Having lived there for a while, some observations: Travel: major airlines have robust enough mobile sites or apps to make a 100% smartphone experience seamless

Having lived there for a while, some observations: Travel: major airlines have robust enough mobile sites or apps to make a 100% smartphone experience seamless. Printed tickets can be obtained from ticket kiosks inside any convenience store. Big travel agencies such as JTB or HIS also still play a large role. E-banking: might be different now, but 2018s Japan still eschewed credit for cash, and rely on passbooks [0] for teller/ATM transactions. Most Japanese people I socialized with regularly carried around $300 USD equivalent in cash. Transferring money to other individuals or companies is easily done through ATMs. Bill payments: either auto-withdraw, or paper bills mailed to you and paid for at...convenience stores(called conbini in Japanese)! Just have the cashier scan the QR code and pay in cash! Miss a payment? No worries, the grace period goes for something like 60 days and the balance due will just roll into the next paper bill. Online shopping: the spot that shows the greatest amount of credit card adoption...but you can also pay for things using gift cards (sold at the nearest conbini) or ...you guessed it, more QR codes and kiosks (at conbinis). Subscription services: All major streaming sites sell gift cards for various time amounts. Or you can tie your apple or google pay account to your phone provider and have the charges added to your phone bill (payable via conbini kiosk). By the time I was leaving there was a greater push for app-centric user experiences but for the most part, life goes on via cash and conbinis. It is very possible to live life with just a smartphone in Japan. Something also of note is that unlimited SMS is not a thing in Japan and the Line app rules the day for daily communication. Line has been pushing their digital wallet really hard lately, and I had to mute the app due to incessant pleas to make me throw my hard earned cash into Line... [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passbook https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passbook