It’s a pleasure to be able to get a snack and a hot coffee at Erik Nielsen International Airport again, thanks to Air North’s Black Wolf Bistro.
They even have an airside vending machine called “The Cache,” which provides travellers waiting to board a chance to grab something for the plane.
This is a nice service for Air North to offer to the passengers of stingier national airlines who don’t give you snacks and cookies on board.
The Cache offers Red Bull Peach Edition energy drinks, Fruit Compote Chia Puddings and Turkey Combo Deli Sandwiches.
In the old days, this kind of service would have involved a coffee cart with an actual human pushing it around and taking cash. The Cache, of course, is fully automated and takes credit cards.
Paying humans to push carts around airports is not economically attractive these days. There is a labour shortage in the Yukon, and one that will get worse as our population keeps aging.
We are shifting our thinking from how to create jobs for unemployed humans to how to eliminate jobs so the scarce human workers can work on the most important things.
And, in the grand spectrum of jobs, getting up at 4 a.m. to serve me a coffee in the Air North waiting room will not be high on the list.
I was recently in Japan where you get a hint of what an older society looks like.
There are 55.4 Japanese over 65 years of age for every 100 Japanese of traditional working age (20-64 years). In Canada, the equivalent is 31.7 but rising.
In Tokyo’s equivalent of YXY, the airport lounges have robots to collect the used plates and cups. They are about four feet tall and wander the lounge like the robotic Roomba vacuum cleaner you may have.
They emit soft classical music and have slowly pulsing coloured lights in muted colours, perhaps so as not to scare the humans too much.
After failing to understand Tokyo’s address system, we accidentally found ourselves in a noodle bar for busy workers. It was tucked away on a side alley and full of delivery workers grabbing a quick and cheap lunch. At the door, there was a ticket machine. First, you selected salt ramen noodles or the white-soy sauce or salt-dipping versions. Then you added options, such as a boiled egg, roasted pork, fish ball, seaweed or seasoned bamboo shoots. Next was your choice of beer, whisky and soda, or soft drink. Then you paid and received your ticket.
The humans in the kitchen quickly produced our lunch and, when we were done, we just left. No wasting a precious human’s time with paying the bill. Nor were we able to waste a human server’s time asking how salty the broth was, whether the noodles were produced on a sustainable wheat farm, or if the pork was Canadian or Japanese. (Of course, we couldn’t have done that anyway given my inability to do anything more than answer the telephone in Japanese – “moshi moshi!”).
Tokyo is also famous for its conveyor belt sushi restaurants, where a continuous stream of sushi options roll by your table. You just grab them and pay by the plate later. Some Yukon friends who visited Japan a few months ago were startled to find that their table even had drink dispensers, and were even more startled to discover after a couple glasses of lemon soda that it contained Japanese vodka.
Japanese vending machine technology is also a national phenomenon. In fact, although The Cache is an innovation by Yukon standards, visiting Japanese Northern Lights tourists undoubtedly find it primitive.
In Japan, there are drink vending machines everywhere. You can get a range of cold drinks, from Pocari Sweat (Japan’s answer to Gatorade) to a variety of cold coffee and Asian tea energy drinks.
I was surprised to discover they also have hot selections which change seasonally. From our AirBnB, there was no need to walk to a distant human-staffed café. We could just get a can of hot coffee across the street. There was a dizzying selection of teas, black coffees, milky and latte products, and sweetened options.
A baffling array of vending machines also sell sushi, sandwiches and other foods such as triangular rice balls filled with seasoned pork or pickled plum. The machines are refreshed regularly. I felt more comfortable eating at a Japanese vending machine than at certain unnamed Alaska Highway lodges.
If you visit the flagship store of Uniqlo in Tokyo’s central Ginza district, you’ll find lots of self checkouts. Somehow Uniqlo has managed to make it work. Unlike some Canadian chains, there was no struggling with barcodes, having the machine freeze until a non-existent human arrived to unlock it, or getting searched by a security guard just after having paid.
That’s the service industry. But the Japanese government hopes to go even farther. They have been investing for years in research and development on robots to help older people. This includes lifting, managing stairs, getting things off high shelves as well as detecting falls and even helping with bathing and the toilet.
With the rise of artificial intelligence and ChatGPT, researchers hope to develop companion robots. If Siri on your iPhone can tell you the Canucks scores, then why can’t a home robot talk to you about the weather?
The hype about Japanese eldercare robots is currently outpacing the reality, according to James Wright, a researcher writing in MIT Technological Review. However, the next five years may see some breakthroughs.
Of course, the Yukon is many years behind Japan in terms of aging. The Yukon government has been aggressively promoting the Temporary Foreign Worker program to bring in lower-skilled workers, usually young, to augment the Yukon labour force.
But eventually, the Yukon may get a little Japanese. By the time it does, I hope the Japanese have put some research funding into robotic driveway shoveling robots.
Keith Halliday is a Yukon economist and the winner of the 2022 Canadian Community Newspaper Award for Outstanding Columnist. His most recent book Moonshadows, a Yukon-noir thriller, is available in Yukon bookstores.
