hey all,
So as some of you might have guessed, I wussed out and went into the bank the other day to pay that health insurance bill. I didn't have to ask anyone to cover for me: as soon as I finished my first lesson in the afternoon, I knew I had a long break and if I hurried I could make it to the bank on time.
So I paid it, and that was that. Or so I thought. I ended up getting about 10 phone calls from someone at my bank, and one of the voice messages explained that they wanted me to come in for some reason. I couldn't really follow all the Japanese, but I understood that much. It turns out that they give me the wrong receipt. To really understand this, here's how most bills work. There are several slips of paper, most often just the same piece of paper that has been perforated into different sections. One of these is for the place where you pay, another is sent on to the payee, and the last is for your own records. Usually, these are similar looking, with almost the same information on them, but differently sized. The slip for the payment I made was three identical (as far as I could tell) pieces of paper. In any case, they gave me the wrong one, which means that the wrong one was sent to the national insurance agency.
Why would this make me want to take back the things I said about the payment system? Well, it really doesn't. What does, is that after I explained that it would probably cost me money and definitely take more time than it was worth for me to come in, one of the bank employees met me at the train station closest to my job (a 2 minute walk), and I passed the receipt on to her. I didn't have to come in to the bank, and I was able to make sure that my lessons were all prepared for. I can't think of a company in the US that would do the same. My credit union in the US is a really unique place, and Moosejaw is a really great company, but I still can't conceive of them making that kind of trip.
In other news (in the near future this will literally be true), NHK, the national broadcasting service of Japan, is going to do another special about my school. The nerve-wracking thing is that it looks like I will be one of the teachers who gets a lot of air time. At least, who actually gets the most air time will depend on which classes perform well, and all that, but still.
In still, other news, I do actually have to work this Saturday, so I'm probably going to hang out with some of my fellow US expat friends Saturday night after work. One of the only nice things about all these Saturday work days is that my paycheck will be very good.
We're in the process of hiring more teachers now (which means that myself and another teacher will not have to take turns working 6 days a week), and two of them seem very good. But a different two are not native speakers, and they would need lots of training and still they might not be able to perform adequately. And then there is another teacher who I haven't seen teach much.
Cheers
