You never want to have your pasmo not working when you are rushing in Japan. Picture this: Jamaipanese-kun cruising into his second month of life in Tokyo, settling into big city life, especially rush hour commuting. You tap your pixel phone as you have done 3847636 times before when navigating the subway and boom, it doesn’t work. This IC card glitch sets off a chain of event that had me panicking, almost feinting on a packed train and spending days trying to troubleshoot the issue to decipher “why my Pasmo IC card was not working?”.
Pixel 6 Glitch
In the end it was a glitch with Pixel 6 phones that caused the issue with the Osaifu-Keitai FeliCa Networks apps on my phone that manages IC cards. I am never removing my backup PHYSICAL IC card from my wallet again and also grabbed a digital Suica card in case of future glitches. Even as a tech savvy person its still insane to me how “simple” tech glitches can really mess up modern systems and by extension their users.
Love tech when it works but oh boy, when it fails, like you described in your story, pure chaos and anxiety ensues. Let’s hope that glitch is fixed shortly, if you haven’t fixed it already. But yes, carrying that physical card should alleviate future stress should this happen again. Fingers crossed it doesn’t though!