Golden Week is never a good time to travel in Japan. Tickets are scarce, discounts are impossible to find. Japanese media shows packed Shinkansen trains and traffic jammed expressways. But […]
Help Desk
The Sad State of Apple Pay Suica Online Guides
Now that tourists are back in Japan it’s time to take a look at the state of Apple Pay Suica English language guides. Since AtaDistance is mostly a collection of […]
Apple Pay + Wallet
JR West announces Apple Pay ICOCA
Update: Apple Pay ICOCA launched 2023-06-27 7:00 am JST. With the successful launch of Mobile ICOCA (2023-03-22) on Osaifu Keitai Android, it’s time to think about Apple Pay ICOCA that […]
Japan Journal
Hope Vampires
Now that Tokyo Yamanote line train cars have replaced most of the ad poster spaces with display screens showing endlessly looping silent video commercials, catchy slogans are more important than […]
Japanese Typography
Refurbishing classic Japanese text for the digital age
One of my favorite work tasks is bringing classic Nichiren Shu Japanese texts into the digital age so they can be translated easily or republished using the latest print technologies […]
Mobile Payments - Mobile Transit
Suica 2.0 Platform Closeup: How Suica 2.0 will remove IC fare region barriers and much more
The Suica cross region problem, no thru transit going from the Suica area to the TOICA area for example, is a well known and criticized shortcoming of the Transit IC […]