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holy hell i've now met the demon that is "japanese paperwork".
we went to the bank with the guys we're teaching english to, got bank accounts. we had to write our full address, full names and birthdates 3 times, plus pronunciation guide for our names twice and our address once. our address is REALLY REALLY LONG, and my wife again had the problem where her name, thanks to her two middle names, was too long for their system. all we needed was our "hanko" (name-stamp), "zairyuu card" (residence card, aka proof we're not illegal aliens), and health insurance card. no passport or anything else. we sat in a sort of break room and were even given tea. the bad part is, the bank doesn't allow anyone else to fill out the paperwork for you - if our friends had been allowed to, it'd've taken less than half the time.
we each got a "cash card", which is actually just a debit card but isn't called debit for some reason, and a bank book. when you deposit money via an ATM, you insert your bank book and it prints a line with the date and how much you have in your account and stuff. i also know why most japanese people have huge wallets now - it's so you can keep your bank book in your wallet. you need your bank book as proof of your identity if you go to the bank or something weird like that, at any rate we were told it's very important.
we weren't told anything about interest rates (my japanese friend assures me they're amazingly low) or monthly fees. instead you get a fee if you try to use an ATM outside of business hours — which are from like 9am to 3-6pm — meaning you CAN use an ATM at 2am but you'll get a service charge. there's also a service charge if you use an ATM from or send money to an account not from your same bank. in general if you're paying a bill sent to you in the mail (ex. our rent bill) and you pay it with cash there's also service charges at that time, so it just seems like they always want to charge like 600 yen for sending anyone money. we weren't taught how to use our cards or anything but our friends showed us a little bit and will show us more later. we put 1,000 yen as starter money on our cards. we even got a cup of lukewarm green tea. the bank took TWO HOURS.
then with our brand-spanking new cards we went to the phone shop, which was the demon. we got two brand-new phones (15,500 yen each) + the cheapest possible SIM card plan (1,650 a month for 3gigs of data; calls are 40 yen a minute); there was an initial cost of 3,000 yen per SIM card but actually it was a special sale day so we got that for free. our phones can, by the way, be set to english or japanese. now, how long do you think it took us? FOUR HOURS.
we chose our phones and SIM card plans. first we filled out some paperwork, with our friends' help. then we filled out more paperwork which was more or less exactly the same, it's hazy at this point. then we were forced to call the customer help center, who had two japanese to english translators (from india) on-hand, so a japanese staff member read from a piece of paper in japanese, we got the same paper in english, so did the translation staff. the japanese member read in japanese, the translation staff translated and/or read in english exactly what was on our paper, we had to mark checkboxes saying that "yes we were in fact given this information"... which was almost entirely information that we'd already gotten from our actual in-store staff member. i mean, they did stuff like confirm which phone and which plan we're getting, even confirm our payment method. dude just let us talk to the in-store lady, okay?? because she already confirmed it herself!
so after that the lady just kept kinda sorting out paperwork, she also had to scan our residence card, health insurance card and bank cards individually. then had to link our bank cards to our phone number via a special machine, so we'd be able to pay our phone bill each month (which comes on the 26th of the month btw). had to open the phone box to show us that everything was in fact there safe and sound (japan likes doing this). then had to put in the SIM cards for us, which took like 20 minutes. etc. we even protested at the whole help center thing, saying that since we can read english it'd go way faster to just read the paper ourselves, but no. four hours.
and none of our classmates who complain about japan have had to go through this. they had magical phones that could take japanese SIM cards no problem, and they're "rich" (compared to us) so used more expensive plans etc, so their in-out time was like 20 minutes. but the good thing is, if we keep using the same company but just need a new phone or new SIM card it's gonna go a lot faster next time. and it's not like you get a new phone once a month or something like that...
