This is the first news about Americans doing something smart in a little while. Great job!

Remember when we used to talk to the producers of the used panties?

We probably don’t have the workforce to replace since we won’t open up to immigration lol

Methinks you are romanticizing a culture you don’t live in by only seeing the positives you like.

That’s kind of an insulting assumption as I’m Japanese and live in Japan. So while I may have a biased opinion, I wouldn’t say it’s romantisizing.

In fact, I’d say you’re the one that seems to be making assumptions based on snippets of our culture that you see on the internet. The weird vending machines that sell letters from your pretend grandma to used panties aren’t found everywhere you go — they’re in specific locations for the novelty.

Also having regular vending machines for drinks and food doesn’t exactly contradict my point. The vending machines are more for the customers’ convenience. They’re not installed specifically for removing human contact. Yes, we lose human contact as a result, but it’s a tradeoff to better serve customers whereas most companies that deploy AI support agents probably do so to save a buck.

Sorry about the rant.

It might actually be China. All the robots I see here are the one with the cat face and I’m pretty sure that’s where they come from. We don have remote control robot cafes where people with physical/mental disabilities to serve you using avatar bots which is cool!

Japanese people tend to make a big deal out of the “human touch,” especially when it comes to service, so I can see how companies aren’t jumping on to the hype. We’re also pretty slow to adopt change.

Oh and maybe the shit exchange rate makes it expensive to use the service as everything is pretty much foreign tech.