Akihabara on weekend

Here is Akihabara, the biggest electric shopping district in Tokyo.

The streets there is free of vehicle on weekend and many people are wandering about the streets. Some of them are people from other countries and they usually would like to buy electric appliances, such as single-lens reflex cameras, video cameras and so on.

Now, here is an interesting data.

There are, perhaps as you know, many duty(tax) free shops in Akihabara.

These shops are most popular among people from Scandinavian, just like Norway, Sweden and Finland. Though they are not so many in Japan.

At first I didn't know why people from Scandinavian like "duty free" shop very much.

Do you know why?

Because their consumption tax rates are very high, more than 20 percent, and they seem to attract the word "duty free" very much, a newspaper said.

By the way, our consumption tax rates are now five percent.