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Originally Posted by CoolNard
Yup. Thanks for the information, though, GoNative and MMM. I think this thread is another great outlet for gaining information, as well. But one can't help wondering why places in Japan can be so different, especially with regards to technology - which happens to be daily usage.
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I know of places in the US where they don't even have cable television, and there are certainly rural places where no one uses credit cards, so I think it is hard to talk about the countries as a whole in such sweeping terms.
In terms of other tech, like public transportation, Japan is decades ahead of the US. We have been talking about bullet trains, but now interstate train travel shares lines with freight trains, and where in Japan schedules are reliable down to the minute, delays are common on American interstate trains, sometimes hours late.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GoNative
Obviously rural Hokkaido, or probably anywhere rural Japan, is going to be very different to major cities like Osaka and Tokyo. I can only comment from a rural Japan perspective as I've never lived in the big citites.
The credit card comment is based on my experience here that it's very difficult to find many places, including some of the large supermarkets, that accept credit cards (beyond maybe ones they distribute themselves). Before I left Australia it had basically turned into a society where few people carried cash anymore. Pretty much all money transactions could be done by credit or debit cards. All bills could be done by internet banking (I've only just recently managed to get some of our bills here paid by internet banking). People really just didn't carry much cash anymore. Here, as you know, it's hardly unusual to see people walking around with large amounts of cash. Many employers still pay in cash (something practically unheard of in Australia these days). Overall Japan is much more of a cash based society from my experience.
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Japan is surely a cash-based culture. People in Japan confidently walk around with the equivalent of thousands of US dollars, where I feel most Americans are nervous walking around with more than a couple hundred dollars. (I rarely take out more than 40 or 60 dollars from the ATM.)
This is an issue of the technology reflecting society, and isn't necessarily "behind".