy areas, taxis cruise the streets asking everyone if they need a taxi. Shop owners relentlessly hawk goods. Counterfeit apparel was rampant. Polo was especially popular. At one point we walked past three “Polo” stores within just a few blocks.

The area frequently reminded me of Mexico. Tourism accounts for 80% of their economy (the rest is mostly rice and other agriculture). The large tourism industry results in Bali being one of the wealthier areas of Indonesia. People are overly kind when they think you might tip them, otherwise they are pretty lethargic. When arriving at the airport you’re flooded with people offering to take your bags, drive you somewhere, or sell you a tour. The customs and visa agents, on the other hand, don’t even acknowledge you when you step up to them—you’re forced to guess whether they want your passport, boarding pass, or both. They charge $25 per person for a visa when you enter the country then charge a $15 “service charge” when you leave—why not just charge $35, once? Also it’s kind of sleazy to charge someone to leave.

In multiple places we encountered this system:

1. Buy ticket
2. Walk 20 feet
3. Give ticket to guy at entrance

Why not do away with the ticket completely and pay at the entrance? The inefficiency astounds me. Maybe they’re just trying to keep people employed?

Littering is a problem. At Pura Luhur Uluwatu, a beautiful temple overlooking the ocean built in the 11th century, I saw an employee drop a handful of paper tickets off a cliff.

Anyway, enough of my complaining.

Bali Grand Hyatt

This was nice. The room was cheap, but food and drinks were expensive. In the end I think it evened out to be a decent value. The room could maybe have been cleaner. It felt… “beachy.” The beach and ocean were nice. The water was maybe too calm. The pool was great.

Bungalow in Ubud

This place was really memorable. See the location on Google Maps. Also the word “bungalow” starts to sound funny when you say it a lot.

Volcano Hike

We signed up for a tour that picked us up maybe around 4am. We rode in a van with 6 or so other people to the foot of Mount Batur. From there we hiked to the top and watched the sunrise.

Gunung Kawi

This is an 11th century temple in a jungle, and it was really cool.

Terraced Rice Paddies

The people of Indonesia have built rice paddies on the side of steep hills to take advantage of every inch of land possible. I’d seen pictures of terraced rice paddies before and really wanted to see them in person. We spent a few hours driving around in a taxi looking for them. Many of them had already been harvested, and so were yellowish instead of a deep green.

Balangan Beach

This beach seemed great for surfers, but was a bit rough for swimming. The ocean floor was hard rock in many places. There was a calm section, but, meh. We bought a really cheap meal and had a beer at one of the cafes on the beach. This was the same “cheap food and beer on the beach” experience that I’ve heard people talk about in Thailand.

Padang Padang Beach

Similar to Balangan Beach, this seemed great for surfers but was just ok for swimming. This did seem a little more calm than Balangan. There was a frat-party vibe at sunset… people sitting around smoking and drinking beer. There were also some bolted climbs here, which was kinda crazy.

Pura Luhur Uluwatu

A temple built on a cliff. This was also really cool.

Food

The local food is very spicy. Places that cater to tourists tone it down a bit. The food is similar to Thai. Lots of rice and noodle dishes. I liked it.

Other Stuff

Temperature

It was hot and humid. Highs around 85 and lows around 80. Maybe 70% humidity.

Bikes

A fair number of people rode bikes for transportation. There were very few recreational cyclists. Almost no one wore a helmet, and I think that’s crazy.

Dogs

Wandering dogs were common. It wasn’t clear if they belonged to anyone. Most seemed calm and friendly… possibly a side effect of high heat and scarce food—they were usually quite skinny. They also didn’t look neutered. They tended to be mutts. During our pre-dawn van ride to the start of the volcano hike, the streets were void of people but meandering dogs were common.

Smoking

Smoking is common here—both by locals and tourists—and seemed to be allowed everywhere. Most people smoked clove cigarettes (apparently they originate from Indonesia, who knew?).

