Starting in the last few weeks JR and no matter how indirectly, DoCoMo and other cell phone providers that support Mobile Suica, have been very aggressive in permeating the use of Suica (pre-paid touchless IC card, supported also in certain mobile phones). I have seen signs all around Tokyo in more places ranging from convenience stores (FamilyMart already supported Suica but others are slowly picking it up as well) to taxis and buses (pretty much all of which seem to support payment by Suica by now). I am a huge fan of the technology as you might have read in my previous posts so this makes me very happy. In a country where credit cards are still very hard to use in places like little convenience stores and international credit cards can randomly not work, a system like Suica is a lifesaver. This picture is from a Summit (サミット) store, a big supermarket which started supporting Suica. The blowup penguin is a part of the campaign – he keeps showing up everywhere (oh and the little sign says “Use Suica!” in a friendly way). As a part of the push they were giving away little penguin faced puck shaped fridge magnets too.
ps. I took the picture with my new phone – a Sharp SH-04a which embeds GPA coordinates into the picture so if you want to know where this particular Summit is, you can ;) I will write a review of this touchscreen phone (DoCoMo released it around February I think, as a part of its new Pro Lineup) as soon as I have used it for long enough to be comfortable with all the features.
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