I've used JapanTaxi (mentioned in the article) a fair number of times, and while there's nothing wrong with the experience of the app, oftentimes the biggest competitor to these ride-hailing apps is the fact that Tokyo's roads are so densely populated with taxis cruising everywhere that it's often faster to just hail one passing by than to open an app on your phone.
I feel the Uber service itself has a sort of a 'premium' feeling around it in Japan, with the cars/staff/pricing being higher-class than the run-of-the-mill taxis you can hail. As such they don't seem to be used too often. I only use Uber/Lyft when traveling to the US; In Japan I come into contact with the brand much more often from the context of Uber Eats.
> I feel the Uber service itself has a sort of a 'premium' feeling around it in Japan, with the cars/staff/pricing being higher-class than the run-of-the-mill taxis you can hail.
Even for a limo-class car, it's hard to beat the Toyota "JPN Taxi" model. Thoses high roof taxis are so fine!
Besides, being able to pay with a Suica card is very convenient.
Love paying with a suica for taxi and basically anything, I've stopped taking any taxi that does not accept it and I'm considering changing my laundry place just because of this.
Lots of places in Japan don't take Visa/Mastercard, so it's either Suica/Pasmo or cash. There's tons of vending machines, for instance, but they don't take credit cards, but a lot of them do take Suica. Suica is basically a debit card; you put money on it (there's terminals at all the subway stations) and then spend it on the subway/train fares and also at other places that accept it, like vending machines, taxis, and various establishments.
The only thing I didn't like about Suica/Pasmo when I was in Japan was that, unlike a credit card, there doesn't seem to be a way to get a statement so you can see where you spent all your money. But I was only there for 2 weeks as a tourist, so maybe it's possible to get access to that and I just didn't find it.
> The only thing I didn't like about Suica/Pasmo when I was in Japan was that, unlike a credit card, there doesn't seem to be a way to get a statement so you can see where you spent all your money
I use Suikakeibo [0] for that. The latest 20-ish transactions seem to be stored on the card, so by scanning it using my phone every day I could keep a history of everything I used it for. You can even put in notes, since non-transit transaction don't list what you bought with it - just the amount.
> > The only thing I didn't like about Suica/Pasmo when I was in Japan was that, unlike a credit card, there doesn't seem to be a way to get a statement so you can see where you spent all your money
> I use Suikakeibo [0] for that. The latest 20-ish transactions seem to be stored on the card, so by scanning it using my phone every day I could keep a history of everything I used it for. You can even put in notes, since non-transit transaction don't list what you bought with it - just the amount.
> It makes for a nice reminder of my past trips. =)
Pro tip I didn't learn until embarrasingly late, they can recharge it in many (all?) places that they accept it, especially in convinis. Just say "charji" and give them money + tap it.
It works everywhere instantly (just tap) and you can reload it with cash in almost any train station or convenience store. I doubt there is part of Tokyo that is more than 5 minutes from a place to load your suica/pasmo card.
Pro tip I didn't learn until embarrasingly late, they can recharge it in many (all?) places that they accept it, especially in convinis. Just say "charji" and give them money + tap it.
It’s also the fastest of any contactless card I’ve ever used. Faster than Clipper, Taipei Metro card, and faster than apple pay. Even the iPhone integration is fast.
https://news.livedoor.com/article/detail/11497078/
This (Japanese) article is an interesting read about the speed of FeliCa cards, the contactless tech Suica is based on. The speed requirement that was used when designing FeliCa was that transactions were to complete within 200 msecs, while cards in London for instance only required 250ms-500ms.
While this may be overkill performance for other countries, the number was derived from Japan Railways’ rush hour statistics and simulations, which made their target to be processing 60 passengers per minute at the gate.
As Japan has one of the highest train station utilization in the world, using contactless systems like MiFare etc. to make iPhone train payment work would probably clog the gates and not be realistic; hence, when iPhone 7 began supporting station payments in Japan, Apple supported FeliCa instead of the other way around. (The fact that smartphone users here disproportionately favor iPhone over Android also probably helped.)
