The big news today was the train that derailed at high speed near Amagasaki. Amagasaki is not too far from where I am – it’s fairly close to Osaka and I used to go by there all the time to visit Kuniko in Shin-Osaka. It’s also near the Costco, but I don’t go there too much anymore. I’m not sure which line it was on, because there are two lines that intersect at Amagasaki station. I don’t think it was the one I ride, but still, pretty scary. The photos were amazing to see the train car squashed flat against the side of an apartment building.
I only had one class today – normally it’s three, but the third years are taking short exams right now. I used the extra time to prepare for some classes on Wednesday. The one class I did have went pretty well. It was my first time teaching with Mr. Yamamoto this year. He’s a pretty strict guy, and is not big on the team teaching concept. He’d rather sit in the back of the classroom and only participate when he thinks the students are not understanding. Not understanding is part of my plan, however, so I’ll need to train him a little bit over the next year. My plan this year was to make the Japanese teachers work a little harder in my classes – after all, I’m supposed to be an Assistant teacher.
At lunchtime I walked over to the bank. The banking system is very different in Japan. For one, the interest rates that they pay for savings are just about 0%. There’s no reason to save money in an account in Japan other than to free up space in your wallet or your house.
Also, I don’t get bank statements. There’s no such thing as checks in Japan. You set up recurring transactions to come right out of your account. If you need to send money to someone, you electronically transmit it from an ATM to their account. Everywhere else you use cash, and lately more and more places are starting to accept credit cards.
Anyway, to keep track of your finances they give you a cool little passbook. You take the passbook into the bank to a special “Update Your Passbook” ATM. You open the passbook to the correct page, slide it into the machine, and then it prints line-by-line each transaction from your account.
I don’t do it that often – so when I go in, there’s a long time to wait while the machine catches me up. The cool thing is that everything happens inside the machine, so once it fills up a page with information, something inside turns the page and it keeps going. I was a bit concerned today because I was running out of pages, and I didn’t want to have to go through a big process to get a new passbook.
Good news – once the machine finished it spit out my passbook, and then it spit out another one. It had set one up while I was waiting, all printed with my name and up to date with my bank balance. It was completely seamless and a total no-brainer. Nice!
Nothing much else to report today. I’m working on getting together with Komori sensei this weekend. We’ve got a holiday on Friday, so we’ve got a long weekend just before Golden Week next week.
