Land of (in)convenience?

If you haven't been to Japan, you might associate it with being very modern and in many ways it is. However, Japan is a largely cash-based society, which can seem rather old fashioned, especially if one is coming from Canada, the country with the highest rate of debit use per transaction in the world where plastic money is accepted just about everywhere, even the dollar store. In Japan, if one want to buy groceries, clothes, a meal at a restaurant or even pay a hotel bill, one typically has to pay in cash.

There are also issues with ATMs here, such as after hours convenience charges---where "after hours" means "after 3:00"---and there are ATMs which close at times as early as 4:00 on weekdays and do not open at all on weekends. In addition, most ATMs do not accept international bank cards, so if you want to take out cash and do not have a Japanese bank account, you have to find a 7-11 (which is easy since Japan is home to 30% of all 7-11s in the world) and use their ATM or find a post office ATM (which are sometimes at train stations, but are not open all the time). Note that if you use an ATM at a 7-11, you should be aware that you are required to take out at least 10,000 ¥ ($102.89 CDN as of 2013/12/16), which is very unlucky if you happen to have a daily withdrawl limit on your bank card set at $100 CDN and forgot to change this before coming to Japan (oops).

So, on Saturday when I wanted to take out some money, it was a bit of an ordeal. First, we went to the post office near our apartment and found that it was closed. Then we went to the big post office in town which was open, but for some reason, the bank machines in the post office would not accept my PIN. I would input my PIN and the enter/confirm key would light up, but wouldn't do anything when I pressed it. At this step, the "cancel" button had disappeared so I had to wait for the machine to time out and return my card.

We thought that the first machine we tried might have been broken, so we tried another one only to get the same result. At this point, we had to run because daid had a meeting so we tried the 7-11 machine on our way (and found that it had a transaction limit that was too high for me to take out money). Eventually, I managed to get some money out by stopping at the post office ATM in the train station later, but it was still much more hassle than necessary.

The ATM by the cafeteria at daid's work.

I've had some issues getting cash in Canada before (if memory serves, finding an ATM downtown Calgary on a Sunday was lots of fun), but that was typically because I tried to use my own bank to avoid fees and even then, I could still buy things with my credit or debit cards. I've also never seen a closed ATM in Canada. I've seen buildings which contain ATMs that are locked, but in Japan there are times when the building is open and the ATM inside it is closed. For example, to the left is picture I took of the ATM outside the cafeteria at daid's work during dinner service. Across from this machine, you can put money on your meal card, but if you didn't get money earlier in the day, you're out of luck.

Although I have heard Japan referred to as the "land of convenience" due to the proliferation of convenience stores, which are indeed very convenient (in a previous post I briefly mentioned that it's possible to buy entire meals at convenience stores), in some ways things here are quite inconvenient. To a point, I can understand why some stores might not want to add credit card functions (it costs the store for each transaction) and I can understand why banks charge after hours convenience fees (everyone else does it, so why not make a bit extra off your customers). I do not understand why ATMs close when the buildings they're in are still open though. One can get inside the train station most hours of the day, but the ATM in the train station closes at 9 pm on weekdays and even earlier on weekends (hours before the last train comes in). So if you spent your last yen on beer out in Tokyo, you can't buy a snack when you get off the last train.

Another thing that seems like it should be easy to do and more convenient for customers is to leave packages at the closest post office to one's home after a failed delivery attempt. Last month, daid got a care package from his parents and we went to the post office near our apartment to pick it up. The package wasn't there and we had to walk to the main post office in town to pick it up. It's not that far of a walk from where we live, but it is the only post office where you can pick up packages in the entire city. This probably explains the giant line that seems to exist every time we've been to the post office (there's also only one window at which one can pick up packages).

Personally, I'm not sure what the purpose of having a local post office is if not to hold onto packages for you. I guess you can mail packages from there (in principle, we haven't tried), but if they can hold onto outgoing packages, it shouldn't be too difficult to hold onto incoming ones for the neighbourhood as well. If they don't hold onto outgoing packages either then there's not much point to having a post office; it would be easier to sell stamps at the grocery store or something and have a drop box for letters outside.

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Pouch can be used as underwear and PET bottle?

On an unrelated note, daid and I went out to buy some crafting supplies for a project that we're making at home. I'll post pictures of the finished result some time in the new year since we're unlikely to finish it before we take off to North America for holidays next week. However, while we were at the store, I discovered that yarn here is significantly cheaper than what I find in Canada. The selection wasn't so great, but since we shopped at a department store this isn't surprising.

We also spotted this pouch (pictured to the right). While it seems cute and somewhat practical, I feel like it cannot be used as underwear, contrary to the claim on the packaging.