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Comment by midoridensha | Hacker News Reader

>They still use fax and telegrams quite a lot

Telegrams? Is this some kind of joke? I've never seen anything resembling a telegram here.

Faxes are still used between businesses, which is much the same as the US where they're ubiquitous in the real estate and legal industries.

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Telegrams are still commonly used in Japan to send messages of congratulations and condolence.

https://www.denpoppo.com/

https://www.ntt-east.co.jp/dmail/

Wedding and funeral ceremonies often include a segment where someone reads aloud messages that have been delivered by telegram.

This doesn't seem like a technological issue at all, unlike Fax machines. Unless I'm missing something, this is basically like the old-fashioned "singing telegrams" in the US, except without the singing part: you're just hiring a person to deliver a message in-person and read it aloud. The message isn't being transmitted over actual telegraph wires.

I remember few years back Tokyo's Covid-19 numbers plateaued because the hand-written fax system

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-japan-...

https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13373419

The UK's virus numbers did too. But because they ran out of Excel rows and didn't know it.

> Telegrams? Is this some kind of joke? I've never seen anything resembling a telegram here.

They're used for special occasions, you can even get them printed on pretty paper and put in pretty envelopes.

I didn't know that US real estate agents still use faxes. Really??? What are they sending? Floor layout?

Just guessing, but maybe signed contracts

Good point. I wonder if they fax for "round one", then use courier on bike for "round two".

most don't, they use email and signed pdfs like most people, i'm sure there are some hold outs though.

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