Stupid Bank!

I was so absolutely frustrated and annoyed yesterday!  I came home exhausted and with a headache!  My story isn't really a plea for help, just a venting of I don't know what!

Last week sometime I decided I was going to empty out a bank account that I have been keeping for Takumi since he was a child.  I did the same thing for Leiya last year taking her the "not-a-lot of savings" when I saw her last year in November.

"You can use it for your wedding dress..."

This time however I don't plan to hand over an envelope of money to Takumi, (the way it is often done in Japan) but to have the funds sent by remittance directly to his bank account.  A-ha!  But Japan is notorious about red tape and regulations so I went to the bank (post office bank... long story, until recently considered the most reliable type of banking in Japan) with my family chop in hand .  Chops are used instead of signatures in Japan.

"Okay...  I want to empty my son's account.  See, I have the chop right here that I used when I opened the account (and I was the one who opened the account).  I want to have the money transferred to my son's American bank account and since I already understand that I have no legal right to send money from HIS account, I want to put the same money into MY account and then send it from there.

Why I have legal right to empty out his account I don't know but with the chop I do... 

"We are so sorry.  We no longer can transfer money from this branch of the bank.  You will have to go to the main branch downtown to do that.  The law was changed earlier this year.  Also, your legal right to empty your son's account only is up to the such-and such an amount.  Your son's account has a tiny bit more money in it.  Please take out half of your son's account funds in two separate transactions on two separate days."

Fine.  I gave the nice lady my chop, I filled out the withdrawal forms I filled out the deposit forms for my own account, the money was transferred into my account, I'll come back another day for the rest.  And I did, yesterday.  No problem yet.

I went down to the main bank fully expecting to transfer the money now in MY account to Takumi's bank.  I even brought 10 years of bank transaction records that I'd kept of sending money to Takumi when he was in college in California, and to Leiya's home-stay family when she was in high school and also to Leiya when she was in college.  Over the years I've made a lot of bank transactions to my kids in America!

I explained again, putting my chop on the counter along with my bank book, pointing to my pile of papers. 

"We are so sorry.  It seems that your MY NUMBER is not registered with your bank account.  You are not allowed to transfer money to another bank unless your MY NUMBER is registered."

MY NUMBER is sort of like the US Social Security Number but this system only began in Japan four or five years ago.  There was NO MY NUMBER when I started the accounts. 

Okay.  I need a MY NUMBER card to prove I have a MY NUMBER.

"Can't you just accept my Alien Registration card (which I had on me) or even my American passport?  (which I also had in my purse.)

"We are so sorry.  I know it is a bother.  We only accept MY NUMBER cards."

Fine, I said a bit irritated.  That means I'll have to get Tetsu to go down to the city hall to get a MY NUMBER card.  I'll do what I have to do.

"ALSO...  In order to transfer money to your son's account we need proof of your relationship with your son..."

"WHAT!!!  How am I supposed to prove that my son is my son?!  What does it matter if I'm sending money to my son or to whomever I want?"

"Those are the rules.  You have to prove a relationship.  You may do this by bringing in a copy of your family registry with both your names on it."

This is more complicated than the bank people know.  BECAUSE JAPAN DOESN'T PERMIT FOREIGNERS ON THE FAMILY REGISTRY!!!  It is so ridiculous.  (There is a way to get around this but I wasn't going into details then or now.)

"I'm not ON the family registry!  How am I supposed to prove this?  What does it matter if I want to send my OWN money to whomever I want, whether it is my son or not?!"

"We are so sorry.  Those are the rules." 

The nice lady at the counter had called over a supervisor to stand next to her and bow deeply at me while they both explained the RULES!  Dang it all, everyone is so dang NICE while they roadblock me completely!!!

"Okay....  I guess I'm going to have to get my husband involved in this.  Please write it all out for him IN JAPANESE because I'm not going to be able to explain it all (without him telling me I'm mistaken)."

"And we are so sorry to tell you that you also have to have proof of what your son intends to do with the money once he gets it."

