American studios are losing ground to Chinese rivals that can make games quicker, cheaper and more profitably. 🎨: Photo Illustration: Israel G. Vargas; Photographs: Getty Images, Alamy, Bloomberg

Americans are increasingly turning to credit cards as financial pressures mount, new reports show. Collectively, credit card balances climbed by $22 billion in the third quarter to a record $1.29 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s latest household debt report, released Tuesday. Balances are up 4.2% from a year earlier. More:

Americans now owe a record $1.29 trillion on their credit cards, according to what New York Fed research reportedly shows. Households are increasingly turning to plastic as steep prices put pressure on their budgets.

Americans love making fun of the people in Walmart late at night. There are entire websites. My coworker Nishiyama spent six weeks in northwest Arkansas this fall for work. Jet lag kept him up every night, and his hotel was across the parking lot from a Walmart that closed at 11. So every night, for the last hour, he went. Back in Tokyo, he told our boss, with a completely straight face, that the people in Walmart at 10 p.m. are the finest human beings he has ever seen. Our boss asked for evidence. Nishiyama is Japanese. Of course he had timestamps. First, you should know what a store at night is in Japan. It's a convenience store. You walk in. Nobody speaks. You're out in ninety seconds. It's beautiful. It's also the loneliest room in the country. Here's what he wrote down. 10:02 p.m. The school supplies aisle. Four fathers. Four kids. Four projects due tomorrow morning. Not one of those fathers had been told before 9:30. The fathers did not speak. They nodded at each other like men at a war memorial. One of them had extra glue sticks. He passed them down the line. Like ammunition. 10:11 p.m. A nurse in navy scrubs, straight off a twelve-hour shift. One frozen dinner and a birthday card. She had missed her son's ninth birthday party. The cashier looked at the card, walked to the floral counter, and returned holding a balloon. "On the house, hon. Don't tell my manager." The manager was standing right behind her. He said, "Get her a cake, too." 10:19 p.m. An old man buys one tomato. Every night. The cashier keeps the best one under the register for him. His wife used to do the shopping. He doesn't even like tomatoes. He likes the walk. And the cashier. 10:26 p.m. A boy, sixteen, in the flower section with his dad, buying a corsage for homecoming. Within four minutes, there was a committee. The dad. The cashier. A stocker. And a grandmother in house slippers who had come in for cough drops. "Not the pink one, baby. Ask her what color her dress is." He texted the girl. Blue. The committee chose white. The grandmother approved. The committee dispersed. In Japan, a boy buying flowers for a girl would take a train to another city and wear a mask. 10:33 p.m. A young mother. Three kids. A full cart. Her card was declined. Then declined again. Nobody breathed. The woman behind her leaned forward and said, "Run mine, sugar. I've been there." That's all she said. She didn't wait to be thanked. She just started bagging the young mother's groceries. 10:48 p.m. Two old men in the coffee aisle. Arguing. Folgers versus Maxwell House. Loud. Fifteen minutes. A stocker told Nishiyama not to worry. They've had that argument every night since 2011. They're best friends. In fifteen years, neither one has bought a single can. 10:55 p.m. "Attention shoppers, the store will be closing in five minutes." Nobody moved. In Japan, when a store announces it's closing, people leave like there's a fire. In Arkansas, it's more of a suggestion. Then came his last night. 10:58 p.m. The baby aisle. A boy, maybe twenty, in a work jacket, holding a car seat. Inside it, a baby. Three days old. Screaming. The boy was crying too. Quieter. His wife was still in the hospital after complications. They'd sent him home to sleep for one night. He did not know how to make a bottle. He had been standing in front of forty kinds of formula for twenty minutes. Nishiyama froze. Nobody else in that store had that problem. The stocker, Earlene, 67, left her pallet right where it was. "Give me that baby, honey. I raised five. And two of my sister's." The tomato man showed him how to burp a newborn. "Raised four. Pat like you mean it, son." The two coffee men paused fifteen years of arguing. To agree on a formula. The cashier ran warm water from the deli into a coffee cup to heat the bottle. And at 11:00, the manager, the cake man, walked to the front doors, locked them, and said: "Nobody leaves till that baby's fed." At 11:41, the baby burped. A real one. You could hear it in Sporting Goods. Eleven people in an empty Walmart started calling the Hogs. The young dad asked how he could ever pay them back. Earlene buttoned the onesie and handed the baby back to him. "You don't, baby. Somebody did this for every one of us. In about twenty years, it's your turn." Nishiyama showed our boss his notes. Our boss read them twice. Then he cleaned his glasses and read them a third time. There's an old saying: it takes a village to raise a child. In Arkansas, the village closes at eleven. Mostly. So go ahead, internet. Keep laughing at the people in Walmart at night. A man from Japan watched them for six weeks. They are your nurses. Your fathers. Your widowers. Your grandmothers in house slippers. They're the best you've got. And they're open till eleven. (One of the fathers in the school supplies aisle gave Nishiyama a glue stick too. Just in case. Nishiyama has no children. It's on his desk. He says it's for emergencies.)