Japan is inefficient - my pet hate

Japan is, as I think most will agree, a highly technologically advanced country. They have machines that do everything, from GPS navigators as standard fittings in cars to spy-cams on school childrens' backpacks (also fitted with GPS trackers). And yet, I cannot go down to my local travel agent and book a flight. No no, if I want to take a vacation that hasn't already been mapped out to the minutest detail for me by Nippon Travel then I have to make a trek into the nearest large city to make a booking. But do not attempt to make a booking in simply one visit, especially not if that visit is made on a weekend. Because even though the agency is open for business, they are not selling anything. Yazanami and I drew up a travel itinerary alright, but then she informed me that the place that they apply to to check seat availability and ticket prices is closed on the weekends. So not only can I not pay for my flight, I can't even find out how much it is, or even if there are seats available. Does this not seem odd to you? All this fabuous time saving technology around and no one has managed to come up with a programme that allows travel agents to click around on their computer and tell you prices and seat availability immediately, much like they do in Australia?

So Yazanami is going to give me a call on Monday evening and tell me what the price is and if there are seats which should be an exceedingly painful conversation given her propensity to use massive keigo and my brain's inefficient keigo translation function. If, by some miracle there are no futher problems and I want to book the flights I still have to make the massive trek back to Okayama in person and pay the deposit before the end of the week.

On a related topic; Japanese lifestyle trivia point #16 - Japanese ATMs are not 24 hours. They open at 8am and close at 6pm everyday in the small towns. I am not sure if they are open longer in the cities, but I remember when I was living in Hiroshima getting stuck one evening without any cash and being unable to find a single ATM that was still open. Unlike at home where ATMs are just stick into the side of buildings, here they are set up iwth their own room so only one person can go in at a time, like a little toilet cubicle (cept it's all glass so you wouldn't want to be dropping your daks in there) and come 6pm the shade goes down over the glass and the door locks. No more cash for you. There are also withdrawal fees applied if you take out money outside of 9-5 Mon-Fri. I think they have rather missed the point of ATMs. What makes it even odder is thefact that Japan is a cash society. Nobody uses a credit card at restaurants or supermarkets here (I don't even think you can), they just carry massive wads of cash around with them. Pickpockets' heaven.