No sense? No problem. But a hell of a lot of cents.

Here's a little cultural corner for ya here on this fine fine fine rainy day. It's time to drops some knowledge, son. Okay nay it's not raining anymore.

I wanna just start by saying, Japan is WEIRD. I think that is pretty much internationally known at this point, but I may never run out of weird points to mention about Japan. I am confused and surprised just about everyday. It's one thing that is so interesting about this country. So often you find yourself asking yourself "Why?? Why that?? Why??" Many things in Japan make sense only because things in Japan consistently don't make sense, and you just see things and just think "Oh, that doesn't make sense, well that wouldn't make sense." So here we go.


Money in Japan is like, wtf

You know for what research would allege is a money saving society*, Japan sure does make such a task incredibly difficult. That is unless you prefer to shun conventional banks or wallets and would rather opt to save your money under your local drink machine, in the crevices of the interior of your vehicle, or a bowl on your room divider for things you don't otherwise have any idea what to do with. Yes, folks, I'm talking about coins. The COINS THE COINS. WHY JAPAN WHYY???

There's a simple misstep which takes us all down to China town. Not too far from here but rather an annoying trip to make more than anything. The largest coin in Japan is worth FIVE FRIGGIN DOLLARS. Not only that, but the smallest bill in Japan is TEN FRIGGIN DOLLARS. Well you guessed it, the smallest coin is equivalent to a penny. Thus, FML. Coins in Japan are a painfully annoying fact of life.

Now I know what you might be sitting there thinking, yup I do. You're thinking Yeah we have pennies and they're annoying but hell nobody carries cash anymore so how does Mr. Complainypants have any kind of point here? Wellllll think again genius in a bottle, I'll tell you what rubs my brain the wrong way, and that's the fact that PEOPLE DON'T USE DEBIT OR CREDIT CARDS HERE.

HUH??? But Sensei, didn't you know that Japan is one of the most advanced societies on God's green Earth?? Well you know what, you're right about that. It is one of the most high tech societies there is, but to my surprise, Japan actually picks and chooses convenient technologies to use, ones that we understand as modern facts of life. It has stuff we've never seen before that it considers normal, and stuff we've had since the ice age that they just pass on. However, my friend, is for another blog post altogether and a tangent in this one.

Japan is a cash based society, and that doesn't seem to be changing with even "deliberate" speed. And that doesn't mean just in bars. Forget it, if you come to Japan bring a big tough wallet and a tight fitting belt to hold your pants up as you lug boatloads of change for reasons beyond the grasp of mere lay like ourselves. If you ever wanna get an idea of how much that sucks, get 20 quarters and stack them up. Then imagine they're just a tiny bit bigger. Realize that in Japan you have 100 dollars sitting there instead of 5 dollars. Now keep up with all the change rendered from those things cause a dollar bill is also a coin. Then there's 50 cent, 10 cent, 5 cent, and 1 cent coins. No quarters, and the dimes are huge. You quickly find yourself leaving bread crumbs of money everywhere you go. Of course you get all of it back because it would strongly violate a Japanese conscience  to keep or use anything they even have a suspicion isn't theirs. Any left over talents they may have from the days of ninja mercenaries are now used to track people down and give them back their money or items they dropped.

So what about cards? I mean come on, people don't just........what do people do anyways to get money?? I wasn't born before this archaic vestige you call "cash" became so.  Well people do use cards, but only generally at ATMs, to get money out. IE, you can't pay for anything with them. Nobody told me that shit actually. I often tried to pay with it when I first got here. I often gave people my card, and they would just look at me and hand it back to me timidly like ummm....this is a cash card sooo...... They wouldn't say that of course because English isn't exactly widely spoken, but that was the obvious sentiment. People are so polite here though, they would even sometimes try to use it knowing full well it wouldn't work.

Little pic of the coinz, minus a 500yen($5) coin because those things get broken so quickly.

Insofar as people don't use cards, they don't use them for online payments either. In fact, when you order something online, you go pay at a convenience store. Convenience stores are a whole other blog as well, they're indispensable in Japan. Seven-eleven picks up the slack where all of Japan decides to deliberately inconvenience itself.

So to be fair, there does exist the capacity to use cards in spots. Some people actually have credit cards, but I almost never see people use them. In fact, to my knowledge, there aren't debit cards either. Now maybe they exist but I just haven't noticed or inquired far enough, but the point overall still stands - that people use cash. Many places won't accept card period, and only larger places like shopping malls and grocery stores even have to potential to do so.

So in the end, how you supposed to save moneys like that bro? Smallest bill is ten dollars and nobody uses electronic/plastic payment. Everyone uses cash for everything and a much larger proportion of their "cash" is pesky easy to lose coins. You got metal flying everywhere and some politician should run on quitting that. The GDP would probably spike and lead Japan to the promise land!......Oh. What a weird thing to lead you to the promise land, you say? That doesn't make any sense, you say? Well that wouldn't make any sense. Peace.


*(Statistically countries whose native language has no future tense tend to save more money than their future tense language counterparts - saw it on NPR son!)