Thursday, February 26, 2009

ATMs and that

The Japanese don’t like change. They’re terrified of it. You can see it in their eyes when someone suggests a new teaching plan or stops wearing a tie to work (both me). Japan is still running things like they did in the 1950s; a half century of Happy Days reruns without the happy part. The hierarchy of offices is still based around who has worked there the longest, with no attempt to rearrange the pecking order for the young rookie with a headful of new ideas. In order to be the boss, one must simply wait it out, until the superiors have died or retired, and then and ONLY then will you be able to pitch that proposal. And, if it is even the slightest bit radical, it wills probably we rejected anyway.

Gender relations are also firmly cemented in another decade. Japanese offices are extremely male-centric. Women employees get less holiday, don’t get paid for overtime and at the age of 30, receive sizeable pay cut in their salary. This is because of the unwritten fact that women are supposed to be at home making the babies by their third decade, and those at work obviously don’t need to be earning the big bucks to support the family. By contrast, 30 year old men receive a pay rise for the same reason; to keep the wee wife and kids happy. Women were not allowed to vote until 1945; half a century after New Zealand. An Equal Employment Opportunity Law was created in 1985 (twenty years after the rest of the world), but there are still less Japanese women in legislative positions than most Muslim countries.

Apparently most female college graduates stay out of the corporate world, and instead aim for jobs as air stewardesses. Even these are incredibly hard to get, with over 50 applicants applying for each job. This is supposedly the ‘glamorous’ lifestyle for a Japanese woman, much like a model or actress would be in the western world. If Sex & the City was set in Japan, Samantha would be an air stewardess. So would Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte.

The Japanese also refuse to partake in daylight saving. A when they tried to introduce it in the 1950s, the population freaked out and thought that it was some new age scheme to make them work longer hours. As a result, the night descends upon Hokkaido around 3.30pm during the winter, and I die a little inside.

However, my main qualm and issue with the Japanese conservatism (for the moment) is their inability to move beyond a cash based society. If you have a credit card in Japan, it is probably gathering dust. They are not used. Ever. Even worse is the matter of debit cards, or lack thereof. Japan does not believe allowing money to change hands electronically, and thus, any attempt at shopping, fine dining or in fact any good old fashioned consumerism must be done through the medium of cold, hard cash. However, my favourite part about the whole system is the ATMs; the only medium for getting money from the account in the hand. ATMs are scare, and can be found in the occasional convenience store, if you live in a city. Small towns such as mine, have one or two, and they are usually hidden away down a dark alley behind the post office.

Last Saturday, a friend and I were sipping beer and sharing travel tips, gearing up for a fun night out on the town with the other gaijin. Stupidly, we were so involved with our conversation that we lost track of the time, and at 6.30pm, decided to get out some cash for the evening ahead. This is where we learnt our first lesson about Japanese cash flow; ATMs close at 6pm during the weekend and that, as they say, is that. There is no way of getting cash until the next morning through any medium. Any attempt to use a credit card at a bar will result in an ‘are you fucking serious’ expression and a shake of the head. And so, we were forced to scrape together the last of our coins, convince the barman to let us put our drinks on a tab and went home at 9pm with our tails between our legs.

And so begins the obligatory list of hypothetical situations; what if you knock over a wine display at the liquor store on your way to your friend’s birthday, with the shop keeper demanding all the cash in your wallet, which was meant to take care of the present, the subway and of course the alcohol now lying in pieces on the floor? What if it’s your round at the bar and after all your friends have left at 3am, you realize you’re apartment is on the other side of the city and you haven’t got enough taxi money? Or suppose you need an emergency operation on your foot to remove a tumour and have to pay for it with the money for the next morning’s train? The latter is a real life situation which happened to me two weeks ago, and I was only saved by the generosity of my neighbouring JET.

The alternative of course, is to forgo the banks altogether. After all, their 0.5% interest rate, the logical situation seems to be to stuff your money into a hole in your mattress. For the country with the world’s second biggest economy, there’s definitely something missing.

1 comment:

  1. This is hilarious!! And reminds me of certain aspects of life in Vietnam. They all use cash too, which is especially insane with the currency. And people get really pissy when you don't have the exact change - even when it's quite close (cost: 8000 dong, you hand over: 10,000 dong). Ridiculous!!

    But NZ does have one of the highest ATM usage rates in the world, so anywhere is going to seem inconvenient to us spoilt brats...

    ReplyDelete