In Japan's businesses and bureaucracies, in home offices and hulking companies, the fax machine is thriving.
Yes, the clunky device has fallen out of favor in much of the world, a refuge for dust bunnies and stray cover sheets. But it is humming here.
Japanese still fax party invitations, bank documents and shopping orders. Business people call the fax a required communications tool, used for vital messages, often in place of email. In the early hours of last year's nuclear crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 plant, operators informed the government of an emergency seawater injection by dialing up Tokyo and sending a fax.