"WHAT!!!!???  He's going to use it!  He's getting married!  He's planning to live his life in the States!!!  He doesn't need a bank account in Japan!!!"

"That's not a good enough reason...  "

(They had the audacity to say that!)

"Listen, I did the same thing for my daughter last year.  I emptied her account, I took it to America, she used it to buy a wedding dress."

"Oh, that is very good!  You can have your son say that he plans to use the money for his wedding!  That is a very good reason."

"Fine...  That's what he's going to do."

"So now you will need to supply us with a printed message from your son saying that he is going to use the money you send for his wedding.  Anything that has proof that he is going to have a wedding."

"And then, so sorry to say, that there will be a delay of a few weeks or months while the bank checks all the legal files that you submit and also confers with the US bank.  It is possible that your files will be returned to you and more additions will be required.  And were you aware that a money transfer charge of $50 will be applied?  We suggest you complete the transaction as soon as possible because from January the fee will be $70."

I really about lost it.  They wrote it all down.  They apologized long and with great sighs.  They bowed and offered help with any other problems I might have and cheerfully explained that I could just take the money from my account and carry it away with me...  They were just not able to SEND it.

As predicted, when I stormed into the house telling Tetsu, he didn't believe me and poo-pooed by efforts. 

"You've got it wrong, Tanya.  You're not making sense.  That's ridiculous."

I pulled out my handwritten paper from the bank and the many pamphlets they'd given me and handed them to him and then stormed upstairs. 

     In compliance with the Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Act and other laws, we must confirm the purpose of each remittance at the time of application...  For this reason, remittance purposes should be described specifically, such as "payment for books," "living expenses for children", "academic society membership fee," "donation" and so on. 
     We may also require documents after accepting the remittance in order to check further details of the purpose of the remittance, the resource of the remittance and the relationship between the payee, etc.  If so, please be reminded that some extra days will be needed.

It's all there in black in white on the bank's Guide to International Remittances pamphlet. 

I'm now planning to figure out how to cut off all relations with this bank.  So there!

Christmas quilts

As you may have guessed from the lack of mention on my blog, we don't celebrate Thanksgiving here in Japan.  Many years we will get together with the Yamadas at their house for Thanksgiving but this year the Yamadas were in the States visiting their family thus the holiday went past Tetsu and me un-noticed...

I have though started thinking about Christmas because I just recently finished another McKenna Christmas quilt.

More than 5 years ago three of my patchwork friends and I fell in love with the McKenna Christmas quilt series and though none of us had ever done art quilts we ordered four kits and figured with each other's support we could figure out how to make them.  I THINK (but I don't know if I remember correctly) that those kits had pre-cut pieces and I do remember that the fabric was all included...  I chose to do the large horizontal pattern with lots and lots of animals on it.  Mrs. Furui chose to do a pattern with bears and a snowman.  Another friend chose to do the cardinals and stockings and a third friend chose to so the Santa and reindeer.

Well, McKenna's fabrics were just gorgeous and we had ever so much fun making the rather expensive quilts.  After a year or two went by I decided I wanted to do the cardinal pattern also and added that to my wall.  I still haven't gotten around to borrowing Mrs. Furui's pattern of the snowman... but alas, the third friend moved away...

Mrs. Furui and I have often said that if we could ever get a hold of the McKenna kits for the last two or three Christmas panels we would definitely splurge and buy them as McKenna stopped selling the kits though she still has a few patterns on her website.  A couple of years ago when looking at McKenna's website I noticed that the Santa pattern was on sale but not as a kit...  Could I figure out enough appropriate fabrics from my own stash?  I clicked the BUY button and bought the Santa pattern and the next summer when I was in the States I even found some batik fabric for the starry night sky but then the project got put away in my cupboard.

This fall I decided to do the Santa Christmas panel and though the batiks aren't as beautiful as the custom fabric from the original, the quilt came out very nicely!  I love all the embellishments that can be done...  The beading on the reindeer, the cording for the reins.

