Change

Imagine you went to a store and there were no price-tags on the products, how hard it would be to stick to your budget. That's more or less how we buy electricity. Tokyo Electricity sends me a bill every month. As you see in the picture below, the bill is divided into three stages of the electricity we used. I learned recently, this represents a progressive charging system, meaning a higher rate for more electricity use. But the problem is there's no description about detail: why our bill went up this month or where in our house the electricity is wasted (or... no thanks for using so much of their product). We are buying electricity without price tags.
If we had a detailed understanding of our home energy use, we would come up with all sorts of ways to save energy and lower electricity bills. We should know how much power is wasted by stand-by electricity, by using incandescent bulbs, by lowering a preset temperature of an air-conditioner too much in the summer or opening a curtain throughout a freezing night. In fact a study shows that access to information about our home energy consumption is considered to lead to 10 % cut on our electricity bills.
The age is becoming digital. Technically, there is no problem for every home to employ a system that enables us to know the detail of our electricity consumption. But somehow we remain in an age of analogue when it comes to energy bills. Perhaps it is hard for people to employ the system, but if they can't, the government should provide them, hopefully for free. It would have been far cost effective and ecofriendly way to stimulate our economy than the pork-barreling of that money to everyone(定額給付金）.
There are many things we take for granted. What we lack may be this type of small ideas. They should contribute to solving our various problems.
Our government has changed. But the change itself means nothing unless the new government gets aware of old problems that we are too used to to be aware of and brings up new ideas based upon it. Wait and see. The time is changing for sure.