Japan spends far in excess of $500 million on telegrams a year, the overwhelming majority of it because it is traditional to send one if you&#x27;re invited to a wedding and cannot attend.<p>There exist a variety of circumstances where a business has to put a piece of paper in someone&#x27;s hand within about 24 hours.  It&#x27;s doable between virtually any two endpoints in the first world.  It also costs whatever FedEx&#x2F;DHL&#x2F;etc think they can get out of a business which needs to have a document hand delivered on the other side of the world <i>immediately</i>, which is &quot;a lot.&quot;  (e.g. It&#x27;s presently midnight on Wednesday in NYC.  I can walk next door to a store in Tokyo and hand FedEx a letter.  It will arrive at the New York Stock Exchange before the opening bell on Thursday.  That will cost ~$125 but it will almost certainly actually work.)