30,000 dollars Bank Heist, Minus the Theft Part

 $30,000 Bank Heist, Minus the Heist

Money I like money! I wish I had some money right now. All gone!

As I geared up to leave Japan after three years I contemplated what to do with my buckets of money. And by buckets I mean a lot. But don’t try to rob me its all gone now. As the saying goes "Never trust a man with the money, you can be guaranteed it will be spent on drugs, alcohol, gambling or wasted on things they don’t need", like in my case.
Yes, even after spending large amounts of cash across three years at the dollar store (I almost went everyday) I had managed to save quite a bit believe it or not. $30,0000 is quite impressive if I can toot my own horn.
I’ll never forget the first day when I bought 100 items and the teacher said “I’ve never seen anyone buy so much at the dollarstore”. I smiled and told him, “And that’s just today, I’m planning to come back tomorrow!”. And the best part. I did!
As you may know I was on the JET Programme which is a Japanese government sponsored program.
A lot of people are able to save a lot of money since we were paid fairly well and in most cases, our apartment or living rental is subsidized. I knew of a few people who were able to to pay off their University loans. In my case, I just collected the buckets of money and dreamed of dollarstore glory.
So what should I do with the money I thought. How should I transfer it or should I just carry it in my suitcase, so it will be like a drug deal. When they ask me at the airport how I got all that money, I’ll be like, “Well, I Taught English for three years. I basically got paid to be beaten”.They would probably arrest me and say, "Must be drug money, there is no way you can get beaten in Japan by students, they are too nice". Not at my school.
The exchange rate was terrible! In fact it was the worst it had been since I had arrived in Japan.
Me, being the person I am, was not prepared to lose any money on the exchange rate. I was thinking I could make money on the exchange rate. If I waited long enough.
How long though, I didn’t even want to think about.
My final decision was to sit on the money, literally and figuratively. I thought since I had a post office (bank) account I would put all my money in the post office bank account (no fee to hold it), give someone I trusted my post office bank card (preferably someone rich so they don’t want to steal my money)  and for them to send it to me when the exchange rate was better.
The only issues I had was that my approximately $30,000 dollars was sitting in a different bank account across town and they wanted me to pay to transfer it. Ridiculous I thought! Who pays to have money transferred (I guess they do everywhere I found out later).. I’m a loyal customer of three years, the least they can do is transfer it for me. So I showed up during my last few days. I brought my ID and told them, “Hi, I’d like my $30,000 dollars please”. They suggested I transfer it and pay the $20 for the transfer. Seriously? I lose $20! I could buy twenty things the dollarstore with that.
I told them no, I want cash.
They prepared the bills in my bulletproof case (that's a joke about bulletproof case) and asked if I was OK. I said ya no problem and tossed the $30,000 into my old backpack. Now, had I been in the United States, or possibly Canada I may not have done this. Walking around with $30,000 is a bit of a risk.
To make the risk even greater I had ridden (rode?) my scooter. Plus my backpack was so old the zippers weren't staying together. Not to worry I thought, should be fine. Maybe.

This bag should hold the money well I thought.  The odd hole, hopefully no money will fall out.

I started up my scooter and drove to the other side of town. Since it was probably the last day I would get to use my scooter I gunned it, thinking about how I won’t be able to enjoy the wind through my hair again, nor the typhoons and rain in my eyes. I had forgotten the bag wasn’t closed very well.
I arrived at the post office. The teller asked what I’d like to do. I told her deposit $30,000 dollars.
She was like OK nonchalantly. I pulled my backpack off and noticed the zipper was open more than hallway, whoops!
There was a man standing pretty close behind me as well, so I was lucky he hadn’t put his hand in and taken any.Its OK though, he's Japanese I doubt he would.
She counted the money as I hoped to high hell it was all there.
I waited another three years before the exchange rate was what I considered good enough to transfer. I ended up paying 50$ per $10,000 to send to Canada, so $150.
In the end I paid more for waiting then the damn $20 to have to it transferred to the post office and avoid any risk. Plus I could have just taken it with me and lost less money on the exchange rate.
Oh damn, just my luck!
$150 to transfer! Can you believe that. Damn I could have bought 150 things at the dollarstore!

It's basically my Disneyland. Where dreams come true.  $1 everything!

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Other funny stories from this blog 
http://memoirsgaijin.blogspot.ca/

My blog about everyday life (not Japan related)
http://eyethroughtheglass.blogspot.ca/


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Camping in Floods, that sounds fun!

Camping in Tsuruga Japan
Paradise or hell?

Camping in Flooded area, That sounds fun.

I went on a camping trip with my friend Anthony (also Canadian), Chiaki (who is a girl that speaks many languages), my girlfriend, Anthony's girlfriend and Chiaki's friend (don't know her name but she was silent and allergic to the sun, yes to the SUN!). So I heard the beaches (maybe bitches too) were super hot in Tsuruga. That sounded nice since Chiaki and Anthony's girlfriend had a car. It was a relatively close drive. The idea was to go there, and then go to some awesome campsite not too far away from beach (and the bitches). Well, it sounded great in theory (especially the bitches).
The trip there was OK, I was in Anthony's girlfriend's car. As I recall nothing that great happened in the car, except that Anthony's girlfriend was loving my jokes (which are not too funny as you probably already know based on my writings on this blog). Anthony later told me his girlfriend kept saying she thought I was hot. I was like uh OK. He said she never shuts up about it, which I guess explains why she laughed at everything I said including directions. "Turn left soon". Her response "Hahaha you are so funny." I was WTF, its a direction not a joke.
Finally when we got to the beach, it was beautiful except for the wood chips and small sticks and other crap floating in the water (I didn't see any bodies but there could been, it was cloudy).