The cardinal panel that I made later was made with leftover fabrics from the animal panel... the border fabric is the same in both.  Purple ribbon on a blue pine cone background. 

For the Santa panel I found similar purple fabric in my stash and actually used the very last of the pine cone fabric that I'd saved protectively!  So there is still SOME continuity in the three quilts.

I suppose on my wall I really should put Santa up in the sky and the animals down under him but that's not how these three quilts fit on my small wall.  If nothing else, I am ready for Christmas just in my living room!

Wedding wear

This morning I have been texting with Julieta and I was asking about her plans for wearing a wedding dress.  I look back at wedding dress shopping with Leiya with such fondness and I am expecting lots of pictures when Julieta and her mother start looking at wedding dresses!

Kimono wedding apparel is common Japan though some brides will choose to wear a white wedding dress.  There is also the custom of changing clothes during the wedding reception and so often a bride will wear a white wedding gown at the ceremony (if it is a church ceremony) and then change into a wedding kimono half way through the reception.  Or maybe the other way around is more common...  the couple will have a wedding at a shrine and will wear traditional kimono and then later will change into a wedding gown and tuxedo during the reception.  It is quite a production for a bride to get into a wedding kimono entailing many people helping with layers of kimono, tying of the elaborate obi (belt), traditional make-up etc. 

My friend and English student, Mrs. Ide,'s daughter just had a wedding and Mrs. Ide shared a couple of photos with me and said I could post them on my blog.  Thank you Mrs. Ide!

Mrs. Ide's daughter Y-san got married earlier this month at the main shrine of Nikko and one of her wedding pictures with her mother was taken in front of the famous red bridge near the shrine.  Y-san is wearing a traditional white kimono which is well padded and covers the elaborately tied obi beneath.  Mrs. Ide is wearing a the traditional kimono for the mother of the bride.  It is always black but the embroidery and brocade along the bottom express the taste wearer.  The brocade obi is tied in the simple style of an "older" woman.  On the shoulders and on the back are the small family crest.

When Leiya was planning her wedding I thought, as mother-of-the-bride, that I might wear a black dress that I have.  But Tony's mother commented that black was so somber and that she wanted everyone to know she was joyful about the wedding and so she definitely wouldn't wear black!  I was thinking from the Japanese point of view about black being for formal situations.  Black is the way any mother of the groom or bride would go in Japan!

By the way...  Doesn't Mrs. Ide look elegant in her kimono?!  She often wears kimono in every day life and she is very comfortable wearing one and doesn't have a stilted look that happens when someone only wears kimono for a special occasion.  Kimono so suits Mrs. Ide.

Here is Y-san and her husband in their traditional wear at the shrine hall.  A bride wears this white hood over another headpiece and it is supposed to be hiding the "horns of jealousy".  You can see how padded the kimono bottom is. 

I love this picture of Y-san and her husband.  Though she went for a traditional style wedding, she later changed her outer robe to very ornate and colorful one!  And look at them holding their snowboards!  Both Y-san and her husband are avid snowboarders and I think they met on a snowboarding outing.  I also love that they are holding hands which is a rather unusual show of affection when in kimono!

Weddings are so wonderful no matter what the culture!

Knitting again

Earlier this month (or maybe it was at the end of last month) I made a declaration that I wasn't going to knit anything for Tetsu this Christmas, ending a nearly 40 year tradition.  I announced my decision to Tetsu who took it philosophically saying that he had SO many knitted sweaters and vests that he already didn't make good use of.  Good.  That tradition has been laid to rest and instead I bought him the funny sweatshirt from Bitmoji (which he has yet to trump up enough courage to wear!)

The cold evenings we have been having with the kettle boiling away on the kerosene stove and the cats lounging around on the heated carpet are the nights when I most yearn to do some knitting.  Instead I have been tatting but for some reason that has been unsatisfying.  I want to feel yarn in my fingers!! 