Cars and Driving

There were more motorcycles than scooters. They were low-powered, small (same size front and rear tires), and usually had a surfboard rack on the side. It’s common for tourists to rent a motorcycle. Few motorcyclists wore helmets. Drivers are crazy, and I would absolutely not feel safe on a motorcycle, scooter, or bicycle. Lane markings are loosely adhered to. Lots of Toyotas. Also Suzukis, Mitsubishis, Daihatsus and Kias.

Roads

You’d have a hard time describing their road infrastructure as “planned.” There were few highways and traffic tended to make traveling slow. After leaving the urban, southern part of the island, roads were small and winding. Thankfully, most roads were paved. I’m guessing people aren’t usually in a huge hurry, so they’re ok with slow traffic.

English

People who dealt with tourists tended to speak English, which was convenient. Bali is close to Australia and Australians were by far the majority of the English-speaking tourists. As such, the locals tended to speak English with an Australian accent.

Seoul

From Bali we went to Seoul, Republic of Korea (aka South Korea). We were here for only 36 hours before flying home.

Like Tokyo, Seoul is a huge, modern city. The location of our hotel was fantastic. Close to the subway and close to many restaurants and a popular pedestrian street and shopping area. Check out the area south of our hotel on Street View.

We saw more American companies here than anywhere else: Dunkin’ Donuts, Krispy Kreme, Baskin Robbins, Smoothie King, Jamba Juice, McDonald’s, Burger King, Outback Steakhouse, California Pizza Kitchen, The Coffee Bean, Nike, Adidas, North Face, Wilson.

We also saw more buses here than anywhere else. There was practically a constant stream of buses at the bus stops near our hotel.

Gyeongbokgung Palace

This is an old palace that is open to the public. It’s a sprawling compound with many buildings.

COEX Mall

Apparently this is the largest underground shopping mall in Asia. In addition to lots of shopping and food there is a movie theater and an aquarium. You could easily spend a full day here.

Namsan Tower

As is our nature, apparently, we visited the tallest point around: Namsan Tower on Namsan Mountain. The mountain is in the middle of Seoul. There’s an observation tower and you can see a panorama of Seoul.

This was the first time either of us had been to Asia, and we had a great time. A few highlights:

• Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden in Tokyo
• Seeing Mt. Fuji from Hakone
• Fushimi Inari Taisha Shinto shrine in Kyoto
• Our amazing bungalow in Bali
• Hiking to the top of a not-quite-dormant volcano before sunrise in Bali
• Gunung Kawi in Bali

You can see all 472 pictures or the best 54.

Japan

We spent four days in Tokyo, took a train south to Hakone and spent a day there, took a train (the Shinkansen) further south to Kyoto and spent two days there, then took the Shinkansen back to Tokyo for one last night.

The Shinkansen is Japan’s high-speed rail. It was maybe half the price of air travel and took a comparable amount of time (thanks to the lack of X-rays and metal detectors). Much faster than a bus. Smoother ride than a normal train. Less ambient noise than an airplane.

We carried pop-out maps for Tokyo and Kyoto. I’m a devotee—they’re great. We had previously used them in Italy.

Tokyo

We felt like we could live here. It’s a cool place. It would be important to learn to read and speak basic Japanese to make it easier to get around and order food.

I’ve always felt that people in Europe and Asia dress better than in the US, but Tokyo takes it to the next level. Most people dress business traditional: Men wear dark suits and dress shoes and carry leather briefcases. Women wear blazers, long skirts, and mid-height heels. Emily kept saying she looked frumpy, and that the people dressed like Zooey Deschanel.

Tokyo is a huge city and we wandered through many great places to shop and hang out. For example, the Shinjuku-sanchome area has multi-story buildings selling expensive clothes, and lots of bars (including a huge number of gay bars, a little to the east).

