Will Miss #35 - being a "millionaire" (reflection)

My husband's old pay stub. Ah, those were the days... days when we had jobs.

If you think that the way you perceive money and numbers does not matter, start paying very close attention to the way prices are set in your home country. My current rent is $1395. It isn't that way because someone figured that it would just be too high if it were $1400, but rather because that's as close as they could get without having to manage $1 increments. That number was chosen because a rent starting with "13" feels significantly less than one starting with "14", even when there is a negligible different in 1395 and 1400.

There was a positive psychological impact that came along with seeing relatively enormous strings of numbers on our pay information sheets. I miss that, and I miss getting paid for the work I do. ;-)

Will Miss #516 - less emphasis on money

One thing that I was aware of long before I left Japan was that the emphasis in America is largely on money. Your value as a person is determined by your ability to earn cash. Your value to the family is determined by what you bring to the bank account or what you take away. An acquaintance, whose family of origin is from a Middle Eastern culture, said that, there, family was most important, but in America, money is. Though that is not always true, I have seen plenty of families who value their material wealth more than their family relationships. While that can happen in many cultures, it happens more often here. It's not just about relationships though, people judge you by your job and how much they believe you are paid. Tell someone you are an engineer or a computer programmer and they respect you. Tell someone you are working in social services and they will not, even though you are working to help people in need. It's not about what you do. It's about how much you make.

Though Japan is also a consumerist culture, the core of the culture is not about earning potential. I miss the fact that there is less (don't read that as "no") emphasis on money in Japan than in the U.S.

Random Thoughts: Moving

This was our living room within days of our departure from Japan. Four suitcases were all we took back with us. We didn't ship anything. It was just 4 suitcases. Here is what it looked like before we started tearing it apart.

My husband and I lived in Tokyo for 23 years and we did not move once. It wasn't because we had a great landlord, though we did. It wasn't because we liked our apartment, though we did. It was mainly because of "location, location, location". More than ever, in Tokyo, where you live has an enormous impact on your quality of life and I don't mean living around a bunch of trees or near a park, at least not in our case.

One of the things that we were happy about living where we did in Asagaya was that it allowed for a very short commute to Shinjuku and both my husband and I spent the majority of our time in Japan working there. It was 12 minutes on the subway or 9 minutes on JR. Though we had to walk to the stations, the total commute time was never more than a half hour even with all of the walking. Very few people are blessed with such short commutes and it has an immense impact on quality of life. Time not spent being jostled about by strangers on a super crowded (and often super hot) train is time spent relaxing in the comfort of your own home.

Many of my students and coworkers endured extremely long commutes, sometimes as long as 90 minutes one way, in order to have a different lifestyle. Sometimes, they lived with their parents (generally in the case of office ladies) and sometimes with their families in houses they could only afford to buy if they lived in the outer suburbs (like Saitama).

While I didn't begrudge them these choices at all and certainly empathized with the economic realities, sometimes I felt that they would have been better off getting smaller places or paying a little more and living closer. That being said, the way that Japanese companies move around to different offices or shuttle employees out to different offices makes picking a location and living in it permanently very difficult. If you want to buy a house, you pretty much have to accept the high likelihood that you're going to end up commuting for a fair amount of your free time on weekdays sooner or later.

Moving has been much on my mind lately because I've done it 5 times over the last year after not having done it for an extremely long time. It has been one of the most exhausting and difficult experiences of my life and I don't even own that much stuff. Compared to most people, we live a spartan existence. We only own 7 pieces of furniture(kitchen table, desk, sofa bed, printer stand, corner shelf, rolling coffee table, dresser) and 4 chairs (2 office, 2 kitchen). Most of our packing involved kitchen implements and various necessities as well as what few mementos we brought back from Japan. Yet, even with so little, it's an arduous task moving around so often.

After all of the hassles of moving, my husband and I thought about what it would have been like had we decided to move in Japan. The truth is that things are done rather differently there. Most of the time, people just pay a service to come in and do everything for them, at least in the big cities. Here, we've borrowed a moving truck to put our furnishings in public storage while we reside in a furnished place for the next 3-4 months and done all of the work ourselves. We've also loaded up our small car and ran back and forth between places.

