Here’s another quirky thing about Japan. It’s election season, and that means politicians going around in campaign vans with loudspeakers, delivering their blaring speeches to unconsenting pedestrians and open-window office workers. Sometimes they stop at train stations or other high-traffic spots to orate while handing out colorful sheets of dead trees.

These campaigns barely have websites, but apparently if they don’t inflict their noise pollution on every neighborhood at least once, 90-year-old Mr. Voter McSato feels unloved.

People think Japan is this ultra-modern place, but it’s really a country of contradictions. Like how companies still use fax machines because 100-year old Mrs. Tanaka just might want to contact them via fax.

If the mantra of US tech companies is ‘move fast and break things’, Japan Inc.’s is ‘no senior citizen left behind.’

This is the reality you have to deal with if you want votes or market share in Japan.