CHOPSTICKS AND DEBIT CARDS

Just a random thought of the week, first of all lets talk about disposable chopsticks, ya know the wooden ones. Didn't quite notice how much Japan uses disposable chopsticks until the other day i was at Mike's and was reading an AJET lesson about chopsticks. It said everyday Japan uses 130,000,000 wooden chopsticks (that's alot of fuckin chopsticks), is the biggest user of wooden chopsticks, 50% in the world, and gets its chopsticks from other countries forests such as the USA, Philippine, Malaysia, China, etc. Heck there was even a news article this week about how China is raising the costs of the wooden chopsticks to 2 to 3 cents from 1 cent in order to save its forests, so Japanese companies were gonna think again about the disposable chopsticks, but then again, i don't really think so. Just looking around they are everywhere, every restaurant uses wooden chopsticks, you get em from the bento stores, you get them from the supermarket. I can't really think of a time when you use plastic or non-disposable chopsticks at the restaurant. Mmmm... never really thought of it until i started looking around. Kinda reminds me of my drawer full of disposable chopsticks. Then when comparing to back home. Most of the times if you are at a restaurant you are using plastic chopsticks, in chinatown, at a vietnamese restaurant. Anyways that's that, next is money matters.

In Japan everyone uses cash. Everyone carries it. They have ATM machines, but no debit cards, and if you got a debit card from overseas, good luck trying to use it. Impossible to find a ATM machine that will take a foreign debit card. So the society of bullet trains and technology also takes a step back sometimes. So everyone carries cash and sometimes alot of it, maybe its because they don't have debit cards to use, or maybe its because everyone feels safe, but yeah carrying even 100 bucks back home is pushing it a bit. But not in Japan, i have seen people take out wads of 10000yen bills which is 100 bucks back home. Even i have felt the pleasure of being safe and strolled around with 800 bucks in my pocket, which of course i would never never do back home, because you know if that slips out you will never see it again. Anyways so i was reading the news again and the news reported that a former rock star got pickpocketed, and of course yah guess how much he had in his wallet in cash? Not the ole 100 bucks, not even 1000 bucks, but oh yeah 5000 bucks. All gone! damn. Well better safe than sorry, watch your pockets, or get a debit card into the system.