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 lostpricedchargedcost them until the credit card bill arrives, the Japanese preferdesireenjoyselect to settle up before they’ve even written outwritten aboutwritten upwritten off 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 outdoes withoutdoes away withdoes out of the bother of banknotes and it saves the Japanese offrombyfor the fear of being in interestpaymentbilldebt to someone else.

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

Few Westerners can understand why anyone willmustwouldmay want to give money to a supermarket or a department store in frontin advancein futurein 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 depositssumsmassessavings of money in their pockets. The fact that street crime is fairly seldomrareslightslow helps.

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