well if were gonna re-meta currency away from fancy paper and chunks o metal bashed into pretty shapes, does it really matter whether its contained in your phone, credit/suica/debit/whatever card or even in a rectally implanted RFID chip?

when I first came here, I was frustrated at how few merchants accepted plastic, now I'm quite comfortable with cash in hand for almost everything, even large purchases. In the end tho I dont really care about the shape of my wallet.

belabored? getting rid of one yen coins is the highlight of half of my days.

what's the point of a physically manifest e money anyway? It's a credit card, or a debit card under another name.
Even the non corporeal e moneys really shouldn't be anything more than a link to another account somewhere. There's no point in creating all these micro accounts to lose track of and be billed for.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20051028a4.htm

oops - wrong blog!! sorry -- though it is an interesting news blurb.

Oh forget about political injustice! Do you understand how aesthetically pleasing Japan is? That's where it counts!

Yes, great aesthetics. Let them eat BAPE.

Saru, that is the greatest quote about Japan, EVAR.

Listen: when's the last time you went to write a letter and felt horribly belabored by having to pull out a pen and write things on paper? When did anybody's fantastical vision of the ultra-efficient future involve typing things on a keyboard and screen to communicate? Can't the money developing E-mail be spent elsewhere?

I'm not sure if the trouble with counting change is of much relevance. Every form of currency is equally a form of enslavement and oppression for the masses. Metal, paper, or electronic currency, they all serve the same function of bonding us to the government and it's political construct, the nation.

Okay, wiseguys. Measure the time that it takes to write out a 500 word letter, send it, and wait for its arrival. Then compare that with the time an email would take. (Days vs. minutes)

Now, compare that with the 10 secs it takes to pull out your wallet and pay in real cash - compared with the 5 secs it takes to swipe some sort of E-money device. (We saved 5 secs!)

ha! that doesn't work for me, every time i need my cellphone i have to wait 'till someone calls me to find the damn thing, now if someone invented a credit card like those old key-chains where you'd whistle and they'd go *beep* *beep* :/

But what if you look at FeliCa (Edy/Suica/...) from the shop owner's perspective? I can imagine it streamlines the post-sale processing of income in, say, a convenience store: it's safe (no physical money to guard) and fault-proof (no need to worry about returning the correct change) etc. So, some clear advantages there, no?
I can also see some advantages on the consumer side though: look at how Suica (and soon also Edy, I believe) makes Shinjuku station a littlebit less of a pain, for instance.
What is more intriguing though is the fact that the shift to FeliCa based payment systems makes RFID a fact of life - and yes, FeliCa can be used for other things than just payment streamlining.

marxy - what's all the fuss about? I thought they already had a system like this in Canada, albeit using debit cards rather than mobile phones. A friend of mine from Edmonton, Alberta tells me that, at home, he wouldn't even use cash to buy a pack of chewing gum from the local store - it's virtual money all the way...

Leave it to Andreas to actually know something about the topic at hand. I was thinking of this just from the consumer side...

"Yes, great aesthetics. Let them eat BAPE."
LOL!