You wouldn’t think that, if you were going to divide Japan into two pieces, that it’d be by “Eastern” and “Western”.
Doing further searches, the dividing line between east and west in Japan is the central mountain range of Honshu. The division is historical and political. The division is now in food, dialects, and customs.
seems to make sense, tho …
what I did not find info on (the 3 min. I googled) is what voltage they are using? … German transformers seem to be indicative of 2x0 volts, the part with US-transformers seems to point towards 110 volts … or were they always 110v?
which triggered another CVOM … - … Country - Voltage - Oddity - Memory:
Brasil, they have 127v and 220v (and quite often both curcuits and appliances) in one household
here a bit of google-AI:
Brasil does not have a single national standard for electricity voltage. Instead, it operates on a dual-voltage system where the standard is either 127V or 220V, depending on the region or city.
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Standard Voltages: 127V and 220V are both in common use.
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Frequency: The standard frequency nationwide is 60 Hz.
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Regional Variations:
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127V (often referred to as 110V): Generally used in the Southeast (e.g., Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo), Midwest, and North regions.
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220V: Predominant in the Northeast, the South, and the federal capital, Brasília.
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Dual Voltage: Many hotels and newer buildings may offer both voltages, often with 220V outlets clearly marked in red or with labels.
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Oh, after first reading about the 50/60 Hz divide in Japan, I thought that it was only between different islands. But according to the graph @Al128 posted above, the division occurred also on the main island, which must be an ongoing hassle.
ETA: I mean, Japan must have twice the amount of transformers normally needed, from the tiniest phone charger to the big ass ones for the main grid.
I’m really surprised that Japan’s electrical grid wasn’t so destroyed by August 1945 that the occupying Americans didn’t impose the US standard for rebuilding.
On review, I’m quite aware that low power devices like phones or other household devices can be designed tolerant enough to handle both frequencies, but that doesn’t apply to the really big and expensive transformers for the general power supply.
…Huh, why was I picturing Japan as being more north-south aligned than that?
Picturing the map of Japan, you approximately can draw a line at 45° through it, so there’s no clear north-south nor east-west divide.
Blame Mercator with the USA in the middle of the map – Europe does it too. The closer to the corners, the more the diagonals are righted up (or down, in the Southern Hemisphere, say New Zealand in a map with Europe in the middle). A Mercator map with China in the middle would show Japan closer to what it actually looks like.
Obligatory link to xkcd map projections, though he did not draw Japan very accurately in any of them.
Actually, for all its faults, that’s the one kind of distortion the Mercator map doesn’t have. It’s in avoiding that one particular distortion that it picks up all of its other distortions.
the southern hemisphere is nearly 81% made up of oceans
and only 32% of the planet’s landmass is on the southern hemisphere.
We get shortchanged on everything.
Another revelation I just gleaned from the History of Rock in 500 Songs podcast.
When Little Richard signed to a major label first he had to go to Hollywood to record his first songs for them, which ended up including Long Tall Sally and Tutti Frutti. But he had commitments to play several shows in small venues back in the east and south at the same time, and unlike many musos he didn’t want to get a reputation as a no-show. What do to, what to do!
So he and his management hired a Little Richard impersonator to do the shows for him - similar stature, pompadour hairstyle etc. That person hit the stage in those shows with the introduction “And now, the hardest-working man in show business - Little Richard!”.
Yes, it was James Brown.
Kim Il Sung, the founder of North Korea and grandfather of the current dictator, had a large tumor on the back of his neck, which developed in the 1970s. As you might imagine, this was rarely photographed, and was never discussed within his country.
It was described as a calcium deposit, but deemed too close to his spinal column and brain for surgery.
We got a window prompting you to upgrade to a Pro account instead of an image.
Here’s one:
It’s called Kim IL Boil
Another one from that podcast. Johnny Cash was christened as J. D. Cash because his parents couldn’t agree on given names. It wasn’t until he went into the Airforce he took the name John as they insisted he must have an actual name. Johnny came later.
His job in the Airforce in Germany was to decrypt intercepts of Russian military chatter, as a consequence of which he was the first American to hear of the death of Stalin!
Eh, not quite. He may have been in the transcription loop but it’s an overstatement to say he was “the first to hear the news.”