No Fees: Suica does not charge users merchant fees. Contrast that with a credit card, which charge fees as a % of transactions. Some credit cards with contactless functionality (eg. PayWave) charge a higher % if you use the contactless method rather than inserting or swiping. If you like money, well, you get more of it by using Suica. You do have to pay a 500 JPY deposit (refundable) when you first obtain the card. You can get this back at any JR station whenever you want. Also if you're using a foreign card, you might be charged foreign exchange fees and also get a bad exchange rate (ie. the rate is almost always some % worse in favor of the bank). If you can find a more efficient way of getting JPY onto a Suica, then you can save money.
Privacy: If you care about privacy, Suica is relatively anonymous, unless you (optionally) register it. It's probably possible to link a card to someone retrospectively with CCTV, but your transaction history is not being broadcast in real-time to your bank.
Acceptance: It's also increasingly widely accepted: public transport (the Tokyo metro system is amazing and gets you just about anywhere efficiently); taxis; the pervasive convenience stores + some supermarkets; more and more retail stores. Edit: as another poster pointed out, a huge % of transactions in Japan are made in cash and it's quite common for stores to not accept credit cards, yet some of these do accept Suica.
Discounts: You might get discounts on train fares if you use Suica, too.
No battery required: The SUICA works 24/7, 365, with no need to charge it. Unless I'm mistaken, smartphones require at least reserve battery for NFC payments to work.
Suica was awesome in tokyo, but I wasn't able to use it in Osaka unfortunately. Other than that, I love it. I had the card originally but I switched to just using my phone.
How long ago was this? In the past couple of years, I believe the backend systems have been integrated so you can use Tokyo-specific cards in Osaka and vice versa
I’ve used suica from Hokkaido to Kyuushuu. Some local bus lines don’t accept it, including the one in my city, but they seem to be gradually adding suica compatibility everywhere. It’ll probably be universal in a few more years (tech adoption is incredibly slow in Japan)
> feel the Uber service itself has a sort of a 'premium' feeling around it in Japan, with the cars/staff/pricing being higher-class than the run-of-the-mill taxis you can hail.
Isn't the average Japanese taxi some big Toyota Crown sedan already? How much more premium than that can you go?
> Introduced in 1967, the Century isn’t for the flashy or hasty. Prospective customers can wait months because Toyota hand-builds each one. Background checks ensure the buyer is of an appropriate caliber, and not a member of an “antisocial organization”—a Japanese euphemism for the yakuza crime syndicates.
Reminds me of mobsters in America driving Cadillac’s and how much that probably helped sales. I know my dad loved watching mob movies and bought a Cadillac in the 90s that was straight out of the movies.
I’m curious if there was a badass motivation there similar to middle class suburbanites owning a Harley style motorcycle.
Hmmm; From my limited time in Japan / Tokyo, almost all the cars were Toyota Comforts [1]. I have not entered in a more basic and rudimentary vehicle in 25 years.
I mean, it's _fine_. Whatever. Gets you from point A to point B. You get a feeling it'll likely do so reliably, and if not, virtually everything might be fixable with a hammer.
But I wouldn't have called it premium...
P.S. The "Automatic rear doors", at least in the versions I've been in, is basically a string/lever that goes from driver to the rear door. Again, it _works_, but when I hear "Japan" and "Automatic", my mind conjures a rather different picture. However, that was true of much of my personal experience in Japan - pragmatic and reliable automation, over fancy image. And cassette tapes everywhere... :P
I don't know anything about cars, but I'm pretty sure most taxis in Tokyo are the smaller variant, the Toyota Comfort. I'd describe them as comparable to most taxis (maybe cleaner than average + the automatic doors)
> feel the Uber service itself has a sort of a 'premium' feeling around it in Japan
I don't think it has any sort of feeling around it really - it's very small here and doesn't advertise, so I think you'd be fairly hard pressed to find someone off the street who's heard of it. (Unless they know it from Uber Eats that is, which does seem to be picking up steam.)
