Japan is a high-tech country, right? It is, after all, the home of bullet trains, robots, computer games and all sorts of gadgets.
But there is another side of the story: low-tech Japan. Most of the world now communicates by email, but our Japanese friends are still hooked on fax machines. While the rest of us use electronic signatures, the ancient tradition of personal red seal stamps (“hanko”) persists in Japan. And cash still dominates consumer purchases, to the great surprise of foreign visitors, especially from China whose large cities are increasingly cashless.
