Japan, the Cash Based Society
Japan is an extremely cash-based society. Although credit cards have gotten more popular with consumers over the past couple of decades, people here are generally more comfortable dealing with cash, and often carry a lot of it. When my wife goes shopping in the U.S she brings a lot of money, and once she managed to lose her purse with more than $1000 in it, something that most folks could not imagine doing. (Happily, she got it back safely, cash included, thanks to an honest man who turned it into the police.) The Japanese sentiment that cash is kamisama (God) is expressed in the tendency for households to keep all their savings in normal accounts paying around 0.05% interest rather than stocks, and I just realized that I don't know a single Japanese person who owns any stocks in a public company. In 2006, singer Keiko Fuji (who is the mother of JPOP star Hikaru Udata) tried to board a plane from New York to Las Vegas with $420,000 in her carry-on luggage. The authorities promptly confiscated it, sure that anyone with that kind of cash must have been involved in some illicit drug deal. It appears, however, that the former star just liked carrying around lots of money when she went to Vegas since, you know, banks are such a trouble to deal with and everything. After several years, no evidence has been found to show that the singer had been involved in any wrongdoing, and happily, the money is scheduled to be returned to her soon.
Most Japanese households keep their savings in low-interest cash accounts
posted by Peter in Japan at 8:20 PM
7 Comments:
Sound like it'd be nice to have cash. But part of the problem with Japan now is that people horde their cash, don't spend it, never doing anything useful with it, and leaving it in the accounts where the politicians nick at it to build stupid things like a hot springs hotel on the top of a mountain that no one will use, for the purposes of "public economic stimulation." Frustrating.
1:46 AM
Wow, hmmm... the Rightist Socialist Party of Japan, maybe? This would/will be pretty hard for me, considering the fact I've grown accustomed to using my Debit card for all purchases over five bucks(and I withdraw about 40 dollars per week just for smaller stuff). Well, at least they aren't wasting money.
4:54 PM
I hope your readers don't think your numeracy skills suck, and you really meant 5% interest instead of 0.05%. Because when I first found out how little Japanese banks pay, that's what I thought. I couldn't believe how low the rate was!
On the other hand, there are rarely monthly fees. I think if you compare, North American banks probably pay negative interest to a lot of their customers! That is, the monthly service charge is larger than the interest paid.
Also, the photo you've chosen is a bit natsukashii -- only in Japan have I seen people routinely count bills like that!
11:54 PM
Greg, no, I checked my local bank's rate before the post. 0.05%! As in, half of .1%, or 1/20 of 1%, which would suck anyway. My wife is happy when she can get a return of 1% on her money here, but of course she's not "baka" and also has money in the U.S. at better rates. The other side of all this is that prices don't go up in Japan, and a lot of things (beef bowl, a train ticket) here are still at their 1991 prices, when I got here.
1:41 AM
OOOH man that story about Keiko Fuji having her money confiscated (stolen, really - robbed at metaphorical gunpoint) just reminds me how angry I am that these laws that allow the State to rob someone of their property without due process, without the person even being charged with a crime, have not yet been declared unconstitutional.
12:09 PM
Yes, it's a shame. If we're going to get reform of all that crap, it'll be now or never.
12:23 PM
It's one of the things that drives me mad about living in Japan, always having to make sure I have enough cash on me as money gets spent like water here.
I've been to hotels and gas stations that did not take credit cards. Absurd.
10:26 PM
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