"Made in Japan", good or bad?
 

What do you think when you see "Made in Japan"? Is it a sign of quality, or something else? Have you driven a Toyota lately? Play online games with Sony and gambling with your identity (and eternal soul)? Eaten any raw beef in Japanese restaurants and actually survived? Have you sat on a porch lately, listening to crickets while drinking Shizuoka green tea in the warm light of it's Cherenkov radiation?

Yeah, ok, that last part was scientifically bullshit, but you get my drift. Japanese economy is not so much as being overtaken by China and India, but actually sinking. Tourism wasn't so hot even before tsunami and Fukushima. Even Japanese companies are shying away from domestic subcontractors for electronics, metalworks and optics (that I'm aware of). I hear constant complains that engineering skills are falling as old engineers won't guide younger ones in fear for their jobs, but at the same time cannot follow technical advancements due to laziness and lack of fresh skills including English.

All this is bound to show on the quality of products. Have you noticed it? Do you buy because it's "Made in Japan", or do you leave it in the shelves for the same reason?

Lately, to me, it's a rarity, as many products that used to be Made in Japan are now Made in Singapore, China, Vietnam, etc....

The only thing I still value as good quality I use every day is my Citizen Eco-Drive Skyhawk.... It works great and it looks awesome....

As far as all the other jazz, well, everyone seems to go for the cheapest manufacturing possible. We sell extension cords from the Philippines, DeWalt power tools from China.... Quality has gone down, but we all seem to live in disposable societies. How else would the economies continue to run if things lasted for a decade or more?

definition
 

For me the answer is simple :

Made in Japan = Perfect Quality.
Made in China = Cheap Counterfeit

I think made in Japan is probably fine! They still make more than Britain!

At the very least, it`s a sign that it`s better quality that most of the other options. Certainly better than "Made in China".

I even bought one after the uproar in the US... Which, to be quite honest, I still doubt to be anything other than an unfortunate mat-slip incident followed by a LOT of people trying to cash in.

Sony has never been "quality". Quite the opposite of it, really. They`ve been using cheap outsourced parts for years - there is very little that is "made" by Sony, and a lot that is "cast off parts from other makers that is assembled by Sony". It was no surprise that they screwed up even more.

Regularly, in fact. ;D

No, but I would LOVE to so a photo of someone else doing so. :)

When it comes to optics, Japan has always held foreign... German, I think? Optics as higher quality than Japanese. This is a weird wall for Japanese companies involved in optics. It has been shown that Japanese producers can make equal quality faster and for a lower cost - but still companies will choose European. I believe that there is a belief in the industry that as Japanese optics are not all that well known, being able to say that the optics were made in Germany instills a further confidence in the customer. This is a spiral of sorts, which leads to people assuming that if the Japanese companies aren`t choosing the optics from their own country there must be something wrong with them (or at the very least, the others are of higher quality if even the Japanese are choosing them) so there is little hope for the companies that do have excellent quality...
Branding - it`s power is amazing.

What is the other option?
That is the big question.
I most certainly am not going to avoid Japanese made products... And in most cases I don`t think there is even a decent option if I did. Even if Japanese quality falls, it isn`t as if it is going to be worse than "Made in China".

Haven't noticed any difference at all. Other than the increasing rarity.

I don't understand what this is. That's like blaming the oven for hormones in your chicken.

While I don`t get the eternal soul bit, it actually makes really good sense to blame Sony.

They decided to "reduce costs" by completely removing the security team from their online service - leaving one poor non-specialist to come in every few days or when there was a problem.

That is unbelievable with a company the size of Sony. Security for personal details and credit card info should have been pretty high on the scale of importance.

It`s a bit more like living in a sketchy neighborhood, leaving your doors not only unlocked but wide open... And walking away for days at a time. Yes, the people who came in are in the wrong, but you could have at least locked the door.

But the people who run the online service in the US are not the same people who build the machines. I thought this was about "Made in Japan".

The customer data service is run in Japan, by Sony. This is why users worldwide were hit. The actual in-country play servers didn`t have a problem. It was where they stored customer information - in Japan.

