soccer, school fees and silly banks

friendly matches leading up to the world cup have begun – south korea played japan on monday and won 2-0. i watched the match, but it was only today that i learned that the japanese men’s team is called “Samurai Blue”, while the women’s team is known as “Nadeshiko Japan” – nadeshiko coming from the japanese word yamato nadeshiko, which according to wikipedia means “"personification of an idealized Japanese woman".

the match was quite a bad one, as both teams played poorly and nothing really happened during the game. the first goal was scored in within 15min of kick-off, i believe, while the second was scored in extra time. unfortunately, the south koreans were significantly better than the japanese; my JTE said that a south korean reporter had declared post-match that korea now has nothing to fear from Japan.

such harsh words!

 

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i also learned today that school fees for senior high schools in japan have been removed since April this year; a promise apparently made by Hatoyama’s government. before that, students were paying a whopping 140,000yen per year for an education in public senior high schools!! that’s so much!

my american ALT colleague (i have 2 at my school) says that it’s a lot less where she comes from; i’m pretty sure we pay less than $100 per month in singapore? if anyone knows exactly how much JC school fees are, please let me know cos i’m really interested to find out now!

 

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preparations to head home – or at least leave JET – are slowly getting underway, but i’ve recently discovered that my bank, Mitsui Sumitomo, is no longer issuing international cash cards - this means that there is no way for me to withdraw money from this account once i leave japan. it’s the same thing for the Japan Post Bank; both these banks are pretty big banks too, at least in the kansai region for SMBC.

it’s really stupid, cos what kind of bank doesnt allow its customers to get money once they’re overseas? the japanese banking sector is such that it doesnt really integrate well internationally – at least from a user’s viewpoint – which doesnt make sense because it’s not as if japanese people dont travel around and spend money overseas. guess it means that japanese tourists are reliant on credit cards when they’re overseas to borrow money from their banks.

the option for me, as well as the other returning JETs in the city, is to either close our accounts when we leave and have our pension money + transport reimbursement transferred into our home country bank accounts in 6 months to a year’s time, or to open an account with another as yet unknown bank that issues an international cash card. troublesome troublesome.