Let's keep things in perspective here. This is the kind of country where the Maruzen frequent buyer card entitles you to a 1,000 yen off coupon after accumulating 1,000 points. Except you'd have to spend 20,000 yen to get these points, for an outstanding 5% discount!

Also, this is the place where the Maisen sells packs of 3 katsu sandos for 700 yen, and packs of 9 for 2,150, or where three Marron Glace in a bag at the Park Hyatt Tokyo go for 500 yen, but you can buy a box of eight for 1,500 (I kid you not).

So I am not surprised if the designers of this exciting promotion consider a free keychain an attractive enough incentive to bring in the hordes of White Water Buffalo traipsing through their lovely country and spend freely and with abandon.

This is a symptom of the same mindset that makes some Japanese company or another take out a full page ad in the Japan Times or other English language newspaper and neglect to have the English copy proof-read by a native speaker with the result that the company just spent tens of thousands of dollars to put up a page full of gibberish that doesn't quite get the intended message across.