The Japanese were always the first adopters of wizbang techology, because they have a homogenous society: you steer a couple sheep and flock follows. "the mob has spoken, indeed". If you visit Japan, less than an hour outside of every major city, you run into Europe circa 1947 complete with hedgerows... and a seemingly endless expanse of stinky 2 cycle micro trucks driven on dirt roads by farmers with 4 whole acres of land to cultivate... by hand. Everybody thinks of Japan as "modern" and "high tech", but their food still comes from "a guy" digging in dirt for 12 hours/day.
MagLev, Magnetically levitated trains have captured the Japanese imagination since the 1970's. At the Museum of Emerging Science in Tokyo, the have a large, working MagLev model you can drive. Speed it up through the little Japanese countryside, Slow it down and stop at the little stations. When it comes by, you can stick a pencil under it and it will fly right over, because it is floating 3/8" above the tracks.
One time when I was at the museum, some foreign, giggling girls grabbed the MagLev model while it was sailing by and picked it up to examine it more closely. Seeing no visible means of support they set it back on the tracks... it went for about 3 inches, then clunk, fell on its side, dead. The foreign giggling girls looked around then bolted.
I flagged down one of the college students that worked at the museum and pointed at the crashed MagLev. Her constant, pasted on smile momentarily turned to a frown, then I watched a lightbulb go off in her head and she hurried off. About a minute later she comes back wearing insulated gloves, face shield, carrying a thermos of Liquid N2 and says "Help me?" "This is going to be good", I remember thinking.
The gloved up girl ignores the train wreck for now, but goes right to the little train station. One of the little benches was a handle or something and the next thing I know she is handing me the 2 ft X 3 ft board the station is mounted to with little people and trees glued to it and underneath, there were tracks. Tracks like the trains my dad had... when he was a kid... in 1947.
She goes to the throttle, gives it full throttle and waits. About 10 seconds later an electric model train (Confirmed!, just like the one my dad had, in 1947) pulls into the hole under the station and she stops it. The train has one car. On the car is an insulated, superconducting magnet. She pours some of the liquid nitrogen into a fill hole in the magnet until full and points at me to to put the station back on and retrieves the crashed MagLev.
Carefully feeling around to position the MagLev back over the Magnet and "boing!" the MagLev car pops to 1/2" above the station surface. She gives it throttle and the MagLev is Back! silently accelerating out of the city and into the model's countryside.
I tell people this story because it is the perfect allegory for Japan as a whole. They try very hard to make it look VERY high tech on the outside, but only about 1" below the surface, it is still 1947.
