5
May
Can You Help a Fellow American Down On His Luck?
Topic: Family and Friends, Japan 2007
We’re back from our vacation, and I’ll write some posts about it soon, but right now I want to tell you the amusing tale of our cash flow problem. On our final day in Kagoshima City, Maria paid for our room with the last of our cash. She then headed to a convenience store ATM for some more cash, but for some reason it wouldn’t let her withdraw any from our Japanese bank account. She had no luck at other ATMs either. Normally the next step would be to call or visit the bank to find out what the problem was, but this is Golden Week: many businesses, including all private banks, are closed while everyone is on vacation.
[mpiphoto=296,right,scale,300] So we figured we’d head to an old reliable Japan Post Office, to use their ATMs to withdraw money from our US account. As I’ve mentioned before, private bank ATMs in Japan don’t let you withdraw money from foreign banks, but Post Office ATMs do. Japan’s government run Postal Savings system is in the early stages of being privatized, as a result of a political battle won by former Prime Minister Koizumi a couple of years ago. We were shocked to find the post office ATMs closed, even though it was a weekday. The sign in the window explained that, as part of the privatization process, postal banking services are now unavailable during Golden Week, just like the private banks. Wonderful.
So we headed back to the Ryokan and the owner was nice enough to give us our cash back and let us pay with a credit card instead. Hotels, department stores, and fancy restaurants are just about the only places that take credit cards in Japan - it’s mostly a cash economy - so we were lucky. Without some cash we wouldn’t have been able to get to the airport, or home from the airport, or buy any food.
We were all supposed to go to Hida this weekend, but I’m staying home with Eidan, as my back is still bothering me. I have our last ichiman yen (about $80) to get me through the weekend. Maria’s friend Andrea flew in last night, and fortunately she brought a bunch of yen with her, so they’re paying for everything on the Hida trip with her money. Maria will pay her back once Golden Week ends in a few days, and she can get cash again.
The title of this post is a Humphrey Bogart line from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. But I know it better from Looney Tunes’ 8 Ball Bunny. I’m re-living my childhood watching Bugs Bunny cartoons on DVD with Kai. Like me, his first encounter with a lot of 1950s American culture will be via old Warner Bros cartoons.
[tags]Japan, Kagoshima, Postal Savings[/tags]
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