So the new head of Starbucks Japan has made a threat promise to open 100 stores per year for an unspecified number of years, up from the current 624 outlets. This is all well and good, except for one thing-Starbucks in Japan doesn’t offer any wireless internet service! While I suppose wifi access in Japan must be better than it was a few years ago, after living in Taiwan-a country where every cafe, KFC and subway station has free and open wifi connections-for most of the past year it seems rather dreadfully difficult to get online with a portable computer when traveling in this country.
I moved into a new apartment in Kyoto on Friday, about a two minute walk from the Sanjo Keihan train station and five minutes walk from downtown Kyoto, the edge of which can be thought of as the Sanjo Bridge, which in the days of the Samurai was the designated location for the beheading of the most heinous of criminals (such as Christians). Being Kyoto, this former killing ground is of course marked by a sign, but more people probably know it for the adjacent Starbucks. (pictured below)
Living so near to downown I assumed that I would be able to walk into any number of establishments with my laptop, once again able to run off battery sans AC adapter thanks to my clever repairs, only two days before my departure, and naturally this Starbucks was the first place I tried.
To my surprise, Starbucks Japan offers no kind of wifi service whatsoever! Neither does Dutour, a Japan-based cafe chain with a large presence in Taiwan. The menu is basically the same, but of course in Taiwan you always see a few patrons tapping away on their keyboards thanks to the free internet.
I ended up strolling up and down Kawaramachi and the immediate environs with my open laptop, Netstumbler running, in search of an internet connection that I could glom onto. In fact, there were plenty of connections- easily dozens. But all of them were corporate networks, for internal business use and were correctly encrypted to restrict access from non-authorized users. I did find one eventually, weak but slightly usable for a few minutes at a time, between service interruptions-accessible while sitting on a bench near Sanjo Kohashi (pictured right). After about fifteen minutes of highly frustrating internet use it started to rain, and with no options left I sprinted under a store canopy with my laptop tucked under my right arm, stowed it in my laptop carrying-case-backpack, and scurried through the rain back to my apartment.
After getting back I took the laptop out and turned it on in my new room for the first time, thinking I might watch a movie from my narrow yellow binder of DVDs, and immediately was hit with a message from Windows saying that it had connected to an unprotected wireless network. The wireless AP had the SSID “YBBUSER,” telling me that it must have been provided for a user of the Yahoo Broadband ADSL service popular in Japan.
Happy ending: I was able to download the latest episode of Doctor Who in under 30 minutes via Bittorrent. Seeing **spoilers removed**meet for the first time was excellent.
Lessons learned: Partly because all Japanese people can check their email from their cell phones free wifi is more difficult to find than in most, if not all other highly developed countries.
Solution: Starbucks can shell out the ￥10,000 for a decent wireless router and ￥4000/month for DSL service in addition to the millions of yen they’ll need to spend on those hundreds of planned new stores.