In Japan, this would never be done this way because most people don't own cars and it would be very hard to manage the logistics (parking, carrying furniture though narrow doors and corridors without taking out a door frame). Also, frankly, I'm not even sure if public storage exists for private individuals in Japan. It probably does, but not at the rates or at the same volume as it does here. I see public storage facilities all over the place in northern California. I don't know if everyone is moving most of their worldly possessions into temporary storage like us, but I doubt it. I think most people are storing the overflow of crap they can't keep in their cluttered homes into another space because it's relatively cheap and plentiful.

I didn't really need a reminder of how lifestyle is dictated by surroundings and economics rather than by true choice, but moving so much since we got here and moving so little in Japan gave me one anyway. You can have more here in America because it doesn't cost much to have more. You can move here more often because, though it is incredibly hard and exhausting, it doesn't require nearly as much money. That being said, I still miss my life and lifestyle in Japan and the ease and lower expense of certain experiences in here don't really make me miss it any less, but those are thoughts for another day.

Won't Miss #512 - dutiful citizen myth

Is that a begging bowl or are you just happy to see me?

In the imaginations of most foreigners in Japan, Japanese people are paragons of civic virtue and foreigners are vile tax dodgers who whine and complain about paying their city taxes, health insurance, and contributing to the pension system. The truth is that most Japanese people do pay their legally-mandated expenses, but only because there is a system in place for salaried employees which leaves them no other choice. The other types of employees, the growing legions of "temporary workers" and the self-employed skip out on as many of these government obligations as possible. In fact, the government even knows they are not paying and shrugs its shoulders and walks away. Numerous Japanese people have told my husband and I that they don't pay their pension fees and when a government worker shows up at the door to collect, they simply say they don't have any money and the worker gives up and goes away.

I won't miss this oft-repeated myth of the perfectly dutiful Japanese citizen in the face of the (more human) reality.

Random Memories #6

My first experience with Japanese money did not come along when I arrived at Narita airport for a vacation in 1988. In fact, I didn't take any American cash to Japan for exchange because of the unique circumstances under which I went there. My boyfriend at that time (now husband) was paying off borrowed money for college to his parents and I sent them my $500 and he reserved the equivalent yen he would have sent them for me to spend when I got there. Keep in mind that that was a fair chunk of money in those days as compared to now.

This neat little arrangement meant that neither of us had to filter money through a bank and "lose" on the exchange rate as the banks will add a yen or two to the rate to get their cut. It also meant that my first exposure to Japanese cash came in the mail and in a manner which had nothing to do with currency that I could actually spend. The aforementioned boyfriend sent me many interesting things that he was given or discovered while staying there for a year on his own. One of those things was the cash that I have scanned in for this post. I didn't know at the time, but it is a 50-yen (64 cents) note. 

These were issued between 1942 and 1944 and feature the gate to Yasukuni Shrine. If that place doesn't mean anything to you, then check any news about controversial shrine visits by politicians. This is the place that angers China when Prime Ministers pay a call on it during the New Year's holidays. My best research, which means a quick check on the web and not nearly the "best" I can do, seems to indicate that these were withdrawn from circulation in the early 50's.

My husband can't recall where he got this, but his best guess is that a student gave it to him and then he passed it on to me. These days, people use 50-yen coins rather than paper money. I'm guessing that 50 yen was a lot more money in the years in which this was circulated. I'd also wager that this would be rejected as currency if one tried to use it these days. A bank might be required by law to take it in exchange for a more modern version. However, the frowning and brow-furrowing that would result, not to mention the time it'd take while supervisors all the way up the food chain were consulted to figure out what to do, would hardly be worth the 50 yen. 

In terms of collectibility, my best research, and this is somewhat better research than that I did for finding out when these bills were removed from circulation, says it is for all intents and purposes, worthless. There are a few versions of a 50-yen note from that time that are moderately valuable, but this is not one of them. Still, as someone who lived in Japan for 23 years and was thoroughly accustomed to what the modern cash looked like, this is a pretty nifty item to have in my collection.

Will Miss #461 - great money design

I'm annoyed that I didn't have any other bills to show (because this was all I had left from my Japaense cash), but you can see more of them here. 

