Question for a worldly electrician

On 4/25/2012 9:41 AM, Metspitzer wrote: ...

... One has no bearing on the other...the choices came for different reasons in different locales.

As only one example, Napoleon decreed right-hand rule in all occupied countries which follows to the day in the Low Countries, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain. Not a one of them uses US-style electric outlets.

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Hiii, Asia where? Asia is big place.

here is another site with good voltage & plug info

Japan uses outlets and switches very much like North American ones, I presume owing to the American administration following WWII, having resisted the European colonization of, oh, everywhere else. A lot of the outlets are only two-prong but apparently the three-prongs are becoming more common. Wikipedia tells us that the actual size specs are a little different but they certainly look the same.

Trivia question du jour: name another drive-on-the-left place which the US took (and retains) control of and *didn't* bother to change the road rules.

You sure the ad was set outside North America? Was there anything else that might give it away? Money? Cars? Skinny little cans of Coke or a bottle of Calpis?

Chip C

It was a TV commercial The structure looked similar to these.

Japan uses the regular NEMA 5-15 we have here. That is a legacy of the US occupation.

Across the whole country? I thought that half of it was still 50Hz AC and half 60Hz (presumably for "historical reasons"), so I'm surprised that there aren't different outlet styles for each (not that the frequency difference should matter in most cases, but there will be a few exceptions)

"Types in present use" was very informative at a glance. There seems to be less of a standard than I expected.

Parts of Japan and Korea use the american style parallel blade outlets, for sure. Not sure about anywhere else in Asia

This was an American commercial, and you are worried about its authenticity? I mean, the whole thing is a fake, probably including what ever they were advertising, so why should they try to make it right? I think I saw a small amount of that commercial, but I have no idea to what they were advertising.

Bill

For the record, I am not worried about anything. Did you read the part about never having to leave the recliner?

Can't speak about electric but it brought up driving question and here is the world chart:

I love a good cat fight, but they could have prevented the fight by installing a duplex receptacle.

OR if they had just been in the kitchen preparing dinner.

In some cases yes. In my laptop bag I have a power strip that I purchased at a Lawson's (basically a Japanese 7-11) in Tokyo when I found that the only recep in my hotel room was too far away from the bed to comfortably surf while lounging. My understanding is that in some places in Japan the power/receps may be different but I haven't been to any of them.

Hah... You can actually get Calpis here, but it's rebranded "Calpico" I can't imagine why.

nate

I have a 9 ft drop cord I keep in my laptop case.

The outlets are the same. The main difference is line frequency "half" of Japan is on 50 Hz. The other is on 60 Hz That was one of the reasons they were hurting when the Fukushima plants went offline because of the tsunami.