Japanese Banks Suck

So many reasons, so little time. First, they offer interest on savings accounts around 0.25%. I'm not exaggerating. Then, there are no checks and if you transfer money by wire, they charge you. The kicker is the ATM fees. If you use an ATM, even your own bank's, during certain hours (such as after 6pm on weekdays and even more restrictive hours during the weekend) they charge a dollar or two per transaction. The banking hours are even worse than the States -- they close at 3pm! The final kick in the teeth was when I was signing up for an account shortly after arriving. I was filling out the forms and made a minor error towards the end of the form. Something like writing a '4' instead of a '9', which was easily corrected -- but NO! I was not permitted to correct the minor mistake -- I had to redo the whole damn form again!
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Yumi and I decided that when exchange rates are good, we will wire money back to the U.S. where we can at least get 5% interest on a savings account. When I left Belfast and transferred money from the U.K. to the U.S., neither bank charged me anything to use an online wire service. Of course when sending money to Japan, the Japanese bank charged us $40!

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During the transfers between the U.S. and the U.K., by the way, I had absolutely horrible luck. When I sent my remaining money back to the U.S., the pound was weak and the dollar strong, giving me fewer dollars. When it came time to pay my tuition, the reverse was true which meant my tuition cost more dollars. If the exchange rates had been reversed, I would have about $1500 more. Ugh. On the plus side, I've been incredibly lucky so far with the yen-dollar exchange rates. When I sent money over to Japan the dollar was strong and as we are ready to send money back, the dollar is very weak. I guess you win some and you lose some.