Spotted the ad below (tagline: Suica Diet!) on my way to Osaka on Friday. It displays a sense of humor/irony that is remarkably absent in most Japanese advertising. Most ads here fall into one of two categories: incredibly serious/techy (any Panasonic ad) or incredibly cutesy (almost any other ad).
The ad is for JR’s Suica card. You load the card up with Yen and then wave your wallet at the turnstile and JR automatically deducts the correct fare. By carrying around this contactless IC card, instead of coins and cash, you can instantly lose a few hundred grams!
You can also do shopping with Suica now in some stores. On a lark, I tried to use my Suica card at a grocery store, but was rudely rejected. Yukari’s card worked, so my card must have discovered that I am a foreign barbarian and implicitly untrustworthy.
As an aside, JR implemented an identical system in Osaka, called Icoca (mascot: a platypus). Of course, it’s incompatible with Suica, at least until August, when they are supposed to link the two systems together.