I’ve only been in Tokyo once ten years ago but I remember the regular taxis there being staggeringly expensive. Are app based rides really more expensive than that?
No, they're actually slightly more expensive than a regular taxi. The growth limiter for Uber in Japan is the strict regulation around transportation vehicles, partly due to the government's close ties with the taxi industry, and partly because I think the government wants to disincentivize car use in its bigger cities (this makes a lot of sense, since in Japan's large cities, public transportation is quite good).
Because of this, any kind of commercial activity using a motorized vehicle is highly regulated - services like UberX are impossible to launch in Japan. Even for food delivery, delivery drivers all ride bicycles.
> the government wants to disincentivize car use in its bigger cities
No need to do that, most people don't use cars to commute already - It's probably fair to say that car usage is only for the weekend shopping or driving out of the city - that's why car rental is a thing in Japan for a few years now, you don't need a car every single day of the week.
>Price per kilometer & wait time seems higher in Zurich, for example
I think Zurich is just a particularly expensive example. At least in the US, most places seem a lot cheaper (I checked New York, Chicago, and San Francisco). Of the few cities I checked in Europe, London is comparable but Paris, Berlin, and Rome are closer to the US examples.
Tokyo taxis are legitimately some of the most expensive in the world per mile/minute.
e.g. on my last trip home from SF, my ride to SFO cost about a third of my ride home from Haneda – both being roughly the same time and distance. if you arrive in Narita after the last train has left, have fun paying $250 to get into the city.
on the other hand, it's nice that I never feel the need to take a taxi given the great transit system, but it does rule out things like buying bulky items in person and night-time flights.
Wow; that's really changed since I lived in Tokyo.
Back in 2011, it was 710 JPY base fare (but I think for two kilometres?) and exchange rates were also tremendously disadvantageous for anyone USD-denominated.
In central Tokyo, hailing taxis is indeed easy, but out in the burbs it's a different story. The only way to get a cab at a relative's place -- and this is 15 min on foot from a major train station in Chiba, not bumfuck inaka -- is to call the local taxi company, preferably a day in advance. This being Japan, said company is super dependable, but they also only have like 3 cabs so if they can't come you're stuck.
> oftentimes the biggest competitor to these ride-hailing apps is the fact that Tokyo's roads are so densely populated with taxis cruising everywhere that it's often faster to just hail one passing by than to open an app on your phone.
Sounds like it could work well with rideshare to save money?
> ubers worth is their international recognition as a premium service
Anecdotal perhaps, but that's not my impression among friends & family. (based in Central & Western Europe) Unless you consider "less likely to be totally ripped off" as "premium". Which I guess it is to some extent, but taxi drivers in many western countries have set the bar so extremely low in terms of service that competing services such as Uber just need to meet the bare minimum of expectations customers would have in other industries.
In Japan meanwhile, as has been said by others, you literally get the white glove treatment in any run-of-the mill taxi and screwing people over totally goes against the grain of the local culture, so it's hard to see how other services might differentiate themselves. Plus of course, public transportation in the cities is fantastic and reasonably priced.
(We recently did a trip to Japan with our then-9-month-old, which meant we had more luggage than we'd normally like. So we ended up taking a few taxis instead of dragging it all the few hundred metres from the train station to whatever next hotel/apartment we were staying; in Europe, many taxi drivers would probably not even have stopped to pick us up if they'd seen us with all our stuff.)
>taxi drivers in many western countries have set the bar so extremely low in terms of service
>In Japan meanwhile... you literally get the white glove treatment in any run-of-the mill taxi and screwing people over totally goes against the grain of the local culture
This is the stuff that the anti-Uber crowd just didn't seem to understand. Taxis in America will routinely screw you over and drive you in circles, knowing that you probably don't know any better, just to increase your fare, and the customer service level is abominable. Japan just isn't like this: screwing customers over is just something they don't do there, and having extremely high customer service with incredible levels of politeness is just the norm there, even in simple convenience stores.
Uber got where it did in America because the taxi industry was absolutely horrible, so all it took was someone competing with them and not being as horrible and offering decent service to become wildly popular. The same situation never existed in Japan.