The hackers may have figured out how to access the information by messing with local bits of the network, but the actual hacking was done to the server in Japan. The server where they didn`t bother with much of any security.

acatualy made in japan is good quality with good price and made in china cheap quality with cheap price so simple

Thats the opposite of how the media here presented the situation. Made it sound like the problem was completely on the US side.

Not really. I made a product comparison test with one of our own 100% "Made in Japan" and a cheaper Chinese order, to find out which carried bigger quality-to-cost ratio. The cheap Chinese design was vastly superior, but I would have flogged the whole assembly line. I wouldn't have been satisfied with just one flogging. :eek:

Japan has reputation, but lot of technical skills are gone and so is integrity for the most part (or I'm just in the wrong place). I have had to cancel a couple of projects because I couldn't find anybody who could deliver the necessary quality, the level I've already worked with while in Europe. Many times the subcontractors engage in small-talk, just so they can get friendly, and after wasting great amounts of time from my project, start suggesting that I "really don't need the designed quality" if they can't come through (dude, wrong, it's you who I don't need!).

Quality control requires integrity, and I don't see much of that where I'm sitting. That is bound to show up eventually. At the same time, European section chiefs in Chinese factories are sacking freebooters and opportunists without a second thought, an attitude that is attracting more and more Chinese who still read Kung-tse. There are over 1400 university programs teaching western quality control in China, and I have to say, I can't dismiss if there is "Made in China" somewhere there. At least they're doing something about it.

sorta not
 

How could you come to any conclusion especially since Toyotas accelerators work without a cable? They use ETC.

Electronic throttle control (ETC) is an automobile technology which severs the mechanical link between the accelerator pedal and the throttle.

An ETC-equipped vehicle has no such cable. Instead, the electronic control unit (ECU) determines the required throttle position by calculations from data measured by other sensors such as an accelerator pedal position sensor, engine speed sensor, vehicle speed sensor etc.

It will be sometime before Toyota is cleared of this, maybe never. In April 2011 Toyota was forced to turn over the source code for its electronic throttle control, something it was fighting for over a year. Access to the electronic throttle source code is a key victory for attorneys representing Toyota sudden acceleration plaintiffs.

I'll take Made in Japan over Made in China or USA any day of the week.

sorta not
 

Tell that to the judge dude,..
note the date of NHSTA report date is Feb 2011' and it is a unredacted report.

Toyota Plaintiffs Insist They Need a Look at Government Findings

Amanda Bronstad
The National Law Journal
March 18, 2011
From The National Law Journal

"Toyota has refused to provide unredacted copies of the full report
As recently as March 14,2011 Toyota's lawyers opposed a request for the report, but Selna told them to turn over an unredacted version of it once security issues surrounding Toyota's source code, which the report discusses, are agreed upon by the parties."

note regarding NHTSA Feb 2011 report:

"As recently as March 14,2011' Toyota's lawyers opposed a request for the report, but Judge Selna told them to turn over an unredacted version of it once security issues surrounding Toyota's source code, which the report discusses, are agreed upon by the parties."


April 29 2011' (Bloomberg) -- A federal judge overseeing lawsuits against Toyota Motor Corp. said the automaker will have to face economic loss claims over unintended acceleration allegations.

U.S. District Judge James V. Selna in Santa Ana, California, said the claims could go forward because vehicle owners met court standards on pleading loss or injury.

Selna also said in the tentative ruling he wouldn’t dismiss claims that Toyota violated consumer laws by not disclosing sudden acceleration problems to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration or to car buyers.

"Made in Japan" indicates that the product is made in Japan.

I know. My mind is blown as well.

I would. I would not be satisfied with screams of just one. To violate such a beautiful design with such unloving assembly... :angryblob:

Dude. This is a propaganda page. Also, the study only shows that when you manufacture abroad instead of home, jobs increase in the manufacturing country and decrease at home, and the savings from cheap labour are smaller than the increased unemployment benefits and loss of revenue. In my country this is called a "null research", because it shows what everyone knows already.

You must realize already that as long as the profits from this type of behaviour are privatized to the companies who do it, but damages (loss of revenue, jobs) are socialized to everyone, this will continue forever. The two easy fixes to it are communism and national socialism, neither which I'd suggest to anyone who still remembers what happened 70 years ago.

I don't know..I play an SOE game and they aren't the fastest on the ball there somedays.

