"Culture Shock" <Shopping>

The view over the quality of goods seems to be different between USA and Japan. Customer service counters of shopping centers in USA are mostly full of the returned goods. Though the cost for handling returned goods should not be indispensable, it seems to me that they prefer to pay for the defects rather than paying for the better quality control.

Since USA is well-known credit card society, you can buy almost everything with credit cards. At the same time, high number of credit card delinquency has become one of the serious social problems. Therefore, the examination for the card acquisition is severe. Even for Japanese, applicant is required to show credit history for a certain period in USA before getting credit card.

Conversely, since it is not necessary to have a large amount of money, the type of the money we can withdraw from ATM is a 20-dollar unit only and the maximum amount of withdrawal a day is limited to few hundreds dollars.

As there is no practice of paying bill by automatic draft, you need to use checks for the payment of the public utility charges. As the number of the utility companies we receive bills from is more than we expect, i.e., gas, electricity, a telephone, cable TV, water service, house rents, etc. you will feel bothered if you do not get used.

When you are at a bookstore, you will see people who sit on the floor with his legs crossed to read books. Though it is considered as disgust thing in Japan, the bookstore in the U.S. is generous enough to allow it. In case of the nationwide-chained bookstore Burns & Noble, they tied up with Starbucks and allows customer to read books inside the coffee shop freely.

In Japan, when you are in a supermarket, you are required to put purchase in a bag by yourself after making payment at the cash register. But in USA, the bag boy will put them into bag for the customers. Apparently, it seems to be a good service, however, a register will stagnate in fact, and a long line will be made in the evening.

Although the bag of a supermarket is called "vinyl bag" in Japan, it is called a "plastic bag" in the U.S. Usually, supermarket provides two kinds of bag, made of paper and plastic. When you pay at cash register, you will; be asked, "paper or plastic?"

When you are at supermarket, you will see people who are doing some shopping pick up pet bottle of cola or the bag of potato chips from the shelf and drink or eat them. At first, I was surprised and wondered if he is a new type of a shoplifter, but surprised again when I saw him to pay for the empty bottle or bag at the cash register with other articles.

Just like an automotive society, the purchase of a car is easy. Contrary to Japanese style, where a dealer delivers the car to buyer's home after buyer placing an order, buyer in the USA chose the car from the cars at the shop front, which are being weather-beaten (they are brand new car though). If money is paid, you can drive it to home on the same day.

Key Word

English	Japanese	English	Japanese
indispensable		bother
delinquency		disgust
acquisition		apparently
conversely		stagnate
withdrawal		shoplifter