Byline: Tokyo
The first observable Tokyo style development is the long hair on women. Below the shoulder is common, maybe one third of the women walking past a coffee shop in our neighborhood had hair below the shoulder. Women of all ages had hair below the shoulder.
There is a new coffee-bakery at our train station (Yoyogi Uehara on the Chiyoda line). It’s called Choco Cro which seems to relate to their iconic product, a chocolate croissant.
What is fascinating about Choco Cro is the marketing of price. No, not cheap, they are just below the mean in price ---- they price every product, including coffee, in a weird number. One roll is 167 yen, next to it is a 183 slice of pizza and a plain cup of coffee is 133 yen
.
This is a marketing gimmick unique to Japan where all prices are 150, 155 or 160 with sales tax included. The Japanese round retail price numbers (except in taxis and grocery stores) and they include the sales tax in the final price. There is no tipping anywhere.
Choco Cro is fooling around. It is a cute gimmick in this society where consumers have created an adult pricing market.
I’m not being rude by suggesting that Japanese are adult in their pricing and Americans are childish.
For my few readers who haven’t noticed before: retail prices in the U.S. are based on the presumption that lower income buyers are stupid, gullible children and that slave/servants are still operating in modern America. Observe it yourself.
Auto prices on used cars are $5,999.95 for a used Chevy, but $27,100.00 for a one year old Lexus. Stupid gullible children are presumed to buy Chevies; sophisticated elites are presumed to buy Lexus. These same pricing practices are found in consignment car lots where ordinary people set the sale price of their own vehicle. 
Slave/servants never pumped gasoline, so gasoline costs what the pump meter says. Slave/servants never repaired cars, did electrical work or plumbing so there are is no tipping for those jobs. The invoice is the price you pay. Taxi drivers, porters and waiters were formerly slaves and servants in America; they get tips to this day.
I invite you to look around at pricing and tipping as the vestiges of our elitist distain for the “lower classes” (they presumably think $1.99 is cheaper than $1.80) and see that tipping is a remnant of slave/servant labor practices.
That is why Choco Cro can joke around about pricing and we Americans can’t.