Sunny Money

A few posts back I wrote about how Ota City had only one claim to fame--being where the Subaru car company was founded.  I have to make a correction now because that isn't entirely true.  If you run Google searches for Ota City you will probably run across a lot of articles about solar energy.

All of them are several years old and link to the same video:




Apparently I live in the "Solar City of the Future".  Who knew.  For the record, I have no idea where Pal Town or the strawberry fields are.  They must be on the other side of town.  I can confirm that many houses, even in my neighborhood, have solar panels on the roof.  Especially new homes.  Ours does not, but our house is a little older.

So that is the back story to my story.  A couple of months ago a Japanese friend of mine called me to tell me about some "money tickets" being offered by the city.  My friend's English is good but not so good that we didn't have to go around in a few circles to get on the same page about what "money ticket" entailed.  Come to find out, she was talking about coupon books, similar to those that are commonly sold during fund-raising drives in the US.  In my (American) experience, kids sell them door-to-door to raise money for school trips/supplies.  The coupons offer discounts to local businesses.

In this case, the city was selling the books, not to raise money, but to dispense it....albeit in a roundabout manner.  In the video above, they kinda mention government subsidies provided as incentives for using solar energy.  These coupon books are a way to dispense government subsidy money to the populace.  The number of books available is limited so you have to "apply" to receive them.   My friend applied for me as it required sending in a postcard with your name, address and age.  I am happy to say I was "accepted" to receive my requested two books.

Now, some of you might be thinking "yeah, you mean the coupons that wind up unused in your junk drawer because there are so many limitations and exceptions plus you don't even go to half the businesses anyway?". No?  Well, that's what I was thinking, even though I applied for the two books anyway.  Well, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that these coupon books don't exactly operate like the American ones.

I had to report to City Hall on a certain day to pick up my books.  My friend wasn't available to go with me so I went by myself but it was a very easy process to pick up the books.

this is Ota City Hall.....it looks like a City Hall

After I got them I was surprised to see that every coupon was exactly the same.  Turns out that each coupon is worth 500 yen (about $5) and can be used at any of the participating local businesses, no strings attached.  My friend had given me list of some of  the local participating shops and they are all places I shop at (part of the reason she called me).  Not only that, but you can use as many tickets at one purchase time as you want.  So basically it's like a book of five dollar bills.  Easy, huh?

So you're probably wondering how much money I'm getting/saving, right?  Well.....turns out that when you do the math you're getting about $15 per book.  Which isn't much, especially for all this work (rather than buying them from a kid on my doorstep) but that's Japan for ya.  Also each book is 10000 yen, which is about $100 so they're expensive on top of all this.

coupon book, aka money tickets.  if you can't make it out, that is a picture of solar panels

They're good for a year, I think?  And I've already used some at my regular supermarket.  Being able to use a bunch at once seems weird but so far I haven't had any trouble with it.  Anyone else out there have an alternative coupon book experience in Japan or another country?