At Last some Neon: After all the waiting to see some of the bright lights of Japan, the first place that I saw them was in Kyoto which is kind of ironic, because Neon lights seem to be out of place in a city of so much history and tradition as Kyoto.1
This day was also my sister's birthday and I wanted to phone her up and wish her a happy birthday, but finding a public telephone that would make an IDD call was task and a half. I seems that not many public phones in Japan let you make IDD calls, because there are not many foreign tourists in Japan so they didn't think it necessary to connect the public phones to IDD. Also the only public phones that would let you make IDD calls required a different phone card than the ones which we had and there didn't seem to be any shops around which sold these kind of cards, presumably because very few people bought them. Plenty of stores sold the standard phone cards but these could not be used for IDD calls.
That was my first taste of how Japan can be unwelcoming (although Japanese people are welcoming) to foreigners, they don't design their systems with foreigners in mind. The second taste came soon after when I tried to use my Visa card in an ATM. I had used the same Visa card (prior to this trip) in ATMs in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong and Macao without any problems. Even though the ATMs in Kyoto had a big Visa logo on them, whenever I put my card in them, they spat it back out. After much frustration I noticed in small writing under the Visa logo was "Japanese issued cards only"! What? Isn't the point of having a Visa card so that you can use it all over the world? Next to the one ATM was a telephone I lifted the hand piece and gave it Ritsuko's brother. In short time a man appeared from a door in the building and handed me a map (in English) explaining how to get to an ATM which would except foreign issued cards, so the day was saved again, by the great customer service.2
We got back quite late to Ritsuko's brothers house, but since we were one hour ahead of Perth it was still early enough to call my sister and wish her a happy birthday.
Note: During my first two trips to Japan it was very difficult to find ATMs which accepted foreign issued cards, however on the third trip I noticed it is getting slightly better, with all of the largest bank's (the Postal Savings Bank) ATMs now accepting foreign issued cards, but still the other banks ATMs seldom accept foreign issued cards.