My in-laws recently returned from a trip to Spain and showed me the design of the Euro. It's pretty good because each bill is a different size and appeared to have various colors. This is compared to American cash which is all pretty much the same size and color. Japanese cash goes a step further than European money. Each bill is a different size and also has tactile dots to help the blind distinguish them (which may or may not be braille as I can't read it and verify that). The coins have different sizes, weights, and holes to help them further be more easily identified. American money must be a big pain for the blind because they have to rely on others honesty or have a trusted person sort out their cash.

My mother is blind, and I often appreciated the effort that was made into designing Japanese money such that it was easier to use for people with such a disability as well as harder to confuse for even sighted people. I will miss this daily reminder of consideration for those with this particular hardship. 

Will Miss #454 - (more) willing redistribution of wealth

One thing about a lot of attitudes in America which upsets me is the preoccupation people have with how their taxes are distributed at times to people they view as deadbeats or as having chosen irresponsible paths. While in Japan this attitude does apply to homeless people and there is not the greatest sympathy for the unemployed, it doesn't tend to apply to society at large.There are a variety of examples of this, but one of them is the existence of suicide insurance in a country with a high suicide rate. When I discuss this with Japanese people and ask if perhaps it's not such a good idea (as it may encourage suicide), they feel that it is important to have some sort of financial safety net to help the families of troubled people even though they know the family will collect more than the deceased paid in. I've also spoken to many people who, while not happy with the  notion of paying a higher consumption (sales) tax, say that they believe it is important to give more money to the elderly even if it means they personally pay more for goods and services.

There is a much higher level of comfort about seeing ones money given to others who have a greater need as well as an understanding that we are all a part of society and contribute to a good one by sometimes paying more than our share and I'll miss this attitude.

Will Miss #448 - cash-based culture

Every several months, applications for automatic payment of various utility bills were put in my mailbox. Every several months, I recycled the forms. Though the Suica and Pasmo pre-paid cards are changing, to some extent, the amount of cash used in Japan, it is still largely a cash-based culture and I prefer this. It's not that I like handling money and I do realize that electronic handling of funds has many benefits. However, I think that the further removed we are from the experience of actually paying for things, the more likely we will be to lose track of our finances. I think that using credit cards in particular contributes to the culture of debt that America has because we don't conceptualize money in the same way once it becomes about numbers on statements rather than notes in wallets.

I'll miss the simplicity and awareness that comes along with being in a largely cash-based society.

Will Miss #385 - (relative) economic parity

I've said before that Japan conducts a sort of "soft socialism", but it's not necessarily rooted in the redistribution of wealth. There is, however, relative economic parity in Japan with a large middle class, few rich people, and few poor people. This is accomplished by not offering presidents and CEOs obscenely lavish salaries and keeping the bottom income bracket a little further from the rocks and by not undercutting employees in order to service stock holders. The Japanese do not embrace conspicuous wealth and overtly disapprove of the flaunting of wealth. Though they aren't known for their political activism or complaining, it is clear to me from years of talking to Japanese folks that they will not easily suffer their company leaders being grotesquely overpaid while the people at the bottom lose lifetime employment and financial security. Being roughly financially in a similar situation as others in Japan means people feel like they are in the same boat lifestyle-wise. It undercuts feelings of envy, keeps crime low, and makes people more satisfied with their quality of life. 

I will miss the social benefits of living in a society in which most people live at approximately the same economic level. 

Won't Miss #365 - wiring money home

As I've mentioned before, Japanese banks have paltry interest rates on savings accounts. In fact, I'm surprised most people don't hide their money in old bento boxes and bury it in the back yard. That probably has more to do with the fact that so few people have actual backyards than it being considered a lesser option than putting it in the bank. Since I'd prefer to lose as little of my money to inflation as possible, I'd like to make a little interest on my savings. The only way to do that is to wire it back home. This is a big pain in the patootie. First of all, you have to fill out a bunch of forms in Japanese, which isn't so terrible but they appear to require quite a bit of after-faffing in which a polite clerk will take the documents and hand them off to someone who will frown over them and a computer screen for approximately 22 minutes. You can then hand them about $75 in fees and transfer your funds at an exchange rate which is at least one yen worse than the actual rate and wait for the cash to reach your account back home. Oh yes, you also have to tell them why you're sending it home and if they don't like your reason (and suspect money laundering), they're going to go tell the police on you and it'll be "fun" hijinks for all.

