Bank Fraud

Never try to cash traveler's checks at a Japanese bank.

I knew this already but I must have forgotten how wretched it is to do business at Japanese banks. Maybe I hoped in my heart that things might have improved by now. So it was that I made two trips to different banks this week to change travelers checks from dollars into yen and was treated like a money-laundering terrorist.

The problem in both cases was caused by minor discrepancies between my top line signatures and the counter-signatures I made before pretty and young tellers wearing bank uniforms.  At the first bank I watched employees scurry from desk to desk getting chops for the paperwork, making phone calls, consulting with supervisors, checking out my passport and working themselves into a frenzy over red tape. After a half hour of this I resolved the situation by standing up and taking photos of the action. In Japan that's called nuisance power.

I wasn't so lucky at the second bank. The drama repeated itself but this time it took and hour and a half before I finally got American Express on the phone to explain that the two signatures on the check didn't need to be exactly the same. Apparently they believed I had stolen the checks from another person whose passport picture didn't have my whiskers at the time it was taken -- Uh oh, a foreigner with a beard -- and that I had forged the checks in order to defraud the Kyoto Shinyo Ginko (Kyoto  "Trust" Bank0 out of $300.

Only reluctantly and with and with deep suspicion did the assistant manager allow my teller to cash the checks. I didn't yell at him until I got the cash in my hand. It felt good to yell. You're not supposed to lose your tempter in Japan so as not to cause others to lose face, but this guy was lucky I didn't punch him in the nose. Actually, he didn't entirely deserve that -- he probably believed he was adhering to a strict interpretation of the rules. as mandated by idiot buraucrats in the Ministry of Finance.  When you don't want to take responsibility for something in Japan, the saying is shikata ga nai: " Meaning: "it can't be helped" or "it's beyond my control" or "tough luck, buddy."