Abacus in Japan
 

YouTube - Japanese girl doing abacus

Man, I remember using this when I was a kid from my relatives' help. Abacus helps improving your arithmetic for basic math.

The greatest thing of all, there are cram schools dedicated to abacus.

I've heard that the Bank of Japan still uses Abacus to check the total in/out money at the end of the day. Then after the check completed, they cerebrate it by shaking the abacuses at once.

I believe this is because of security issue on banks' computers. All secure by human intervention with well-trained minds.

That's so sad.

I don`t really think so. Some of these people are incredibly fast. And I mean fast - on par with calculator fast.
Once they have the skill, it apparently helps a lot with calculating in your head. You`ll see people doing math while moving their fingers like while they use an abacus - and coming up with an accurate answer very quickly. I believe it links the visual of the abacus to the abstract of the numbers in a way that makes math easier for more "visual" people.

Better than just typing in numbers on a calculator, in my opinion.

I remember seeing a show about that. I was so impressed that I even wanted to learn to use an abacus, too bad they don't sell them here.

Abacus's are really cool. Once you master them, you'll be able to visualize them in your mind and do outrageous calculations in your head.

As far as calculators are concerned, here's one person who will never be beat by an abacus. :D

She is also Abacus expert as well.

Yes, she's a 10th dan according to the video. However, the fact remains that she'll never be beaten by an abacus. :)

I hadn't known they were still used anywhere.

I think it's cool that they are.

Using abacus may helps you calculating faster, but it takes a lot of time learning it, but I would like to know how correct the answers of those kids are, cause speed isn't everything^^ And btw. I never learned to use abacus, to be true, i even never saw them in real just on tv (except this one time in elementary school when the teachers told us how they had to learn calculating... i never had to use them either I did everything in my mind or used a calculator^^)

Believe me, I was used to trained in abacus. Abacus also functions as a secondary "memory aide" that it is possible to calculate fast with an abacus if you are an expert.