I haven't seen that many actually. In our neighborhood in Japan the area is crowded with home networks, they're all encrypted.
And when I've tried navigating in large cities (Tokyo included) and found that my stupid tablet's GPS relied on getting the ephemeris data from the internet, and never through the GPS itself, I couldn't start navigating until I connected to something.. and I spent hours trying to find an open network, unsuccessfully. Happened twice, the second time in Nagoya. No open networks. Well, Starbucks have that, but then you need to find one.
they say that Japan is simultaneously living 20 years in the past and 20 years in the future. lots of legacy devices are still being used for all manner of quirky convenience contraptions. they also live in an extremely high trust society where networks don't necessarily need to be secured
If you want a very specific example, the original nintendo DS can only connect to WEP connections, which meant that when I was there I was able to play parts of DS games that wouldn't have been accessible in the west
And when I've tried navigating in large cities (Tokyo included) and found that my stupid tablet's GPS relied on getting the ephemeris data from the internet, and never through the GPS itself, I couldn't start navigating until I connected to something.. and I spent hours trying to find an open network, unsuccessfully. Happened twice, the second time in Nagoya. No open networks. Well, Starbucks have that, but then you need to find one.