We stayed in the Citadines Shinjuku the first few nights and it was nice. Our last night we stayed at Hotel Ryumeikan and it was impressively high tech. RFID room key. Automatic everything. A button that raises and lowers the toilet seat. An alarm clock that played soothing music, faded on the lights, and vibrated the foot of the bed. I think the bathroom fan may have had a sensor that detected when the air was humid from the shower and turned itself on. And the room was super clean.

So what did we actually do? We spent a lot of time exploring the city by foot and subway, walking down streets, eating food, wandering. We also saw a few sites.

Tokyo Imperial Palace

We circumnavigated the palace grounds. This was a good walk and it was pretty, but maybe a little silly since there are a lot of trees and you can’t see much.

Sensō-ji and Asakusa Shrine

A famous Buddhist temple and a famous Shinto shrine next to each other. There are also some pedestrian shopping streets in this area. It was very busy here, with many tour groups and school field trips.

Tokyo Tower and Roppongi Hills Mori Tower

We went to the top of two tall structures. Tokyo Tower is an antenna and Mori Tower is an office building. Our weather was clear and the views were great. It was cool to see Tokyo from above—it’s a huge city. There is nothing interesting near Tokyo Tower and Roppongi Hills is a large shopping area, so if don’t want to go to both of them then go to Mori Tower.

Meiji Shrine and Yoyogi Park

The shrine and the park were both very pretty. The atmosphere is much more relaxing than Asakusa Shrine, which was swarming with people and is closer to busy roads.

Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden

This park is beautiful. It’s very lush. The landscape is varied with a wide variety of mature plants.

Hakone

We left Tokyo by train for Hakone, which is part of Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park. This area felt like a cross between Yosemite National Park and Cinque Terre in Italy. The landscape is mountainous and spotted with small towns interconnected by winding, narrow roads.

We stayed one night at a small ryokan in Gora. A ryokan is a traditional Japanese inn. They served us what would be considered an amazing meal if you like fish and sushi. I’m not a fan of either… but I tried to eat most of it, so as not to look unappreciative, if nothing else. They had communal baths filled with water from the volcanic hot spring. I thought it was a bit awkward (made less so by the fact that the place was small and mostly empty).

The next day we checked out and traveled around the park. The park features a large number of different transportation systems. We took a train powered via cable, then a “ropeway” (aka cable car), then a ferry boat, then something else. I actually don’t remember how we got out of here. Train? Bus? Who knows.

We were blessed with clear weather and had a great view of Mount Fuji from the top of Mount Hakone. It was really cool to see the snowy mountain standing alone in the distance.

We walked through an amazing section of the old Tōkaidō road here that was lined with cedars. Unfortunately it seems like we didn’t take any pictures.

Kyoto

We took the Shinkansen from Hakone to Kyoto. The city is located in a valley and is surrounded by lush, green mountains. The city is definitely more laid back than Tokyo.

We found some bustling nightlife and a large selection of food and shopping just west of the Sanjō Keihan subway station.

Monkey Park!

At the suggestion of my monkey-addict friend Renaud, we visted Iwatayama Monkey Park. It was super cool. The park is situated on a hill on the western end of the city. The monkeys are free roaming—you walk amongst them! We walked up the hill along the park trail and saw a few monkeys, and that was exciting. Then we got to the feeding area at the top and the place was swarming with monkeys. It was great. We went inside a cage, bought some peanuts, and feed them through the cage. It’s amazingly creepy how human they are, especially when a leathery hand grabs a peanut from the palm of your hand.

Nonomiya Shrine and the Bamboo Forest

I don’t remember this shrine very well, but the bamboo forest was cool.

Ryōan-ji

This Zen Buddhist temple has a famous rock garden. The landscaping behind the temple is beautiful.

Fushimi Inari-taisha

This is my favorite memory from Japan. If you’re in Japan, it’s worth going to Kyoto just to see this. The Torii at this Shinto shrine wind through the woods and up the hill. Emily and I hiked up the steps and back down, and I’m very glad we did. I thought it was amazing.