I won't miss the hassle, cost, and sense that my privacy is being unnecessarily invaded (in a minimal manner) when I wire money home.

Won't Miss #351 - paltry (or no) raises

The economic situation in Japan has been going downhill for quite some time. That doesn't mean companies don't make money, but rather that Japan hasn't been growing economically on the whole. However, even before the downturn became so dire, raises were very pathetic at most companies. It's not unusual for people to get raises of as little as a few thousand yen (about $24) or no raise at all, even when a company is profitable. Whether or not you're getting a raise has nothing to do with job performance or evaluation. It has to do with perceptions of whether or not you require one based on your age, gender, position, and marital status as well as how well the company has been doing economically. As a married women in a subordinate position at my former office, the president simply decided I didn't need much in the way of raises whereas a married male coworker doing the same job got a substantial raise. We both had exactly the same responsibilities, and I did more work than him and had significantly more useful and refined skills (computer-based) and could do more varied work. The male coworker got a 10,000 yen raise and I got 1,000 yen, because the president concluded he needed it to support his wife (but no kids). Never mind that his wife worked full-time and my husband didn't. It was all about what the president imagined the situation to be, not our value as workers or actual circumstances.

I won't miss the way in which raises are determined nor how tiny they tend to be.

Won't Miss #347 - monthly pay

This is a MUFG (Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group) building, which is very tentatively linked to this post. I'm using this picture because of the man and poster person staring in awe at the silver scrotum sculpture in front of the building, which is more interesting than a generic bank picture. 

In the U.S., I was paid every two weeks and some people are paid every week. I think the system is set up in that fashion in order to compensate for the fact that most Americans are poor at budgeting and tend to spend all of the money they have on hand a bit too rapidly. Yeah, I know how that sounds like I'm bashing my home country, but it does reflect a culture in which many people often talk about "being broke until payday". Personally, I haven't had problems budgeting myself and I don't mind the fact that Japanese companies pay you once a month from that viewpoint. The problem for me isn't about being a spendthrift. It's about seeing the banks swamped on the 25th of the month (and the next few days for those who lag) and not being able to do any sort of simple transactions there if I happen to forget that it's close to payday or must do something necessary. Note that because I'm a foreigner and my money gets held onto longer by two of the three agencies that pay me for various jobs, I don't get paid on the 25th anyway, so it's not like I'm waiting for a deposit to withdraw money. Sometimes, things just come up and I need to go to the bank when everyone else gets paid.

I won't miss having to fight massive lines at the bank once a month because everyone else is getting paid at the same time once a month.

Will Miss #262 - low interest on loans

Hello Kitty wants to loan you money for your needs at low rates.

The flip-side to the previous post is that Japanese people get to borrow money at a rate which tends to be substantially lower than those in the West. If you buy a house or car, you get very attractive interest rates. This is especially appealing when you consider that it often takes 30 years to buy expensive property in Japan. It's also common in Japan for there to be no interest on small private loans depending on the type of account you have with your bank.

I will miss the low interest rates for loans.

Won't Miss #262 - low interest on savings

This sign does not talk about savings interest rates. Such signs do not exist because such information is too embarrassing to be promoted. Please enjoy this picture of the pretty model next to information on credit card loans at Mizuho bank instead. It's the best I could do as a tangentially related picture.

The Japanese are a country of savers, and that means that banks offer them little incentive to save more than they already do. The idea that your money should be working for you, rather than you working for it, would be a baffling notion with interest rates that have to be expressed as only being to the right of the decimal point. The rates are so embarrassingly low that it's often hard to find out what they are for a particular bank, even for Japanese people. My students have tried to find the rates for their banks and it's a chore to tunnel through the information the bank offers to find them. If you live in Japan, the only way to make any appreciable interest on your savings is to send your money back home.

I won't miss the insanely low interest rates on savings.

Will Miss #233 - takarakuji

 A window which sells Japanese lottery tickets.

