Lake Shikotsu

Over the past month or so our weekends, weather permitting, have found us visiting various lakes here in south-west Hokkaido. I am not too sure why that is, but I think the beatific calm of these large bodies of water have helped soothe our stressed out souls.
I am going to begin with our most recent visit, to Lake Shikotsu. I haven't been there in almost 12 years even though it is only a leisurely 90 minute drive from our house. The last time I was there, I was quite drunk, so I don't remember too much about it. I do recall participating in an alcohol fueled competition to see how far you could ride a mountain bike into the lake. This seemed like a really funny idea at the time.
Man, was I ever wasted.
So 12 years on, older, sober, with no mountain bike but rather a wife and son in tow (a fair swap I think you'll agree), I returned. The occasion was the Montbell Experience. (Montbell are the homegrown Japanese, 100% organically natural, version of the North Face.) The experience in question was paddling around the lake on a foldable kayak.
And it was great, I will have to say. Serenely great; languidly slipping through the burnished grey water, mists shrouding the hills, and with each easy stroke, a slow sloughing off of the anxious everyday.
It was only with immense reluctance that I turned the kayak around and paddled back to my waiting family who, to be honest, were too busy fishing the lake to the edge of aquatic extinction (Cian caught 7 fish!!), that they never missed me at all.

The garden

I have been somewhat busy of late, hence the complete lack of posts. Given that we still have another 7 weeks to go in the term (yes, I know, it's the end of June. But this is Japan. We do things differently here. And we are determinedly proud of that fact), I figure won't be writing all that much over the next month or so either.

It's, well if not exactly summer, then late spring here. A very wet spring it has to be said. For the past fortnight we have pretty much day-in-day-out of fog, drizzle, fog, more drizzle, interspersed with bouts of rainy mist. 

My plants however seem to like it.

Sanae and Cian have embarked on an experiment to see if vegetables, particularly those that require lots of sunlight, like tomatoes and cucumbers, can grow in a place with barely any sunlight at all!

Like I said, they're calling it an experiment. I'm calling it a 'failure' but that's just because I have slumped into a fog fueled pit of wet negativity. Sort of like a one man version of the Irish soccer team, humming the Fields of Athenry to myself as I trudge to work every morning.

Mind you, it could be worse - I could be a Clare hurling supporter.

This week...

...what I learned about Japan included the following:
(1) It costs $38.40 to transfer $200 from a bank account here to an account in South Korea. According to the Economist, that is most expensive money transfer fee in the world.
(2) Hokkaido is below the national average (256) when it comes to the number of doctors per 10,000 people; we're at 218. In the region in which Muroran is situated, it drops to 187. Out east in Nemuro district where I use to live, the most quacks they can entice to this little bit of sub-arctic heaven, is 94.
(3) Katsuya Takahashi, the last Aum Shinrikyo fugitive wanted in connection with the 1995 sarin attack on the Tokyo subway system, had apparently being living and working in Kawasaki city, just south of Tokyo, for the past 10 years. He is now Japan's most wanted man, with a bounty of 10 million yen. My wife assures me that he is no relation, but you have to wonder...
(4) The Japanese are mad. Okay, a bit of a generalization, but those working at my wife's school are definitely certifiable. Yesterday, my wife's elementary school held their undokai, or sports day (which will be the subject of a long polemic post when Cian's turn comes around next year). Yesterday, it rained, heavily. Listen to me, it pissed out of the heavens folks. All day. There was so much rain pouring down that Muroran's few (though game) evangelical missionaries panicked and began building an ark. Even the ducks were complaining. Yet at 6.30a-frigging-m, the fireworks went off signalling that the undokai would go ahead. (To explain the fireworks part: in Japan, this gunpowder happy nation, when major community events are deemed 'good to go', it is traditional to launch fireworks, early in the morning, as a means of informing all and sundry regardless of whether you are participating or not. And no, I don't know how they inform the deaf. Probably something equally traditional like email.) Anyway, the principal of Sanae's school, channeling his inner King Lear, decided to front up to the weather and go ahead with the undokai because this was the day for the undokai and, well, this was the day for the undokai. The day. This day. Not some other dry weather day.

And so Sanae duly splashed off at seven in the morning to rescue her class from drowning and/or death from exposure, while me and Cian stayed at home watching Winnie the Pooh and shaking our heads at the apparent climatic madness that runs through his maternal bloodline.

