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I'm liberating this one from the evil empire. The original poster recently saw this one at Nagoya, evidently one of the few-ish remaining ones in service. Their post title was:
Orange backlit LCD, check! Phone card slot, check! Japan in 1982 was the future! (An endangered species spotted at Nagoya station)
More examples & angles:
https://www.google.com/search?q=classic+green+NTT+public+payphone+from+Japan&udm=2
It’s still in service? I thought that was in a museum or a private collection. Wow, that just makes it even more special.
So it was claimed, yeah.
Actually, I've read that Japan is surprisingly outdated when it comes to various tech across a number of areas, almost like they see it as a tradition worth maintaining, I'm not quite sure.
I’ve heard the same about UK too. When other countries switched to electronic library cards, UK still kept the traditional paper system.
I heard this from a friend who studied there around 2005. Was a bit of a culture shock to go back in time like that. I expect they’ve upgraded their systems now.
It's very amusing as someone from the UK reading how Luddite you think us to be! I know my fridge is a hole in the ground kept cool with ice from the nearest glacier but...
I get it about libraries, assuming you're referring to filing systems, that'll probably be a funding thing. Only once the cost is low enough would it be worth updating the system. Particularly so if that's public sector libraries.
You reference 2005 though?! Only 21 years ago & you talk about being behind the times lol!!
Just a fun little nugget I heard from someone who studied there at the time. I have no personal experience with UK libraries though.
So, any updates? When did the public libraries start having IT systems?
I'm afraid I don't use them frequently enough to put a date to that, but I can recall around 2010 my local public library at the time being fully computerised as far as I could tell.
I expect there was a very staggered roll out, partially dependant on the county & their relation to the party in power, plus the north probably getting them later overall.
I'm in Japan now and I ran into several of these ISDN phones. There is one at Sky Tree station too.
This one is from Akiba.