"Takarakuji" is the Japanese version of the lottery. Let me say that I do not buy lottery tickets or gamble. To me, it's simply tossing ones money out the window because the odds are so low that you'll win as much as you spend, let alone more. That being said, I always get a kick out of the way the Japanese lottery works because the prizes really aren't that big, especially when you factor in the cost of something like buying a piece of land in one of the big cities. Back home, people win more money than they should be able to spend in a lifetime (then manage to spend it anyway) when the really big lotteries hit. There is the potential in winning to transform the remainder of your life. In Japan, the total cash prize pool is huge, but tends to be spread out among many more winners with top prizes being in the $2,000,000 range and many more smaller prizes being offered.

There's something very egalitarian and socialist about the way in which a huge pie is divided into more and smaller pieces when it comes to the lottery in Japan, and I'll miss that.

Will Miss #189 - the Suica Card system

Japan is still largely a "cash-based" society. That means that the Japanese aren't embracing the idea of debit cards* that withdraw money automatically from their bank accounts. However, Japan is also technologically advanced (and inclined) and companies are always pushing to make life more convenient. They have come up with a system which allows them to have the benefits of the debit system while still being cash-based, and that is the Suica card system. You get a plastic card and purchase credits for the card, then use the card like a debit card. When the money on the card runs out, you can "charge" it by putting it and the amount of cash you want to put on it into a machine. These cards can be used for public transport (buses, trains, subways) and at many shops and convenience stores. You can charge up the cards easily almost anywhere and it takes but seconds to do it.

Personally, I like dealing with this system better than having someone take money directly from my bank account because it gives me a stronger sense of how much money I am spending (and I can't mistakenly overdraw and don't have to pay any bank fees), and I'll miss it.

*Note: I haven't lived in the U.S. for a little over two decades and have never used a debit card, so forgive me if I'm missing something about their functionality.

Won't Miss #121 - worrying about exchange rates

The flip-side to gaining advantage from exchange rates is that you have to always concern yourself with when to send money back. You gamble every time you decide to trek off to the bank and exchange currency that this is as low as it might go for the foreseeable future. Sometimes you find that you hit a sweet spot, and at others you find that if you had just waited a day or so longer, you'd have benefited greatly. What is more, sometimes you have no choice about the timing, and get royally shafted by a dip in the value of the yen.

I won't miss having to fret over when to send money back or regret that I can't wait for the rates to change to wire money home.

Will Miss #120 - benefitting from exchange rates

My husband and I earned less money last year than the year before that, yet we were able to send more money home to place in our long-term savings than in more profitable years. If you work in Japan, but plan to return home, favorable exchange rates can really boost your ability to save whether you make more money or not. At 87 yen to the dollar, a million yen means $11,435 dollars to send back. At 120 yen to the dollar, that's $8,333. Sending money back at the right time can make a substantial difference.

I'll miss making less money, but actually saving more simply because the winds of the exchange rate are blowing favorably.

Won't Miss #89 - change and receipt offering method

This is a topic which you will almost certainly hear a foreign person complain about after they've spent a short time in Japan. Men in particular seem to be put out by it, but it's an issue for everyone. When you purchase something in Japan, most of the time you are given your receipt and then your change is dumped on top of the receipt. Since you already have your wallet in your other hand, this method makes it very hard to handle your money and sometimes results in dropping it. For contrast, I'll tell you that, in the U.S., the receipt is usually put in the bag with whatever you buy so that you don't have to handle both it and your change.

I won't miss this awkward method of change handling.

Won't Miss #81 - cluelessness about reducing coin return

Before I ever set foot in Japan, I used to hear about how the Japanese were completely walloping Americans on math test scores. We were made to feel like our kids were hard-pressed to add 2 and 2 and come up with 4 while Japanese kids could do Calculus in seconds with the power of their mighty brains. After coming to Japan, let's say that I've been rather dissuaded from the notion that their math skills are incredibly superior. Part of this has been fueled by the inability for cashiers to grasp an extremely simple math concept. That is the idea of giving a certain amount of money to get back the fewest coins. For instance, if my purchase rings up to 702 yen, I will give 1,202 yen so that I can get back just one 500-yen coin. On multiple occasions, I've had the cashier dumbly try to return the extra money (in this case, the 202 yen). It's as if the notion of doing things this way simply cannot be computed.

I won't miss having to argue with cashiers about this simple notion in order to avoid getting back a pocketful of coins.