super parking garages

as usual, i was watching my daily 10 minutes of tv in the morning. today they talked about new-age parking lots, and i have to give them credit -- they sound pretty cool.

first, it's valet. duh.

second, it's 1000 yen to start, and 300 yen per 30 minutes.

let's say you're shopping in the mall. you buy something. you buy a lot of stuff let's say. carrying it around the rest of the afternoon is going to be a pain, yes? instead of carrying it around, your bags can be passed along to the parking service, and one of the valets will bring your bags to your car for you. this is included in the price of your parking.

next, say you buy cake or something that requires refrigeration. they will keep your items in a fridge until you're ready to leave.

as you're paying for parking at a machine, if you have kids, a clown will sneak up on you out of nowhere to entertain your kids for you.

when you're ready to leave, you walk up to one of these stations that has a large barcode (hard to describe.. not the skinny bar, fat bar types you see in the States, but instead, it's square and looks like some sort of decorder with all these black blobs). some phones (like my kick-ass one) have built-in barcode readers. soo, hold up your phone to the barcode, tell your phone to read it, and on your phone, you'll see a map pop up of that parking lot, telling you how to get to your car. nuts.

apparently, they have the garage also divided into female and male drivers. the female spots are slightly wider than the male ones, because apparently, we don't know how to pull out of a parking spot (i slightly took offense at that one).

at the end of the segment, the commentators said something to the effect of "with the advent of these parking garages, i guess we'll see less fathers at the mall." haha... stupid, but i think it's a fair statement.

the whole time i sat there watching this, i couldn't stop shaking my head, partly because i thought, "this is soooo japanese." partly because i was fascinated that they seemed to have thought of everything. and partly because a little part of me was dying inside, wondering how japanese people can think it's ingenious to come up with the ultimate parking garage, and still fail to realize that hey, insulation in your home ain't a bad idea after all.