The King Is Dead.
Cash Is No Longer King!
The awaited reopening of the shopping are of Akihabara Station as an Acute has been realized. I have not looked into it at all but going from experience Acute shopping malls are taking over more and more JR train stations and Service areas (SA) along Kanto area highways. At first visiting, they are wonderful places but after a few you come to realize that they are cookie cutter in nature obliterating all local flavor and charm that may have existed before. Not that they offer the same kind of shopping experience in each one, they offer the exact same stores. The ones at SAs do usually retain a little local products however.
Thus I was not surprised to see the same food stalls here as everywhere else when I looked through it earlier this week. I did notice one thing new that is disturbing, but could not confirm it then as it was crazy crowded. I came down early today to see if my fear was warranted or not. It was and is. The entire Ecute accessible only to those who have passed through the gates and into the station proper are cashless only. This was confirmed by visual inspection and finally, verbal inquiry; cash is not accepted.
I am again behind in not only posting but also in reading and commenting on the publications of those who read mine and responding to those who have offered comments to my posts. A major reason is kafunsho, hay fever. This deserves its own piece as it MAY be tied into the clot shot and vaccines in general. What I will share here is that is debilitating. Sinus pressure changes affect my vision and creat brain fog as thick as split pea soup. It is painful to keep my eyes in focus on anything for any meaningful duration of time. The pollen is usually no longer an issue by May, so just 3 more weeks to go, hopefully.
I typed the above as I ate lunch. While doing so I recalled that there are two shops in the Ecute that are accessible from outside the station gates, one is a coffee shop that is the only business that was in the retained in the Acute section of the building. Remodeled, I thought I would stop by for coffee to see if they too went all cashless. They have. As is the restaurant next to them. The whole Acute shopping mall in the Akihabara train station refuses cash as legal tender. I used to frequently stop for coffee at this place and was sad to see it go. Now that it is back, it is still gone for me.
Soon. Sooner than we want to contemplate. We will all have to have an idiot phone with all the apps decided by others just to eat, commute and work.
Payment kiosk for a Soba and Udon shop in the Akihabara train station Acute.
Update on Cashlessness
The reason for today’s excursion to Akihabara was a private lesson with the CEO of a food service chain. I told him about Ecute being all cashless and this sparked a discussion on the topic. More on that in a later, longer post. Two points he brought up of interest to the narrower topic of cashlessness are that when he was in Europe a couple of years ago, he could not use cash. The places he visited were 100% cashless. Between last week’s lesson and this week’s, he attended the World Expo in Osaka. One of his friends has connections that provided pre opening tickets to their group of friends. It was 100% cash free.
Whoa boy! Here we go. A headline from tonight’s The Japan Times.
“Banks freeze withdrawals for foreign nationals upon expiration of visas”
Can’t do that without the data from immigration and your banks being linked. No surprise that they are for that is the whole publicly stated purpose of the My Number system, to have EVERYTHING linked to a single number.