Sure, made in Japan is good quality but if something does go wrong its hard to get hold of parts to fix it myself.

I've had a couple of bad experiences with 'Made in Japan' products. But for the most part... not unlike anything else that I have that is "Made in somehwere", most of it is fine.

What I have problems with lately... and I have to say more than I did in the past, is Japanese service. It could just be one unfortunate encounter after the other, but I'm beginning to think service is slipping (and quickly) in Japan.

I understand the physical difference... but what's the difference between a product designed and made in Japan vs a product that is designed and made in China? I see China getting bashed a lot of the time, but sometimes I think it's the designs of certain products that cause some of the problems. For example, I have a couple of Made in China/Designed in Elsewhere products that overheat quite a bit. The thing is... it's clearly a design flaw and not a build flaw.

Oooh.
Fair enough! :whiteflag:

Ditto. Everybody says Japanese service is very "friendly" (No. It is polite. There is a fundamental difference) and "excellent", however that might be defined.

It is far from excellent, it is actually very slow and inefficient. Japanese know no better, and of course, foreigners are ignored. For example, travel tickets bought and paid in advance from an agency will only arrive a week before the trip, so good luck trying to fix possible mistakes/getting visas while working full-time, or getting an apology (or even a correction) when a mistake is clearly theirs.

Simple problems with ethics.

I have never heard anyone say Japanese service is "friendly". What I hear (and experience) is service where the customer is king.

I have never experienced slow or inefficient. Nor have I ever been ignored.

I have no idea what ethics has to do with what you are talking about.

I have experienced quite a lot of slow and inefficient customer service whilst living in Japan and being ignored. With some things it was incredibly frustrating. Especially when companies offered english speaking service but their operators had such terrible english it was almost useless. I somewhat agree with acjama that at least in some things customer service is very inefficient and slow and I think it may well be because Japanese people on the whole are too polite to be overly demanding!
I was in a little country town in Hokkaido though and I suspect that had something to do with it. I doubt people living in the big smokes like Tokyo or Osaka would have to deal with similar issues we had. And I was involved in things that most here wouldn't ever experience in Japan themselves, things like property development and management.

Then allow me to educate:
Ethics: The rules or standards governing the conduct of a person or the members of a profession.

Definition does not have allowances for changing of rules or standards when dealing with a foreign party, as some minority in the local service industry (among others) seems to believe.

Of course for most instances, the problem in question arises from inability to adapt to the situation or to a foreign face, when one has only prepared to perform the bare minimum of one's profession and not one millimeter more, and not actual racism.

You said "of course, foreigners are ignored." I lived in Japan for years, and cannot think of a single occasion where, as a paying customer, I was ignored. If it ever were to happen, I would remedy the situation quickly.

I am not sure what businesses you are frequenting where you are ignored, but I certainly wouldn't darken their door a second time if that was the treatment I got.

I don't think that in 2011, most Japanese have an issue with dealing with a "foreign face" as there are thousands upon thousands of foreigners living in Japan.

I am not discounting your experience, but I am just saying it is not universal.

My main issue with a lot of customer service in Japan was that if you were wanting to do something a little outside of the normal (which foreign property developers often did) it was normal to be told it was impossible to do.
It wasn't that it was impossible at all. It was just that the customer service rep didn't know what to do. Rather than admit they didn't know they'd generally say "it's impossible". Requesting to speak to supervisors or managers normally ended up with the 'impossible' becoming very possible after all.
We also constantly had issues with delivery of service within acceptable time limits. Our Japanese staff would ring and be told that no one could help for x amount of time (some ridiculous amount of time that would end up in significant loss to the company) and of course the staff would just accept it without any fuss. We'd then instruct them to call back and explain that such a timeframe was totally unacceptable and kick up a bit of fuss. The staff generally felt very uncomfortable doing it but it normally ended with much better outcomes for us. It was all just very frustrating...
Getting quality and timely service in a little town in Hokkaido was not that easy. Not sure what it's like elsewhere.

I'm not convinced that the bad service I've had was a result of me being a foreigner at all... but YMMV. I've had certain instances where I'm sure I got better than average service because I was a foreigner.

However, in certain instances, I've seen plenty of bad service. I could make a list that would go on for years, but I'll just put a few that come to mind as even being bad service from where I come from.

