It is a well known fact that most of Japan’s cafe’s and small restaurants only accept cash as form of payment. But no matter how much cash you are comfortable with stocking up in the airport, you are eventually going to run dry. So – where do you go to get more cash on your hands? If your first response was “ATM!”, and your second is “Bank!”, you are most likely to be both disappointed and confused.
Running out
Having run out of cash, and with Kari and myself in desperate need for a lunch break and coffee to increase her blood sugar level (she slowly descends into a Murakami-like stasis when the ‘out of sugar’ lights start fading away), we were both very happy when Kari finally spotted a familiar three-letter sign: “ATM”
A whole hall of robot-like ATMs, the common explicitly marked queue-line arrows with their sibling queue-poles greeted us. Luckily, there were none in line.
Cute denial
I randomly selected a machine. Two cute animated characters greeted me cutely (everything in this country is cute, and do whatever they do in a incredibly cute way). I entered the required data, and the machine slurped in my card into its midst.
It didn’t like it at all. It started making repeated chewing sounds, seemingly wondering what kind of weird, foreign, toxic-tasting plastic it had been presented. After a while of rumocking, the couple smiled at me, and an on-screen notice appeared:
“Your transaction is complete.”
In a strange combination of cuteness, respect and denial, the couple now bowed at me accompanied by a discontent alarm-beep, giving me my card back along with a printed receipt.
“Your card has expired or is invalid. See printed receipt for more info.”
We tried all our cards, double checking pin-codes and expiry dates, but neither VISA, nor MasterCard or Eurocard made the couple change their cute&denial routine.
Another world
If the world takes VISA, Japan is of another world (and I wouldn’t digress). Luckily our SoftBank SIMcard and Google told us why. Turns out the only places you can be sure to withdraw cash is from the Japanese Post Office and nearly all 7/11’s.
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