Imagine wrapping up a tough work week and jumping into a three-day weekend. Maybe you just plan on lounging around at home with the air conditioner on at full blast. Or perhaps you’ll hit the road and head out of the city to get a welcome break from urban life. At some point you’ll probably need to withdraw some cash for the weekend, so you venture down to your nearest ATM … and find out the whole system is down until the following Tuesday.
That was reality over the Marine Day holiday weekend, at least for those using Mizuho Bank. Mizuho Financial Group Inc., the parent of Mizuho Bank and one of the country’s largest financial institutions, halted ATM and online banking services over those three days to conduct data transfers. This move left many without a way to withdraw funds. Other banks, including Prestia, also limited service, but Mizuho attracted significant online attention.
Luckily for them, social media never shuts down, offering a place to commiserate with others and complain about Japan’s cash-centric society, which continues to persist in 2018. So many people ended up affected that a popular buzzword emerged online — “Mizuho nanmin” (“Mizuho refugees”), which spread across Twitter and other social network platforms. It was an episode of inconvenience that showed how internet users in Japan gripe, and a rare moment when many voices came together around a shared topic to vent.