Things are different...

WARNING; contains high levels of Petulance, Fury and Arsey-ness.
Reading material of this nature harms your unborn baby.

Culture shock can be a misleading term, conjuring up images of the lone traveller, seeing a country for the first time & being whisked away on a magical rollercoaster of new sights, sounds and smells. Whilst this is certainly true on some days, the reality of the experience lingers more. The leering face of differing notions of perceived common sense takes the time every now and then to pop up and say "boo".

Though I`m scarcely a lifer, after a year and a bit over here (language aside) I thought I`d done a fairly good job of adapting, but there are still things that ruffle me spectacularly. Case in point, the Japanese Post Office, home of my yen account.

Even in English, I have a hard time with the nature of bureaucrats. None however are quite so particular as the Japanese.

In order to keep my bank happy, I need to send some money back to the UK every month. Due to my nature as an immigrant (I`m tolerated because of my usefulness), this transaction needs to be done in person with all the requisite forms, ID, et al. Sounds OK - even though I work at several locations in a month, there are Post Office branches everywhere...

...but no...

...only specific branches deal with International Money Transfers. Sounds OK - some of my schools are reasonably close to Kawasaki Centre. I can pop in after work...

...but no...

...even though the Central PO closes at five, the actual desk I need shuts up shop at four...half an hour before I do.

So today I did the unthinkable. Faced with an afternoon of no classes, wherein I am free to do as I please, as long as I stay in school, I asked if I could take some time just to nip into town and sort out this very important bit of paperwork. This is a truly cavalier defiance of my illustrious employers` "don`t-ask" policy and Japans` national pathology. I was reluctantly given permission.

Off I trundled to the Central PO, already in a Great British huff, as there`s a branch not two minutes away from this particular school, that couldn`t help me for reasons of procedure. I should have known better than to assume that all I had to do was hand over the already completed form & let the assistant carry out whatever jiggery-pokery she needed.

The first problem she encountered was that the name of the payee was the same as that of the payor. This always foxes them, so I was prepared, informing her that it was my account in England. The second problem was a bit more infuriating.

In Japan, ones` surname comes before ones' given name, hence my ID card having me as Kearton Christopher. I made the colossal mistake of writing my name in the Western order. She didn`t like that, and proceeded to draw a series of arrows on the form.

Then there`s the frankly absurd amount of names I have. I deliberately left out "Louis" on all my applications to get into the country. I didn`t leave out "Patrick".
On the money transfer form, I left out "Patrick".
My ID card says "Patrick".
She asked me to write "Patrick".
I wrote "Patrick".

I wish I knew the Japanese word for "flexible".

The last problem was partially my fault, as my language ability is still very basic. When the time came for the closing stages of the application, it transpired that I had to give her the money in cash, even though I`ve done this procedure several times now & this is the first time I`ve had to do that. When I think about it, she might have asked me if I had the money now. Understanding only part of that question, I answered yes...so off I go to the corner of the room to draw out the money, walk all of a yard back and hand it to her...but this is the sting...

...it turns out that there are two kinds of form for this process - one that requires cash, and one that allows you to transfer money directly from one account to another...the latter is the form that I handed to her in the first place.

Why did she ask me about cash? Why? Why? Why?

There aren`t enough curses in the lexicon of profanity to adequately express my bile.


Lighter news - a couple of third year girls, fresh from a school trip to Kyoto, brought me back a fan depicting Kinkakuji...oh Japan, I can`t stay angry with you...