Before I began work in Shirakawa I was told that, in
addition to the usual team-teaching work at junior high, I would be acting as
“main teacher” at an elementary school. My first thought upon seeing those
words was something along the lines of “I did NOT sign up for this shit.” The JET program, as I
understood it at the time, entailed assistant
teaching to mainly junior high and high school students. Even if I were
to work at elementary, it would still be in the role of an assistant, and not,
you know, the person responsible for designing entire lessons in a subject I’ve
never taught before to a kind of audience I’ve never taught before in a
language that I’ve barely even spoken,
let alone used for giving detailed instructions.
God, listen to me whine. I needn’t have worried. My elementary school has actually
proven to be nicer than my junior high school. The staff is friendlier, the
students are more enthusiastic (which is saying something, since my JHS
students can be pretty damn enthused, at least in the lower grades). . . hell,
even the building is nicer, which is
to say it appears to have been built in this century, as opposed to sometime
during the Allied occupation. Yes, my work at elementary is far more involved,
but that’s largely a good thing. I have more freedom to experiment and have
fun, and because I teach all the grade five and six sections at my school on a
single day, I never end up sitting around the office waiting for something to
do, like in junior high.
That is, except on days like today. Occasionally, there are
days in which I’ll end up not teaching any classes at all, because of teachers
meetings, school trips, and the like. Since my elementary school is generally
nicer than my junior high, these days basically amount to being in-office
holidays. I can sit back, study
Japanese, prep for the next weeks classes or Eikaiwa (more on that another
time), catch up a bit on my favorite blogs. . . hell, I can even write a blog
post of my own for once!
I can also finally
go the damn post office during banking hours! Which leads to the main topic of
this particular post. . .
Even though I’ve now been in Japan for over two months, I
haven’t sent any money home until today. Part of the reason for this is my
reluctance to use Japanese for, well, anything really. But another part of it
is, like I said, the damn postal bank hours: 9 AM – 4 PM (I’m usually at work
by 7:45 AM, and leave work at 4:30 PM).
Fortunately, today I had a basically free day and a vice principal cool
enough to let me leave work for a while. So, at long long last, I drove down to the post
office and ordered my first international remittance.
And then I remembered why I put these damn things off all the time.
First, I stopped at the 7/11 and took out 80,000 yen from
the ATM. Then, I went to the nearby post office or yuubin kyoku (郵便局) and requested a direct remittance
to a bank account, kouza ate soukin (口座あて送金). The first hint that I’m a complete idiot who can’t do anything in this
country came when the clerk, or tennin,
asked if I wanted to deposit to a yuubin
or post office bank account—not only had I failed to specify that I wanted to
make an international remittance or gaikoku soukin (外国送金),
but I also failed to recognize the word yuubin
(though, in my sort of defense, I heard yuuchin,
which is not an actual Japanese word according to my dictionary). After the
clerk saw that I had written gaikoku
in my notebook and realized what I wanted, he directed me over to the banking
section. There, I took a numbered ticket and waited for my number to be called,
as is the norm in Japanese banks. After five minutes, I was called up, and
after a bit more confusion, I was finally given an international payment application and declaration form for payment to
an account, or kokusai-soukin-seikyuusho-kenkokuchisho(kouza-ate-soukin-you)(国際送金請求書兼告知書(口座あて小送金用))—note that I’m not 100% sure about that
transliteration. I also had to present photo
identification; I used my residence card, but a passport works too. I then
took a few minutes to fill out the form:
 | |||
| A sample remittance form. |
I then handed the form
back to the clerk, along with the 80000 yen I wanted to send back to Canada
plus a 2500 yen service charge. That’s when the fun began.
After waiting for
about twenty minutes, I was called up to the desk and asked about the bank code I had entered. I had done
some research online on how to perform international remittances, and I found
out that one of the pieces of info needed for direct-to-bank account transfer
was the bank’s international routing
number. I asked my mom to talk to my bank (Royal Bank of Canada) about
this, and they gave her Royal Bank’s so-called swift code. Well, this is not what the post office is asking
for. In the section marked account
number, I had written down the three digit branch/institution number, followed by the five digit transit number, and finally followed by
the seven digit account number—this
was how I had always done it in Canada (note that different banks and countries may have different
numbering systems). In the section marked Bank
Code I had written the swift code. As it turns out, I only needed to write
down the account number in the account
number section (I know, who’d have guessed?). The Branch Number followed the Transit
Number is what goes in the Bank Code
section. The swift code is not needed
anywhere in the form.
Fucking swift code. . .
So, after making the
necessary corrections and stamping them all with my hanko (which is basically a stamp which acts as a personal signature for
official documents in Japan), I waited for another fifteen minutes before being
called up again to hanko some other corrections I had made on the form (this
was made even more tedious by the fact that I had to stamp all four copies of the damn form everywhere a correction was made).
Then I sat down, waited for five more minutes, and was then asked to come up
and stamp a few more places that I had missed the first time. Fifteen or so minutes
later, I was called up again and informed that Royal Bank would charge me 10
dollars for the international remittance. Alright, fine. Another ten minutes, and I was called
up to enter the equivalent amount of Canadian funds (~$970) into which my 80000
yen would be converted, along with appropriate Currency Code (CAD for Canadian dollars). Ten minutes later, the
clerk (who, to be clear, was really nice through this whole process) finally
gave me copy of the remittance form along with my residence card. Plus, as a
final gift, and to remove any doubt in my mind as to whether everyone at the
post office thought I was a complete fucking moron, I was provided with Japan
Post’s Guide to International Remittances:
 |
| And just to drive the point home, they made me roll this into a cone and wear it on my head as I left. True story! |
The remittance will
take 4-6 business days to clear, so I should know by Friday of next week if my
money has made it safely home. I'm sure— I hope—
there will be no problems with the transfer between now and then.
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