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This has been my experience going on holiday in the Netherlands. Everything functions on cards and touch payments.

I’m living in Japan where everything is cash, and it’s just such a culture shock to go to a place where I cannot simply pay for everything with cash...

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There are many ways in which Japan is more civilized than Sweden is.

Speaking as a Swedish native who lived in japan for years

Cash is not one of those things though. Nor is the system of buying metro tickets with cash only and without an option to change language.

Metro tickets with cash only seem fine to me. What is your problem with that?

I believe inside of Tokyo almost all the machines also support a variety of languages now, but there might be a scattered few with only Japanese.

I just left Osaka yesterday. I didn't use every machine, but I never found one that didn't support English.

There is a big "English" option. Plus other languages as well.

I might have been unlucky then, but the one machine I was in contact with before I ceded all responsibility on my host was Japanese only.

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