That I didn't know, thank you! That sounds like it could be messy though, I'd hate to move across the country and have to replace all my electronics lol
I beleive service voltage is unified at ~ 100V. Most electronics would be fine, as most electronics have a conversion to DC somewhere and that's unlikely to fail with a 20% difference in frequency. AC driven motors might not like to be moved, but might be OK given the domestic reality (unintended protectionism for stand mixers!). Line frequency clocks probably aren't sold in Japan or need jumpers/switches or would need to be replaced when crossing the frequency border.
Nearly all electronics manufactured today are capable of being powered (or are provided with power supplies that rectify to DC) between 110-240v at 50 to 60 hertz for that reason!
That way the variances across the globe don’t matter too much.
You still don’t want to take your expensive 110v hair straightener to the UK without a step down converter though as my wife found out the hard way!
It is a mess. Nowadays all devices support both frequencies, but I have heard from Japanese colleagues that back in the day if you moved accross the frequency boundary, you needed to replace your appliances. Maybe that's one of the reasons why Japan has a huge second hard market?
But the real problem came after the Tohoku earthquake of 2011, when several powerplants in the Eastern half of the country went offline, and they couldn't not transfer enough power from the Western half. There are a few conversion stations, but their capacity was not enough, and as such the Eastern half endured long black-outs even though the country had enough surplus power generation capacity.