...anyway, now we have phones, meaning: google maps! LINE! actually being able to call in emergencies! we can travel to new cities without the fear of getting lost! we can make membership cards at the grocery store, manga rental shop, etc!
and we have bank accounts, meaning: applying for jobs will be easier! i can now order off Rakuten, which is cheaper and more interesting than Amazon!
it feels like we're really deep into japanese society now - after not having had these two things for six months. almost like we're real citizens. teehee.
we went to the bank with the guys we're teaching english to, got bank accounts. we had to write our full address, full names and birthdates 3 times, plus pronunciation guide for our names twice and our address once. our address is REALLY REALLY LONG, and my wife again had the problem where her name, thanks to her two middle names, was too long for their system. all we needed was our "hanko" (name-stamp), "zairyuu card" (residence card, aka proof we're not illegal aliens), and health insurance card. no passport or anything else. we sat in a sort of break room and were even given tea. the bad part is, the bank doesn't allow anyone else to fill out the paperwork for you - if our friends had been allowed to, it'd've taken less than half the time.
we each got a "cash card", which is actually just a debit card but isn't called debit for some reason, and a bank book. when you deposit money via an ATM, you insert your bank book and it prints a line with the date and how much you have in your account and stuff. i also know why most japanese people have huge wallets now - it's so you can keep your bank book in your wallet. you need your bank book as proof of your identity if you go to the bank or something weird like that, at any rate we were told it's very important.
we weren't told anything about interest rates (my japanese friend assures me they're amazingly low) or monthly fees. instead you get a fee if you try to use an ATM outside of business hours — which are from like 9am to 3-6pm — meaning you CAN use an ATM at 2am but you'll get a service charge. there's also a service charge if you use an ATM from or send money to an account not from your same bank. in general if you're paying a bill sent to you in the mail (ex. our rent bill) and you pay it with cash there's also service charges at that time, so it just seems like they always want to charge like 600 yen for sending anyone money. we weren't taught how to use our cards or anything but our friends showed us a little bit and will show us more later. we put 1,000 yen as starter money on our cards. we even got a cup of lukewarm green tea. the bank took TWO HOURS.
then with our brand-spanking new cards we went to the phone shop, which was the demon. we got two brand-new phones (15,500 yen each) + the cheapest possible SIM card plan (1,650 a month for 3gigs of data; calls are 40 yen a minute); there was an initial cost of 3,000 yen per SIM card but actually it was a special sale day so we got that for free. our phones can, by the way, be set to english or japanese. now, how long do you think it took us? FOUR HOURS.
we chose our phones and SIM card plans. first we filled out some paperwork, with our friends' help. then we filled out more paperwork which was more or less exactly the same, it's hazy at this point. then we were forced to call the customer help center, who had two japanese to english translators (from india) on-hand, so a japanese staff member read from a piece of paper in japanese, we got the same paper in english, so did the translation staff. the japanese member read in japanese, the translation staff translated and/or read in english exactly what was on our paper, we had to mark checkboxes saying that "yes we were in fact given this information"... which was almost entirely information that we'd already gotten from our actual in-store staff member. i mean, they did stuff like confirm which phone and which plan we're getting, even confirm our payment method. dude just let us talk to the in-store lady, okay?? because she already confirmed it herself!
so after that the lady just kept kinda sorting out paperwork, she also had to scan our residence card, health insurance card and bank cards individually. then had to link our bank cards to our phone number via a special machine, so we'd be able to pay our phone bill each month (which comes on the 26th of the month btw). had to open the phone box to show us that everything was in fact there safe and sound (japan likes doing this). then had to put in the SIM cards for us, which took like 20 minutes. etc. we even protested at the whole help center thing, saying that since we can read english it'd go way faster to just read the paper ourselves, but no. four hours.
and none of our classmates who complain about japan have had to go through this. they had magical phones that could take japanese SIM cards no problem, and they're "rich" (compared to us) so used more expensive plans etc, so their in-out time was like 20 minutes. but the good thing is, if we keep using the same company but just need a new phone or new SIM card it's gonna go a lot faster next time. and it's not like you get a new phone once a month or something like that...
...anyway, now we have phones, meaning: google maps! LINE! actually being able to call in emergencies! we can travel to new cities without the fear of getting lost! we can make membership cards at the grocery store, manga rental shop, etc!
and we have bank accounts, meaning: applying for jobs will be easier! i can now order off Rakuten, which is cheaper and more interesting than Amazon!
it feels like we're really deep into japanese society now - after not having had these two things for six months. almost like we're real citizens. teehee.
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