> Japan just isn't like this: screwing customers over is just something they don't do there, and having extremely high customer service with incredible levels of politeness is just the norm there, even in simple convenience stores.
There are a few scam stores in Tokyo, there's one that sells paintings to tourists, another one with monks that go around pushing things into your hands, and supposedly some ripoff girls bars. But not many.
Oh, but you can't get food substitutes in any restaurants and they'll deal with allergies by kicking you out of the store.
> and having extremely high customer service with incredible levels of politeness is just the norm there, even in simple convenience stores.
>Oh, but you can't get food substitutes in any restaurants and they'll deal with allergies by kicking you out of the store.
Yes, I saw several restaurants that warned that they don't change their recipe. It makes sense: they've optimized their process in the kitchen for those particular dishes, and aren't going to just change things around for one customer. It didn't seem to be a big problem there. So I just have to wonder: why do so many Americans these days have food allergies? This wasn't a problem decades ago. From a little bit of Googling, it seems that Japanese just don't have problems with food allergies the way Americans do. Honestly, they're right to kick you out of the store: you're too much of a liability, and they just aren't prepared to deal with people with such problems.
I have no idea what your point is here. This is an article about the level of politeness to be used by retain employees (the Japanese language has several levels of politeness built-in). I wasn't talking about any details about the usage of the language by employees, I was just talking about them being polite in general, something you don't see in American stores much.
While I use Uber in the US, I can't say the standard UberX is any more premium than taxis in my home country (Ireland). It's just standard US taxi drivers have set the standards so low in the places I've been.
That's certainly how they started, bit if you get in an Uber in a random city (particularly one where drivers are not required to be licensed by the city) your experience has no guarantee of premium (unless you book UberBLACK of course, but that's a minority of trips)
Doesn’t matter, nobody will use it. Taxi service in japan is good enough to where this won’t be a big factor. Ride hailing services are much more expensive than taxi’s.
Completely agree. In Kyoto, where I live, taxis are everywhere and cheap. That’s true even though I’m picky and try to use an MK cab whenever possible (top class of service, IMO).
Cab drivers in Japan usually take pride in their work. It’s not uncommon to see one waiting outside a home and scrambling to meet the passengers at their front door with an open umbrella.
Having said that, in Kyoto, more than anywhere else, a lot of the drivers are crabby I’ve noticed. I think they get tired of dealing with rude tourists day after day.
> Cab drivers in Japan usually take pride in their work
This is more of a Japanese work mentality than cab drivers being some high-skilled craftsman type class of workers. Cab drivers in Japan are generally very overworked and the demographics look quite bad: average age is something like 55, few newcomers because the pay isn't good and the hours are bad.
My friend became a cab driver in his 50s after he got laid off from his career. It’s not an easy gig. Their pride of service is definitely not unique in Japan, but is when compared to other cabbies elsewhere.
> Cab drivers in Japan usually take pride in their work. It’s not uncommon to see one waiting outside a home and scrambling to meet the passengers at their front door with an open umbrella.
Nothing to do with "pride in their work". When there is competition usually what makes the difference is the quality of service or the human touch. A cab ride is pretty much the same from one cab company to the other, so they try to differentiate with other things, such as knowing their regular customers.
Yes, that's the same thing I felt when I saw the article. It seems like an app for the wrong time and place.
Now if they had something to reduce the cost of a taxi, like a group taxi app where you may have to book in advance but you pay 1/5th of the normal fare since you share the cab with other people, that may be somewhat interesting. Such services exist but not as an app, as far as I know.
I guess it depends on who you ask, but living in Japan I got the impression they're seen as an important role in society. Every taxi I had ever taken had a middle aged man in a business suit driving. I'm not talking about "getting picked up from the airport on business" taxi drivers, I received extremely professional service any time of night from any random street. Others in this thread point out that they're sometimes crabby, but as long as you know the basics of Japanese etiquette I think you're in for a good experience. While a was cautious at first (as any person in a foreign country ought to be), I quickly stopped feeling like I needed to protect myself from scams.