I have enough left over yarn to keep me knitting for years.  So many rolls of this and that color and weight.  I could start making socks?  or do either of us need a new muffler?  Hmmm...  I could make myself a stash-busting sweater or vest with all the mis-matched yarn... for that matter, I could make TETSU a vest with all the mis-matched yarn but I didn't think he'd really go for that... he is rather conservative.  I pulled out knitting patterns for myself...  Nah...  I wouldn't feel right declaring I wasn't making anything for Tetsu and then starting in on myself...  (Misguided guilt complex, I know.)

Sunday I had to go to a craft store to pick up some cording for a quilt I've been making (to be shown later this week).  I don't particularly think of this store as a good place to buy yarn or fabric as it is very trendy and the quality isn't always great though the prices are good.  You guessed it, after choosing my cording I wandered into the very limited aisle of yarn.  Not great, not great, passable, hmm...  this yarn is nice.   Ohh!  I DO like variegated yarn!

After a lot of considering I bought yarn again!!!  It is not 100% wool but Tetsu has complained that some of my sweaters have been TOO hot.  It is rather fine yarn probably more complementary to women's wear but it is pretty.  I'm only giving myself a month to knit something...  a vest, not a sweater but I am a fast knitter and it is what I've been yearning to do these past couple of weeks.   The inexpensive yarn doesn't really compare to the ultra high quality of yarn of past years from the specialty shop (which has pared down its inventory) but knitting SOMETHING is better than knitting NOTHING!

Tetsu laughed at my industry with the knitting needles again.

"You said you were going to stop!  I don't need another vest or sweater!  ... But I DO like the pattern that you're knitting."

I think he is rather pleased, don't you?

Mystery in the cemetery

The days are cold and short this season.  John and I try to get in a 20 minute walk every afternoon and we usually head over to the cemetery across the street.

The neighborhood cemetery is a nice, cheerful place and as I wander around I go past graves of people that used to live in my neighborhood, I meet school children I know with their families cleaning their ancestors' graves, I nod to the staff member who daily waters the grass around the communal areas.  John and I can work off a lot of calories just wandering the cemetery rows.  Does that sound morbid?  It isn't.

A few months back I came across a grave-in-progress being built.  When I thought to take a photo it was already at this stage...  The chamber for ashes will be in the middle...  The stone placed above the chambers.  The very modern non-slip checkerboard of marble is there for people to stand and pray.

A week later the chamber had been closed with just an area for putting urns still open.  The rectangular stone stand on the left is for the Buddhist prayer-boards with prayers written on them that are repurchased every year.  You can see the tall wooden prayer-boards besides graves in the background.

And then finally the completed grave.  The arch receptacle in the middle is for burning incense.  The two cylinder receptacles are for cut flowers.  Not very visible on the right side is a marble slab for the engraving of names and dates for family members who have passed on.  Many generations of ashes will eventually come to be interred in this one family grave.  This very modern grave has the word JOY written on it which is a bit unusual for a Japanese cemetery.

Among other people I have met when I visit the cemetery, one day I came across an elderly woman.  She seemed to have come from the vending machine area and was heading back into the main part of the cemetery, but when I turned another corner the woman was nowhere to be seen!  How odd.

Weeks later I recognized the woman again walking back from the vending machine area and I surreptitiously watched her for awhile until she was in a part of the cemetery where there was no exit way out.  Suddenly she disappeared behind the bucket and water area but she never came back into view.  John and I actually went back into the area looking down the rows wondering if she had stooped down at a grave or something.  No woman.  Where could she have gone? 

The cemetery is surrounded by the forest and fields and there didn't seem to be much of a way into the forest...  John and I entered the forest where we could, but the path (if you could call it a path) didn't go far in and though John could go under the trees I had to crouch down and still got pulled this way and that by branches.  There couldn't be a way through the forest this way could there?