The water was covered in debris. At least it looked nice here

Apparently there had been a major flood and it dumped this crap into the ocean. The beaches were also covered with with wood-chips, sticks etc near the tide line. The beaches would have been paradise if not for the weird things on the beach. There was a large number of Brazilians there though, sleeping in tents on the beach. They seemed a little scary. When I thought about it they probably liked us more than the Japanese on the beach. My reasoning with this is that the Japanese probably thought the Brazilians were weirder than us. On the other hand, the Brazilians and us had a lot in common being foreigners. We were both outsiders, and didn't fit into the cultural norm. I believe that them sleeping on the beach was a cultural faux pas. 

Sorry no bikini babes. I save those for me ;P

 So after playing on the beach, burying Anthony as deep as we could like he was a sandcastle and such, we decided to go to the campsite.

When we got there, it was mass chaos. The whole campsite was wet and covered in logs and weird crap. It was like the beach only worse. I forget the exact price but I think it was like 100$ a night. I remember Anthony asking me to ask for a discount, which the guy laughed at and didn't do of course.

So we start to setup our tents. Anthony had bought a tent just for this trip, I think it was a two man tent. By two man that meant two small Japanese men, not one large foreigner and his girlfriend. Chiaki had a 5 person tent for Nancy, me, her and her friend.

At night after millions of mosquito bites we went to bed. Since I had been in the ocean and my skin was all salty I decided to shower. I guess that was the wrong choice because there was no hot water, which I didn't know until I was standing under the shower head and pulled. It felt like I was taking a shower on top of Mt.Everest. It was so cold I couldn't close my fingers or rub the soap properly. To complicate things there was no privacy really as the only area the shower covered was a 4 inch area crotch height. I have no idea how girls took a shower without exposing their bosoms. Based on how cold it was, they probably sucked it up and didn't shower. Ice showers are terrible. I kept thinking at least once I get into my cozy sleeping bag I'll warm up, its not like I want to get hypothermia.
As I got in my sleeping bag in the tent I tried to think of something warm. The only bad thing was that after about 30 minutes it started to rain. Earlier we had been saying, "Its such a nice day, why would we need a rain guard". I'll tell you, from now on I'm always putting a rain flap on.

I guess Anthony's tent wasn't made for the white devil gaijin (foreigner) cause he couldn't get comfortable. He told me later his feet were actually getting crushed by the frame of the tent. I did see his feet sticking physically outside of where the tent ended. He was bending the tent by having his legs straight. He claimed he didn't sleep a wink, but that probably wasn't because of that. More likely his girlfriend wanted some McLovin'.

So my sleeping bag sucked and was too short, so at first it was a hard sleep. Then, after some rustling, I was able to enter la la land. Then suddenly, I awoke to being drenched in water. As I slept, the rain came down and drenched me. In addition the ground was wet already and we had put our tent in a really bad spot where the water would all collect on my side. It felt like a river was washing over me. I tucked myself in the fetal position and tried to sleep. But there was no hope in that cold dark place, soaking wet. I started to hallucinate I was in a dungeon. The tent was leaking from the inside and there was a drip like Chinese water torture upon my brow. So my face was covered in freezing water and the puddle in the tent was getting bigger and it wasn't just me getting wet. I tried to sleep through it, but its like peeing on an electric fence, it won't work. Finally Chiaki says "I'm soaked, lets put rain cover on tent". I said OK, and as we fumbled in the dark for the tent zipper, but I couldn't find it. I guess Chiaki had put her head in the doorway and I didn't notice so when I yanked the zipper really hard her hair got stuck. I didn't realize I did it, but her head was sideways and she seemed to be moaning. Since she didn't say anything I kept yanking the zipper back and forth and it seemed to be stuck on something. After 2 minutes or so she told me her hair was stuck in the zipper and asked if I could stop moving the zipper up and down. It was tearing her hair out. I started laughing cause it was so ridiculous. At that point everyone else in the tent was woken up by my laughing. Then for the first time I noticed clumps of her hair in my wrinkly and wet hands. I tried to pull her hair from the zipper and the tent caved in! It was terrible! The whole roof fell down. Not only was her hair stuck in the zipper but I couldn't get it out. Finally I grabbed the roots of her hair and I said "Listen, I'm going to try to save a bit of your hair my holding it at the roots and ripping the hell out of the zipper. This may hurt a little." Thinking back I should have told her "Going to hurt a lot, like a real son of a bitch".

Finally her hair came loose, but I lost a bit more in the zipper, possible pieces of her scalp-line too. I didn't notice till the next day but there was a patch of hair missing where I had torn the roots from her skull. If you are reading this, I still feel sorry about that. 

We stepped out of the tent and it was raining hard and freezing cold. 

We re-erected the tent and went to bed soaked. One of the worst nights of my life.

I guess the only person's worse was Chiaki, aside from the pain, she didn't even have enough hair to keep her warm anymore. Damn!

That's what I wanted to do after the camping experience. No sleep = total suck

If you found anything above amusing or even slightly funny help me out and click one of those boxes above or give me a Google +1 or something. Might come in handy in the future. If only it could make me some money. That would be even nicer!

Other funny stories from this blog 
http://memoirsgaijin.blogspot.ca/

My blog about everyday life (not Japan related)
http://eyethroughtheglass.blogspot.ca/


My Youtube Channel (makes no sense just like my blog)
http://www.youtube.com/user/judoka4eva