From: davidg@aegis.or.jp (Dave McLane)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.japan
Subject: Re: Have some cash
Date: 26 Aug 92 00:44:08 GMT
Organization: Aegis Society, Kyoto Japan

tony2@prefect.uucp (21131-gozdz) writes:

[* history of thread omitted *]

>Gee, I haven't read this group for a weak or so, and I
>am really surprised that a minor storm started by my half-joking
>remark (did you notice :-( ?): 

Yes, I noticed. But to tell you the truth I am really tired of
people assuming that things are going to be a certain way here and
then complaining when they aren't.  Perhaps you weren't reading
s.c.j.  and didn't know that there had just been a long thread
(tirade?) about how awful it is to find your way around because of
the crazy "street numbers." 

IMHO, trying to make sense of out Japanese "street numbers" is like
complaining about difficult it is to make spreadsheets with
WordPerfect. WordPefect isn't a spreadsheet program and the numbers
in Japanese addresses aren't street numbers. Likewise, assuming that
everplace will accept your credit card is along the same lines.

>To close the matter, I was not particularly upset,
>angry, or felt mistreated. I didn't feel 'they were
>doing it to me'; sorry if my smirk was missed by some.
>I treated this as just a local curiosity, like any other
>unusual experiences in a foreign country. I _do not_
>regard myself a victim of some dark scheme.
>In fact, I am truly looking forward to another trip to
>Japan in 3 weeks, this time with much less anxiety.

And I hope with some more realistic expections@! The best of which
is, perhaps, to not be surprised if things don't work out like you
thought they would. I think if you take things as they are, you'll
find that for everything that dismays (because it doesn't match your
expectation), there is something else the delights (because it doesn't
match your expectation).

>I have had no reason to invent things. For the guy who
>implied that, the hotel's telephone number is (044) 244-3711;
>you may check yourself. And it is not unusual, as is
>apparent from the experinece of other netters (see above).

This is what a call a "negative outcome". Why would anybody want the
number of someplace that *doesn't* accept credit cards? If it's
cheaper (as they don't have to pay the ~5% to the card company) I
can understand. If not, how about the names and addresses of places
which *did* accept your card? 

>On a different note: I just got my AmEx statements and
>found that their exchange rate was better by about
>1.5-2 yen per dollar than what I got in several banks,
>hotels, and at Narita by exchanging AmEx Traveler's Cheques
>within the same time period.

So you ran into one (and only one) place that wouldn't accept your
credit card so you post an article about it (and only it).  Maybe
your point was just that things didn't go like I expected, but is
that such useful information? 

Why not say something like "Hey, I came over here thinking xxxx, and
I found out yyyy, which wasn't what I wanted. But, I also found zzzz
and it was OK."

Dave

--
Dave McLane 
JUNET: davidg@aegis.or.jp (ONLY within Japan: post otherwise)
Nagaokakyoshi, Kyoto Japan Tel: +81-75-951-1168 Fax: +81-75-957-1087