- You really can insert a ticket in any orientation. Rotated, flipped. The machine turns the ticket around inside of it. If you get really into it, there's an episode of a television series called "Project X" which has an entire episode about the design of the machine (sadly I think this only exists in Japanese).
- Accepting multiple coins in a vending machine simultaneously is cool, but I wouldn't go as far as describing it as "as fast as you can throw them". Still even being able to put more than one it at a time is a huge improvement.
- A person really pops up from inside the machine if you need assistance. I was startled when it happened to me though :)
Ticket gates
- While it's cool that the gates remain open unless a wrong ticket is inserted, it makes it more startling when you do insert a wrong ticket. Now you don't know whether you have sinned until you almost walk into the gates that suddenly stop you.
- About honesty. Yeah, I think the machine would work just fine without even having real gates, as 99% would pay anyway. In local buses the drivers don't bother to actually count your payment and just assume it's right.
Toilet controls
- Japan has not gone too far. Once you get over your initial hesitation and get used to these, you can't go back. Now not having one seems like a silly waste of paper. Google has these.
- Way too many buttons? Yeah, the flush button placing not being standardised sucks. Sometimes you wave your hand in front of the toilet to flush it, sometimes there is a digital button. But 99% of the time there is a physical lever too.
Restaurant ticket machines
- Having pictures is awesome, as it can be kind of hard to picture exactly what you get by just text even in your own native language if you are not familiar with a dish. Not having to use staff time to count money just makes sense, although creates a stingier feeling, so this probably wouldn't work anywhere where you might want to bring a date. But efficient transactions make me happy.
Fax machines
- Sometimes when I order things for Candy Japan, the manufacturers still seem to prefer receiving their order by fax and might just ignore email.
ATMs
- Japanese transfers suck. You need to enter amount, bank name, bank branch name and account code. Why the bank name and branch name cannot be just encoded in the account code is bizarre. You have to know the readings to kanji for bank / branch name to be able to make the correct selection or separately enter a code for them, which you don't always know.
- You enter a bank book and it actually physically flips the pages of it and writes things on it with a dot matrix printer inside the ATM. Again kind of bizarre and I'm amazed it works.
- Sometimes there can be four different vendor's ATMs right next to each other in a row instead of one machine that could be used for all.
- You can deposit money, which I guess is kind of cool if you get a lot of cash payments. But I think it would be better solved by not having people receive cash in the first place by promoting use of cards in transactions.
- You really can insert a ticket in any orientation. Rotated, flipped. The machine turns the ticket around inside of it. If you get really into it, there's an episode of a television series called "Project X" which has an entire episode about the design of the machine (sadly I think this only exists in Japanese).
- Accepting multiple coins in a vending machine simultaneously is cool, but I wouldn't go as far as describing it as "as fast as you can throw them". Still even being able to put more than one it at a time is a huge improvement.
- A person really pops up from inside the machine if you need assistance. I was startled when it happened to me though :)
Ticket gates
- While it's cool that the gates remain open unless a wrong ticket is inserted, it makes it more startling when you do insert a wrong ticket. Now you don't know whether you have sinned until you almost walk into the gates that suddenly stop you.
- About honesty. Yeah, I think the machine would work just fine without even having real gates, as 99% would pay anyway. In local buses the drivers don't bother to actually count your payment and just assume it's right.
Toilet controls
- Japan has not gone too far. Once you get over your initial hesitation and get used to these, you can't go back. Now not having one seems like a silly waste of paper. Google has these.
- Way too many buttons? Yeah, the flush button placing not being standardised sucks. Sometimes you wave your hand in front of the toilet to flush it, sometimes there is a digital button. But 99% of the time there is a physical lever too.
Restaurant ticket machines
- Having pictures is awesome, as it can be kind of hard to picture exactly what you get by just text even in your own native language if you are not familiar with a dish. Not having to use staff time to count money just makes sense, although creates a stingier feeling, so this probably wouldn't work anywhere where you might want to bring a date. But efficient transactions make me happy.
Fax machines
- Sometimes when I order things for Candy Japan, the manufacturers still seem to prefer receiving their order by fax and might just ignore email.
ATMs
- Japanese transfers suck. You need to enter amount, bank name, bank branch name and account code. Why the bank name and branch name cannot be just encoded in the account code is bizarre. You have to know the readings to kanji for bank / branch name to be able to make the correct selection or separately enter a code for them, which you don't always know.
- You enter a bank book and it actually physically flips the pages of it and writes things on it with a dot matrix printer inside the ATM. Again kind of bizarre and I'm amazed it works.
- Sometimes there can be four different vendor's ATMs right next to each other in a row instead of one machine that could be used for all.
- You can deposit money, which I guess is kind of cool if you get a lot of cash payments. But I think it would be better solved by not having people receive cash in the first place by promoting use of cards in transactions.