Subject: Re: [FFML][Ranma][Fanfic] Whispers of the Wicked Past, chapter 1
From: "Miko" <nausicaa@sprynet.com>
Date: 9/20/1998, 12:42 PM
To:


-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Cornish <jeffreyc@sprynet.com>
To: fanfic@fanfic.com <fanfic@fanfic.com>
Date: Sunday, September 20, 1998 10:40 PM
Subject: RE: [FFML][Ranma][Fanfic] Whispers of the Wicked Past, chapter
1




In the hallway, Akane finds Nabiki's number and dials it carefully.
The phone burrs and hums until it switches to an answering machine:
"Tendo
Nabiki here. I'm not in right now but if you have any important
business to
discuss with me, leave a message after the beep."
     It's good to hear her sister's voice - even if it is on a
machine.
     "Hi Nabiki," Akane greets awkawardly, unsure of the answering
machine. "It's Akane here. I just wanted to talk to you about...
something
important and also to see how you're doing.  Try and phone back,
tonight.
See you." Putting the phone down, she sighs impatiently. Now she has to
wait for Nabiki to ring back. She may as well look through some old
history
books to see if there's anything to do with that strange headline...


It comes to my mind that the Japanese have an aversion to answering
machines.  I have a friend who works for a company that makes
voice-mail
systems.  When they presented their product to the board of directors
of a
major company the CEO was asked to record a greeting the rest of the
board
broke up with nervous laughter.  After all the CEO was about to talk to
a
_machine_.


This is a true story -- apparently in Japan talking to inanimate
objects, even an answering machine or voice mail system, means that
you're crazy.  It's a strong enough belief that voice mail systems are
almost unknown over there still.  The voice mail company in question
(Active Voice) had to develop a special feature for their product that
would allow a person to speak with a live operator and have the
conversation recorded for someone's voice mail box.  Essentially, you're
leaving a message for the person you're trying to reach, but you get to
speak to a real person rather than an object.  They've sold a lot of
their systems in Japan since then, but in almost every case it's only
this one feature that gets used.  Honest!

Just a little oddball Japanese trivia, based on the story our friend
told us.  Can anyone confirm or deny whether any Japanese use answering
machines???  ^_^  (Probably by private mail -- this is really spam after
all).

Cultural stuff like this is fun.  I read some other stories in a book
called "From Bonsai to Levis" by George Fields.  One of them involved
Betty Crocker instant cake mixes, which, to my knowledge, (the book was
written about 1982) are still not sold in Japan.  The story was, cakes
were popular in Japan, but were almost always store bought.  General
Mills wanted to enter the Japanese market, and thought their cake mixes
would be a great product to start with.  Their first hurdle was that
most Japanese kitchens, at the time, did not have ovens, so they came up
with a cake mix that could be cooked in a rice cooker.  The product was
a spectacular failure.  As it turned out, Japanese housewives were
afraid to put anything so foreign in their rice cookers.  The purity of
rice was such a big deal that, while people knew intellectually that
they could clean the rice cooker afterwards, they still worried that
their rice might be discolored or might absorb flavors from the cake,
and therefore wouldn't risk it by buying a cake mix.  ^_^

I don't know how much things have changed.  Belldandy bakes cakes on
occasion, doesn't she?  Is this because it's common these days in Japan
for someone to bake a cake at home, or is it specifically because she's
a foreigner that she does this?


Miko

Miko <nausicaa@sprynet.com>