It rained today, and rainy days make me especially reluctant to go out.
With several days' worth of blog entries piling up as well, I spent most of my time catching up on the record.
Generating words by hand really is rather “inefficient.” I spent several hours producing fewer than a few thousand words, and they still read like a running log with no sparkle whatsoever. Yet humans are afraid of training AI until it can imitate and generate their own writing, at which point humans will no longer know what else they are supposed to do.
What if the value and purpose of being human lie in expressing one's own point of view, emotions and reflections?
Machine thought and human thought can never be exactly the same, can they?
Since I stayed in the dormitory all day, I could simply wait for my parcels to arrive.
On my second day in Japan, I had already begun using Amazon Japan, and I was astonished by its speed. Even without a Prime membership, I could still get next-day delivery.
The day after the item arrived, I opened it in eager anticipation and immediately felt that its quality was completely beyond what I could accept. I spent ten minutes wondering whether to return it or force myself to keep it.
If I sent it back, how was I supposed to print the label without a printer?
Ten minutes later, because I did not want to create rubbish I would have to deal with when returning to Germany, I made up my mind. To hell with it: if I did not like it, I was returning it.
The return process turned out to be incredibly simple. I did not even have to print a label. I packed the item, pressed the return button, and Amazon sent me a return QR code. All I had to do was take it to any Lawson and the return was done.
It reminded me of Shopee's service in Taiwan.
Germany has introduced similar return systems, but return points there are nowhere near as dense as in Japan or Taiwan. Sometimes you have to make a special trip a long way out, and collection points are often not open twenty-four hours, so you have to squeeze yourself in before they close. On weekends, and especially Sundays, they are often closed altogether.
When online shopping is this convenient, your fingers begin to itch, so I bought a few more odds and ends.
I placed the order on Saturday, and Amazon actually tried to entice me into joining Prime by promising that it could arrive the very next day, on Sunday.
I thought: Come on. It is after ten on Saturday night. If I order now, can it really arrive tomorrow?
Out of curiosity, I clicked on the thirty-day trial, which I could cancel at any time. After the trial, membership would cost 600 yen. That startled me all over again.
Six hundred yen?!
Surely I had not read that correctly?!
In Germany it costs almost ten euros a month at the very least!
For 600 yen, of course I was signing up! I was going to shop online for all it was worth!
To my surprise, the dispatch notifications began pinging first thing this morning, and by evening the orders had actually arrived!
Apart from one parcel sent by Kuroneko, whose courier did not put it in the parcel locker (did it have to be handed to me in person??), the things I ordered last night really did arrive in less than twenty-four hours.
Delighted as I was, a cold sweat broke out down my back.
It was the weekend!
It was Sunday!
In this country that never seems to rest, turning around the clock, how much human blood and sweat lies behind all this convenience?
Then the German chancellor says Germany's present decline is because Germans are too lazy and work too few hours.
Please. Is this kind of ceaseless, axle-spinning way of working something Germans could accept?
When I enter so many Japanese shops and restaurants, fully automated ordering machines and self-checkouts are already the norm, supplemented by robots that will only become more mature and sophisticated.
German chancellor, are you certain that returning to the old road of extremely long human working hours is the right direction?
Is this how human beings are meant to be consumed?
Are we living in ancient times, when everything has to be made by hand from scratch?
This is why I say that many German YouTubers who lavish praise on China are either “ignorant” or “contemptuous of China.”
Advanced automation and unbelievable convenience are everyday realities across many, many East Asian countries.
Why do I so rarely see German YouTubers rhapsodising over Japan's self-service ordering machines and convenient logistics?
(And when it comes to efficiency, I think Amazon Japan's logistics are even better than Taiwan's Shopee.)
Or is it simply that, because Japan belongs to the developed world, these services no longer seem so astonishing? If that is not an “insult to China,” then what is? It is living proof that these people had always imagined China to be very backward.
All right.
Tomorrow I report to language school.
Time to begin a new life.
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