The current time for my beloved hometown:

Portland, Oregon.

The Point Card: Consumer Abandon in the Works

At first I shied away from them. It seemed recklessly consumerish, being encouraged to buy more, not less. However to live like the locals I decided I should shop like the locals. I’m speaking of course about point cards. Though the US has a plethora of point cards from such places as Safeway, in Japan the system is out, my friends, out of control. I have point cards for everything. Funeral arrangements, life insurance purchases, cans of near beer, bars, and restaurants. How could anyone keep track of all these paperboard, card stock and delightfully durable plastic jobbers? The short answer is that you can’t!

In my wallet I try to burden myself with the most useful cards- the ones for shopping and daily purchases, such as the aforementioned cans of near beer and, well doughnuts.

The Japanese, you see have become wholly engrossed in the Western idea of more is better. They chucked the less is more concept long, long ago. The doughnut card: This nifty rewritable bit of modern wonder works like this: Each doughnut purchased awards the entitled 6 doughnut points. Arbitrary? Of course! What do all of these 6 point-per-go points add up to? I did some digging and here is what I found. For a mere purchase of 24.5 doughnuts (210 points) you can get a cereal bowl topped by animalistic lid, for placing inside. What else? More doughnuts!

All out of steam....

Nothing makes a man feed a teensy weensy bit down like quitting a job as a company goes down in utter, flamage. However, salvation awaits in something called Asahi Brewing "Prime Time," a new brew and in no way related to TV viewing between 8 to 11p.m. weeknights.