Try Italy, Greece, Spain and Czech Republic to name a few.
I don't like Uber as a company, but I dislike Taxi's in foreign countries a lot more. It is not the foreign part that I dislike, but not knowing the formal and informal rules. What if the meter starts at 5 euros? Is that a normal amount here? What if the meter isn't turned on and the driver insists that I make a deal? Is that normal here? etc. Uber might be more expensive than local taxi's in some places, but at least I know what I get.
I agree, except if you're getting a taxi from the airport, as plenty of drivers will happily add on 10-20€ to your price. I always recommend to visiting friends to shop around for a better price, or to just order online (google: taxi airport vienna and lots of websites will pop-up).
I went to Japan last year and speak rudimentary japanese. One big challenge for taxi use was always explaining where I needed to go. If I could have plugged in the address in an app, I would have saved myself some confusion. That said, the Tokyo taxi drivers know the city better than any driver I've ever seen ever. GPS is almost a complete waste on them.
Yeah I agree on that front, but that requires you to have gone to the place once. For a new visitor that doesn't make sense. HOWEVER this does raise an interesting opportunity to build a little saas that generates digital versions of these shop cards for people.
I normally use one of the two options:
- Say somewhere famous that is very near, like a train station
- Say the exact address, like "Shibuya ku, icchome no ..." then they will say something that means "address", you confirm and just repeat it as they type in the GPS.
I think the biggest thing for me when I was living in the suburbs of Japan is that I could taxi from a station to a remote destination, but on the way back I had to either take a bus or just walk the whole way back. I definitely wish I had uber then. There are also some stations where there are no taxis waiting too. Tokyo is a terrible place to launch since like a lot of people pointed out you'll see 5 or 6 taxis pass by while you're waiting for your ride to come.
Who needs a taxi in Tokyo anyway? Can someone make a taxi-hailing app for inaka (Japanese countryside/less populated areas). You usually need to call a local taxi company there, but it's difficult to get a voice call SIM card for a foreign visitor. If you could get a taxi at a precise point of the map without having to somehow call and explain your whereabouts on the phone, it would be nothing short of a revolution.
The voice call SIM card is relatively less painful to obtain now. Previously you couldn't get it on a tourist visa, but now you can rent them from the airport (expensive) or buy them at electronics stores like Bic Camera and Yodabashi Camera.
Sony is not "one company", they have tons of independent branches/divisions working separately on different projects, so the failure of one group does not infer the failure of another.
Then why is it that every Sony product I've used feels clunky? Perhaps it is an issue with their approach to QA than any of the individual teams. If so, I don't expect this app to be any different.
Regardless, if people associate your brand with "clunky", they'll find reasons to dislike even a quality app. You really need to be consistent across your product lines to benefit from brand recognition.
Japanese companies tend to accept a lot of complexity and also love paranoid bureaucratic form UIs. There might be one page of fields, then a second page to show you them over again to check for typos, then a third page of disclaimers to shame you in case you still made a mistake… because they're not going to refund you.
Sony's pretty good about this actually, but buying anything on the Nintendo shop takes 5+ clicks even if you saved your credit card.
>Lyft has expressed an interest in Japan, where its investor Rakuten is a major name, but it has not expanded there yet.
Point to note, Rakuten owns Viber Messenger as well, so it could integrate taxi service on it for japan, though I presume that it doesn't have as much user base as LINE in Japan. Viber has larger user base overall internationally.
I thought the general plan for ride-hailing companies was to exploit human drivers while losing piles of money in the hope that AI would eventually replace humans and make the whole venture profitable. I haven't heard anything about Sony having a self-driving car division, so what's their plan?
I feel the Uber service itself has a sort of a 'premium' feeling around it in Japan, with the cars/staff/pricing being higher-class than the run-of-the-mill taxis you can hail. As such they don't seem to be used too often. I only use Uber/Lyft when traveling to the US; In Japan I come into contact with the brand much more often from the context of Uber Eats.