Use Of English Test 8 – Shopping In Japan

Unlike millions of Britons, who will not know how much the Christmas turkey, child’s bicycle and the January sales have lostcostpricedcharged them until the credit card bill arrives, the Japanese enjoyselectdesireprefer to settle up before they’ve even written aboutwritten offwritten upwritten out their shopping list.

The Japanese like to improve on every idea, even if the idea is cash. So they have been excitingenthusiastickeeneager about the pre-paid card. It does away withdoes outdoes out ofdoes without the bother of banknotes and it saves the Japanese ofbyforfrom the fear of being in interestbilldebtpayment to someone else.

It inventedintroducedstartedopened with the convenient pre-paid telephone card and has developedchangedfollowedturned through train ticket cards, taxi cards, and supermarket cards all the way to McDonald’s hamburgers cards.

Few Westerners can understand why anyone willmaymustwould want to give money to a supermarket or a department store in futurein frontin advancein time by buying a pre-paid card. But credit companies are held in some suspicion in Japan. People have traditionally preferred cash and will happily stroll the streets with quite large savingsmassessumsdeposits of money in their pockets. The fact that street crime is fairly slowrareseldomslight helps.

Pre-paid cards are now as commonregularusualoften as chopsticks and twice as convenient. About 500 million cards were sold in the first five years after they became availablepossiblereadyprepared.