Originally posted by Maciamo
That's because politeness, courtesy or good manners are very important to Japanese. With extremely politeness there is always a good deal of hypocrisy or self-restrain. That doesn't mean they don't like money, but social norms are so developped that people finding money in the street will even bring it back to the local police box (koban). Japanese like money but honestly earned (except politicians of course )
Yeah that reminds me of this time I went to this outdoor flee-market type deal in Shinuku one weekend, well there was this really beautiful girl there trying to sell eye-liner that looked like they had been acquired through dumpster-diving, well that's all she was selling, I felt sorry for her cause she was all doing her best to sell it but everyone just kept giving her **** like she got it out of the trash or it wasen't even worth them time to even try so when I was next to her I told her that I wanted to give her money because she wasen't selling anything, I then gave her a few thousand yen, she went crazy, I walked off, moments later she tapped me on my shoulder with a small box of eye-liners, I shook my head and smiled, walked off again, she then ran in front of me, bowed with her holding the money out saying it was really sweet but she was unable to accept money she didn't earn.

I was impressed,

Josh

http://www.ghettocitiesclothing.com