The day before yesterday I saw the woman again and I closely followed her with my eyes as she finally DID step into the forest and disappeared.  There really IS a path leading somewhere in the forest and yesterday John and I went in where we'd seen the woman enter and we blazed a trail through the weeds and trees...  We came out on a back dead-end road behind a small cluster of homes one of which was a group home for seniors.  I guess the woman has found a way to go and buy a soda or two from the cemetery vending machines without waiting for a bus to take her into town! 

Mystery solved!

Life with John

While Tetsu and I went on our mini-vacation John went to stay the night at the vets.  And when we went to pick him up the vet informed me that John has gained 1.8 kilos!

That is like 8 pounds in a human!

Tetsu bowed his head as he is the guilty party that gives John treats constantly.  Whenever the two of them have to spend the day at home alone or are in the sunroom while I am having English with the ladies, Tetsu just hands over treats at any cute thing John might do.  For Tetsu, even a glance in his direction from John without any wariness is enough of a reason to give John a treat!

John is also very skilled at quickly consuming any left-over cat food or milk and even Tetsu and I know not to try and take away any consumable from John when he has got his eye on it.  John gets extra calories from purloining cat food.

Lack of exercise is another reason for the extra weight gain.  John doesn't like going out for a walk, especially in the morning.  Tetsu and I go out for about 20 minutes every morning but more than half the time John is grumpy in the morning and won't think of even looking at us.  And he won't go out when it has rained and the ground is wet, and he doesn't really want to walk farther than the Yanos' house because he knows Mrs. Yano will liberally give him more treats.

But I don't want a sausage dog!  John has to go on a diet!

We have started feeding him less at meal times.  Tetsu has drastically cut the doling out of treats.  I diligently record how many minutes John as walked each day aiming for 40 minutes a day.  John no longer gets treats just for peeing outside but he still gets treats for every time he sits when a car comes by (training him to stop jumping at cars).  But even those small biscuits that I once snapped in half now get snapped into quarters!  Poor John!

Our vet still comes to see John and me once a week and I continue to keep an English journal for her about John.  (She gets her English practice, John gets trained and I get advice).  She has practically got a book now with a whole year of journal entries!

November 9, Saturday

John and I did a lot of walking around the rice fields and vegetable fields.  We took one path but got penned in by the low electric fence that runs along the field.  Humans can easily step over it but the only way to get John through it to the other side was to pick him up!  John allowed me to carry him over the fence!  Whew!

It is nice to take a different walk away from the roads but one MAJOR drawback was that when we finished our walk, John had stickers all over him!!!  Oh no!  How was I ever going to get all the stickers out of his fur!?  I carry the pet brush with us and so when we got to the cemetery I picked John up again and put him on a table and then started brushing him.  He wasn't too concerned with my brushing his back and sides but he growled a bit when I got to his legs and ears.  Oh well, he will have to figure out how to get the stickers out himself or wait until he sees Maya-sensei!

I have other projects that need to get done, but I spent time in the evenings this week knitting a John doll... 

Someone had given me a zebra crochet pattern and I wondered if I could elaborate and make a John doll. 

A very SLIM John doll!  John isn't too pleased with the doll nor the goal of becoming slim.

I am going back to my patchwork again before taking another walk out and about with John. 

Winding up our mini-vacation

Tetsu and I finished up our mini-vacation with a walk around a preserved samurai village in the mountains.  There were a lot of artifacts and old buildings but there wasn't much in the way of an explanation of what was being exhibited.

The Heike Folk Village.

 The thatched roofs were very picturesque against the autumn colors.

The buildings were very drafty and cold!

 Snow wear made of straw made in the fashion of 800 years ago!

There were lots of old kitchen and farm and household implements that I didn't recognize but THIS is a old Japanese spool for winding thread or yarns.

Interesting "stickers" which Tetsu explained to me was how people would "visit" places that they couldn't really go to.  They'd ask a pilgrim to take along their stamp and place it at the sight thus visiting vicariously...

We left the beautiful mountain scenery and headed back home. 

There are so many beautiful places to see and not all that far from us!

We came home and took a nap!