AIB II

While I am still saddled and riding around on my high horse named 'indignation', I would also like to point out the breath-taking hypocrisy of those in the higher, executive floors of the Irish people's bank.

Specifically what they earn (and by implication, what we don't).

They earn a lot. What exactly constitutes a 'a lot', I don't know. But I should know, or rather, those of you reading this in Ireland who are either (a) taxpayers, or (b) AIB 'customers' (and being made pay for the privilege), are entitled to know.

AIB is a nationalised bank, property of the state and thus those who work there are de facto public employees. Thus, details of their salaries, in line with all civil servants, should be freely available to the public. This is not to say that individual salaries can be made public, but rather that the salary grades for each position within the organisational hierarchy should be publicly available to anyone who cares to find out.

And this should include a clear explanation of both basic salary and any bonuses, retainers, incentives, sweeteners or whatever the glib term du jour is for the extra money they get for their alleged expertise.

Which brings up the question of how that expertise is determined and who does the determining.

Remember folks, back in the giddy euphoria of the mid noughties, these same banks were giving outlandish bonuses in order to keep their expertise 'in house'; a house characterised by the financial equivalent of aristocratic aloofness and a 'let them eat breakfast roll' like disdain for everyone else.

And where did that expertise get us? What exactly were these bankers being paid for? If it was to fuck up the Irish economy for a long and interminable future, then they certainly earned every last hypocritical cent. If it was just to fuck up, then, for instance, me and the rest of the 1994 graduating class from DCU would have happily done it, and done it well (albeit to an achingly hip soundtrack) for one percent of the money they earned. 

And yet, with the wheedling insistence of latter day Mephistopheles, still these executives whisper in whatever willing political ear they can find, that such salaries and bonuses are justified; that to hire the best, you have to pay the best. 

And if they turn out to be the worst, well, sure why worry, it's not really our money; the Irish taxpayer, Mr. O'Faust, is paying for it after all...

AIB

During the week I got a letter from AIB informing me that they are “in the process of standardising our current account products for personal customers”. It turns out that in the parlance of AIB banking argot ‘standardising’ means ‘extracting as much money as we can in fees’.

For the 25 years or so I have had a ‘cashsave’ account with AIB which, although providing minimal interest, has reciprocally been exempt from most transaction charges.

Not any more.

From July I bid sayonara to my cashsave account as AIB will, unbidden my me and many others I am sure too, convert it to a current account. This is because, according to the letter, “you typically use current account services such as Debit Card and/or Direct Debits on your above cashsave account”.

I use neither.

The letter further informs me that from September my account will be subject to a €4.50 quarterly maintenance charge, which adds up to €18 a year.

This is on top of the following charges:

ATM card €2.50 a year

Every time I use an ATM €0.20

and, this in particular riles me, every time I bank online €0.20

Furthermore, my AIB credit card is subject to annual stamp duty of €30, while any interest I may accrue on my savings is subject to a tax of 30%.

Now, to my non Irish readers the last two charges may at first sight appear as taxes and thus not really under the control of the bank, but AIB was nationalized in 2010.

So, I would contend that the account charges, the stamp duty and the savings tax are in fact all taxes - it is after all a government owned and ostensibly government run bank, and any decisions such as the one detailed in the letter about closing cashsave accounts, are thus government decisions. 

Take a step further back; we have a situation where a commercial bank, due to catastrophic mismanagement, had to be bailed out by the Irish taxpayer to the tune of some €3.7billion. Not content with receiving such a hugely generous ‘dig out’, this nationalized bank, ostensibly owned by the Irish people and (mis)managed for us by the Irish state, is determined to extract more money from the very same people who paid, through their taxes, for its rescue.

But that’s not the really rich part. 

To go back to the letter I received. Following the transaction fee explanation, it went on to inform me that I could “avail of maintenance and transaction free banking by maintaining a minimum daily statement balance of €2,500 in the fee quarter”.

This isn’t ‘free banking’, it’s a tax exemption for the rich.

Like I argued above, all these fees from a nationalized bank are effectively taxes. What’s more, they are regressive taxes, akin to VAT, in that they disproportionately impose a greater burden on those with lower incomes. Maintaining a minimum daily balance of €2,500 is a lot more difficult for those on low incomes than those on high.

Put bluntly, AIB and by proxy, our government, is screwing the poor while favoring the rich. 

Shame on them.