Adventures in Banking Sans Translator, Part 1

    Sitting in a Japanese bank, frothing with anger, I started to write this, hoping that perspective gained by words on page would pull me away far enough that rational conversation might be possible. After all, it's probably not their fault that they don't know what's happening to my money or why it just never appeared in my account. It's not their fault that they might not have experienced this problem before.

    It is however all their fault that passing the buck is all they want to do when their bank is the one at fault.

    Back in mid 2020, I sent off six packages to the states only to have them all come back with notes attached that read something like: "Sorry, we're not delivering there right now. Fill out and return this form for reimbursement of your postage."

    The postage added up between the six parcels totals a little under 6000 yen which I didn’t need back immediately. I was also nervous about making a mistake on the forms so I put off filling them out until my husband might be around to help me, but he never made time for it. Between pandemic panic and everything else, I was too frazzled to think about it again for some time. Soon it was December and the forms had 2020 in the dates so I went ahead and filled them out.

    The first week of January, I received confirmation by mail that the money had been delivered to the bank I had chosen to put on the forms, which happened to be the bank with the least difficult kanji.

    A few days later, I went to the ATM at that bank only to find the money had never arrived. A week passed as I checked frequently. More than ten days later, still nothing had been added. A different payment from a student had cleared in that time and I made it a point to go in and check in person.

    Finally I picked an afternoon when I had time and went in to figure it out, bringing my bank book, hanko stamp, ID, and the proofs of deposit the post bank had sent.

    I need to note that just doing this was painful and scary for me , so I sat there feeling a little bit proud of myself for getting there in time before the banks close at 3 to try to get this problem solved. I went ahead and grabbed the number, carefully matching the kanji from the list of banking options to the kanji for savings account that's listed on the front of my bank book. 

    In a few minutes, my number was called I was so excited to go up and try to explain my case. I laid out the paperwork and tried to explain, my words imperfect and awkward. The bank employee tried to say something that was much too formal for my Japanese level. I couldn't really follow her so I explained that I am not fluent in Japanese and can't really understand what she was trying to say but I showed her where proof of deposit occurred on the one form but was not reflected on my updated passbook, which did not include any of those deposits.

    She stared at my paperwork for a moment and I'm not sure if what she said next was trying to explain it away but when I didn't move from the counter, she went ahead and took the forms and the past book and asked me to go sit down can't wait. I did, thinking to myself how nice it would be to have this over.

    When she called me back up, she explained that there was nothing she could do because this was not the bank I had started my account at and therefore not the bank whose branch name was in my passbook and copied onto the post bank forms as the place to send the money to. I would need to go across town to that branch, she said, and mentally I did the math. Making a 45 minute walk or 15 minute drive, before 3:00 when the banks closed was going to be impossible as it was already after 2:45 and I don’t drive. This wasn’t going to be doable before the end of business that day.

    Whatever she said after that was hard to understand and when I explained that, she mimed driving a car and asked if I drove. Even if I had, there wouldn’t have been enough time to get to the other bank and get in before they closed. What she was suggesting could have gotten someone into a serious car accident.

    I explained that I did not drive and mentioned that I do not understand why this bank couldn't accept the payment from the post office. She just stared back.

    If my Japanese were better, perhaps I would have asked why her branch apparently does not have the ability to communicate with other branches and what kind of multi-prefecture banking operation lacks communication between various stores. Instead, I took my things and left before I could start yelling.

The saga continues in Part 2.