One of the key issues of Japanese software is that most companies don't rethink problems and …

> but your credit card is "Ella Smith", the "people" won't accept it and their web app does weird things Ha. I live on street with a long but not that long name (18 chars for what it worth). I recently encountered a site what didn't want to accept my address because the full address was way too long . > credit card actually is written as SMITH ELLAMARY And here I am who specifically writes BANK NAME in the CARDHOLDER input instead of card holders name where I can.

One thing that trips up even native Japanese speakers is the windows IME. It likes to change characters like spaces, dashes, alphabet letters and numbers to roman ones when you intend them to be Japanese "full-width" characters. In our office there, our address was often rejected because the final part describing the floor number should be "−４Ｆ" would come out of the IME as something like "-4F", "−４F", "-４Ｆ" (yes that last one is wrong). The MacOS IME is much easier to use, and was the singular excellent use of the MacBook touch bar. It lets you pick the correct character, pick autocomplete suggestions, and convert between full-width, half-width, katakana, hiragana, etc.

>Recently while visiting Japan, I tried to get a eSIM card... >... Days and days of problems, hours on the phone. ... >... I truly thought I was going to go insane. I didn't leave the hotel for 12 hours All this just because you just had to try to use a US-spec iPhone 14 Pro instead of getting a phone with a real SIM slot. eSim isn't really a thing in Japan yet, or anywhere outside the US, so support is iffy. Dual-SIM phones, OTOH, are normal and common in Asia. You could have saved a ton of time by just buying a 30-day SIM card at the airport like everyone else. The first time I went to Japan, I just bought a SoftBank SIM card at 7Eleven, popped it into my phone, followed the procedure in the instructions, and within an hour I was set. For people with iPhone 14 Pro phones from the US, the solution is really simple: just use international roaming. If you can afford the top-spec iPhone, y…