[registrars] Electrical power in Japan.

["Robert F. Connelly" <rconnell@psi-japan.com>]

Dear Colleagues:

For those of you who have never been in Japan before, you will need the 
know about the electrical power here:

1. The power in wall sockets in the Kanto area is nominally 100v 
50Hz.  Yokohama is in the Kanto District, which extends South and West from 
Tokyo a bit past Mount Fuji.

2. The power in Kansai (South and West of Tokyo) is 100v 60Hz.

3. The wall sockets are functionally identical to the two blade U.S.A. 
standard.

When I say "nominal", it can drop lower.  When I first arrived 29 years 
ago, it could drop to 90v or even lower.  Conditions are much better 
now.  There are very few unplanned power outages.  The system has all the 
bells and whistles that the power companies can buy -- and the consumer 
pays for them -- and then some:-(

Oh, for higher voltage equipment and appliances, it's 200v nominal.  Kanto 
is built around GE equipment and Kansai uses Westinghouse (built locally by 
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Misuses Electric.)  These alliances go back 
to the early Meiji Period (1860-1880) when Japan first opened the doors to 
foreigners other than the Dutch.  They struggled to catch up with the 
industrial world from which they had been cut off for 250 years.

Regards, BobC