Tokyo Subway

There are a lot of public transportation options in Tokyo: two subway operators (Tokyo Metro and Toei Subway), buses, and various surface trains (often operated by Japan Rail). For simplicity we chose to use only the Tokyo Metro and Toei Subway.

The subway system works well—trains are frequent and clean and the ride is gentle. Stations are adequately dispersed through the parts of the city we were interested in. Rides are affordable. Buying tickets isn’t bad… their ticket machines have English translations, but it’s still sometimes difficult to know which ticket to buy. The two subway operators interoperate somewhat, but not completely. We bought the 1,000 yen “Common One-day Ticket” at the start of each day. It’s valid for unlimited rides on both operators. Though you might be better off buying a PASMO or Suica card and putting a bunch of money on it. I think these cards can also sometimes be used at restaurants where credit cards aren’t accepted.

We found it difficult to pay with a credit card—either we couldn’t find machines that took credit cards or we couldn’t figure out how to make the machines accept our credit cards. On one occasion we tried inserting our credit card and it kept getting rejected. Suddenly a small panel opened beside the machine and a guy stuck his head out! Look, I even found a picture:

It was straight outta The Wizard of Oz.

So that was crazy. The guy asked if we needed help, and probably told us that the machine we were using didn’t take credit cards (his English wasn’t great and our Japanese was non-existent). After that we always paid in cash.

The stations often have a few shops. Tokyo Station was crazy—basically an underground shopping mall.

The elderly in Japan were pretty spry! They would hurry to get on the subway and had no problems standing when there were no available seats. Younger people usually didn’t offer their seats to older people, which I found interesting.

The subway station bathrooms did not have soap or paper towels, which I found strange considering that people tended to be mildly germophobic and sometimes wear masks when commuting during cold and flu season.

I saw a fair number of people reading a little book while commuting (and also sometimes while eating at cafes). I’m guessing it was some kind of religious text.

Kyoto Transportation

We used subways and surface trains to get around Kyoto. The experience was not quite as good as Tokyo, but still very usable. Trains were a little less frequent and stations were a little more spread out, but we were still able to get everywhere we wanted to go fairly easily.

Dining

It was a little hard to find food variety. But that’s partially our fault for always picking restaurants that felt more authentic. Lots of dishes—especially in Kyoto—had a fish component. Maybe row in top. Or a shrimp. Or oyster-based soup. Or raw salmon on top of a salad. Or seaweed. Egg is also popular on top of soup dishes.

In Tokyo there were small restaurants throughout the city and we usually picked one at random. Most of our meals were pretty enjoyable. We had a few good bowls of ramen. We had tonkatsu with super fine breading that was great. We had some tempura that was similar to what you find in the US.

We did have one crazy meal… It’s partially my fault. We walked through an alley called Omoide Yokocho with a bunch of small yakitori restaurants, maybe 6 to 10 seats each. The street was very cool (pictures). The food we got… not so much. The menu at the place we picked had only a little English and we don’t speak a lick of Japanese. I ordered us the “special” meats with the theory that they would be higher quality cuts of meat. That was, indeed, not a good assumption. At some point Emily realized that one of the meats was tongue. And since we hadn’t been able to identify most of the other meats, we didn’t each much more after that. So that was an experience.

I feel like many people in the US would roll their eyes and be annoyed if a non-English speaker tried to order at a restaurant, but we didn’t experience that at all in Tokyo.

Chopsticks were used for most food, with knives and forks only provided with slabs of meat or non-Asian food (we had pasta one night).

Restaurants are not as likely to accept credit cards as in US.

Other Stuff

Temperature

It was warm but not hot. Highs in the upper 70s. Lows around 60. Mildly humid.

Sunset

It got dark earlier when compared to the US. In the US in May sunset is close to 8pm. In Japan it was usually dark by 7.

Vending Machines

I loved buying hot milk tea from vending machines. There are vending machines all over the place. Along streets. In subway stations. In department stores. Everywhere. Mostly containing beverages, but also some food. They tend to have coffee, espresso, cappuccino, a few sodas (often Coke and Sprite—Pepsi was rare), and various teas (green, black, maybe peach). Some of the coffee and tea is served hot, which is awesome.

