Tech commentators visit Tokyo and laugh: "Japan is a high-tech superpower, yet they still use paper money like it is 1995! Why are they so stubborn?"
We are not stubborn.
We are trauma-hardened engineers.
Silicon Valley builds systems that assume the sun is always shining, the cloud is always connected, and the power grid is immortal.
Japan lives on four tectonic plates that grind against each other like angry millstones.
When a 7.3 magnitude earthquake hits at 2pm, cell towers collapse in seconds. Credit card terminals go dark. Digital wallets become glowing bricks.
In that world, cash is not old-fashioned. Cash is a zero-dependency, off-grid, peer-to-peer survival protocol that never needs a firmware update.
A 1,000-yen bill works without electricity, without internet, and without permission from a bank server in California.
You think we keep cash because we are nostalgic.
We keep cash because when the ground shakes, the cloud goes to heaven, but paper buys water.