1. During a lunch break I went to a restaurant. Despite it being a little crowded, I got right in. Service was quick to take our order if I recall correctly. After about 50 minutes of waiting, I had to leave... literally. There was no word what-so-ever from the waitress that whole time. This was a weekday. So I got up and left and said "sorry, but see ya" as I left. I don't recall an appropriate response.

2. I called a company called Roland about one of their products that I felt was defective. I explained what was happening and the operator was convinced that I was wrong and wanted to take me through a step by step trouble-shooting process. Despite the extremely long wait to get to her in the first place, I agreed to do it. It was long, redundant, and redundant. The sound was obviously not right, but as long as there was some kind of sound, I guess it was OK by the books. I put the phone up to the sound-source to show her... and she said (bluntly) "See, it's making sound." Obviously, ticked off I said, "you're missing the point of what I want to say". And she got angry with me.

3. Landlord/Apartment Company Experiences... just too many to mention. To give you an idea, they give me a nice cup of cold iced coffee with a big smile while I wait (service that looks good on the outside), we talk, and they say they'll come to fix the current problem in a couple of weeks (whether it be no hot water, broken vents, sliding doors, etc, etc.). Then some guy comes and "fixes" it, and the problem reoccurs less than a few months later. Rinse and repeat. I've been asked "has your landlord ever charged you for repairs?", trying to reason with me once when I complained. I thought that's what rent was for.

4. I'm purposely being vague about this. Trying to get certain official documents has been a joke on a couple of occasions. It's one of those situations where you wouldn't know anything about what you need, therefore you've gone to the official place for the documents to fill out. You fill out the documents and instead of them saying "that's everything, thanks a lot", they say "I'm new here so I don't know if that's gonna cover it..., I'll give you a call if I need anything else". These kinds of documents not only cost money to obtain, but have to be done in a certain time frame to be valid.

Anyways, I'll stop there with the examples. What I seem to notice in general is a lot of these places are quick on the draw when it comes to "Sorry to keep you waiting"-like lines... but they sure don't seem to give a damn about keeping you waiting. And while the regular "I'm sorry" lines seemed obligatory a few years ago, they seem to be disappearing even when they'd be warranted these days.

However, I agree with MMM's notion that when you get bad service repeatedly (or just once if it's that bad) then it's time to stop frequenting or using that business or service. I certainly haven't bought any Roland gear since then and I don't plan on buying anything from them in the future. As for the services or products that are good (and there are quite a few that I've discovered) I'll continue to use them. I understand that sometimes mistakes or problems can happen, but good service to me means properly (which includes promptly) dealing with the problem to MY satisfaction. It's rather unfortunate, however, that some services that I've experienced are unavoidable. That's the most frustrating thing for me.

It is my opinion, however, that it can be hard for a company who has bad service to make a good product. Like I said, it's nearly impossible to have a 100% track record, so it sucks for that small percent of your customers that get a bum product when they have to deal with your crappy customer service.

Likewise, it may just be me, but I think that any store that carries certain products should be willing to help customers out when things go wrong with that product. In other words, if the store decides to carry a company's cheap products from X-country, then they should be willing to deal with that the company on behalf of the customer. I go to some stores where they are willing to deal with all aspects concerning a products warranty/their extended warranty on that product. They go as far as filling out the forms (outside of names, phone numbers, and addresses of course) with all necessary information. They've even mailed said forms for me before. Obviously that's an example of excellent service... but I think it's interesting to note that there can be such great service even when there's bad service around the corner. I might be making quite a leap, but I think that maybe the average Japanese customer is less particular than they were say 10 years ago.

My bad. I was referring to complaints made by foreigners. I could have expressed it more clearly.

No such thing. :pandasmile:
Just that my "sources" were not in English AND a blog (a countryman reporter's economic China blog from a magazine, but still), so not very presentable as evidence.

But since it was a magazine reporter and reliable (to me), in it's view I cannot dismiss "Made in China" so easily. It's a big nation and I think not so restricted culturally as the equivalent Japanese, so... basically, China=Android based things (basically crappy and sloppy, but has more range, potential and freedom for development), Japan=iPhone (proven class NOW and simply works, but less potential and freedom).