ATMs

Many ATMs wouldn’t let me use my Bank of America debit card. They seemed to want a Japanese-issued card or a fingerprint scan. We had good luck using the ATMs in Japan Post offices.

Bikes

We saw many generic commuter bikes with low top tubes, maybe a few gears, basket, front light powered by a wheel generator, etc. People on these bikes didn’t wear helmets. We also saw standard mountain bikes (Cannondale, Giant, Gary Fisher, Raleigh), road bikes (Kuota, Fuji, Giant, Scott, Pinarello), and fixies. I mostly saw road cyclists on weekends. They did wear helmets and mostly rode on roads and not sidewalks.

Dogs

We saw some pet dogs, but not a large number. They were almost always small and fluffy. Maltese, Bichon Frisé, Shiba Inu, etc.

Smoking

Thankfully there weren’t many smokers in Japan. Maybe a similar amount as California. Some restaurants allowed smoking, but it was usually banned in public areas like sidewalks and subways.

Cars

Lots of Toyotas, Hondas and Nissans. Also some BMWs, Porsches and Lexuses. It was cool seeing Nissan Skylines. Trucks and vans made up maybe 50% of traffic and taxis made up maybe 20%. More motorcycles and scooters than you would see in the US. Traffic wasn’t exactly light, but it didn’t look horrible, either. The Toyota Crown was a popular taxi car. I dig the fender-mounted mirrors.

Fire Extinguishers

In our hotels the fire extinguishers were always sitting on the floor. No idea why. In the US they’re usually in a nook in the wall.

English

People generally spoke only a few words of English. Transportation signs usually had English translations. Restaurants in Tokyo tended to have English menus.

One podcast from 15 Nov 2011 interviewed a casino CEO who was a Harvard economist. He talked about gifts that casinos give to customers to keep them happy.

Planet Money

You want the thing where the cost to you is low and the value to me is high, obviously. What is that thing? What is a thing where the cost to you is low and the value to me is high?

Gary Loveman

Well hotel rooms are a pretty good example because the incremental cost of putting you in a room that would not otherwise be used is very low, and the value to you might be very high. Privileged access—if I let you cut the line at Pure Nightclub on New Year’s Eve—that doesn’t cost me much, it’s enormously valuable to you. Exclusivity is very highly valued by our guests; it is not terribly difficult for us to provide.

Gary Loveman

Let me give you a counterexample. We have Guy Savoy’s French restaurant here at Caesar’s Palace, which is a spectacular culinary experience. Three star—Michelin, French chef. The meal costs us just about exactly what we charge for it. So if I give you and your wife a Guy Savoy dinner, that’s a, that’s real money, that’s $1,000 of real money to put you in that table. And you value it at roughly $1,000. So, while it’s exclusive and it’s important and we’re happy to do it, there’s not nearly as much arbitrage in that as there would be in some of the other examples.

Gary Loveman

We have an awful lot of people who visit us one time and never come back for a very long time. And there are lots of reasons for that. But one of them is that on their first visit, it’s not a good experience for them. And there’s lots of reasons why that might be, but certainly one of the reasons is that the gambling outcome is surprisingly bad for them. Everybody who gambles knows that the house has an advantage. They’re not unhappy that they lose anymore than one is unhappy that they paid $40 to walk into the Magic Kingdom at Disney. They recognize there is a fee to provide all this stuff. But they get very unhappy if the loss is surprisingly severe.

The casinos track new customers using loyalty cards. If a new customer does much worse than the average then the Casino sends someone to them, welcomes them, asks how they’re doing, asks if there is anything they can do to make the experience better, etc.

Gary Loveman

So we do these kinds of interventions and then we run test and control against it to see whether, of all the people having a bad first experience, those who have a visit from one of our staff are more inclined to come back for a second visit. And, not surprisingly, they are dramatically more likely.