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I made my first payments into Japan’s pension system yesterday. My wife paid the last two years worth but I missed October’s payment and November’s is due by the end of December. As stated earlier, I paid in coin, though not entirely out of spite as that is how I have been saving money. All coins I have in my pocket when I get home go into a coin holders or bank. I also try to collect ¥500 coins and sometimes have several thousands of Yen worth of them at the end of the day. The smallest bill we have in Japan is the rough equivalent to a 10 dollar bill, thus we have 5 dollar coins. 100 yen stores sell ¥500 coin banks that when full have quite a bit of money in them.

These stores also sell three packs of coin holders of each denomination from ¥10 to ¥500, each holding 50 coins. 100 coins is the max I can deposit at a time through my bank’s ATMs. Further, the branch nearest to my home has a plate over the coin deposit bin that only allows for a few coins to be dropped in at a time and the timer is set such that it will close after just a few seconds of nothing being dropped in. Over the years I have developed a system to be able to deposit the entire contents of two 50 coin holders into the coin bin before it shuts. After depositing my coins, the ATM then takes several minutes to “ingest” them. So much time that if another ATM is available, I can withdraw in bills from another ATM the money I just deposited before the ATM I used to deposit coins has reset for the next user.

The obvious question is why do I not just go to the teller window? Because they charge for the service of counting your coins. Not wanting to waste my time nor money, I resolved to pay in coin at the pension office and let them earn their pay.

Silly me. Unlike the tax office, they cannot accept payment there. (This may be true at the tax office now too as I have not paid my income taxes there in years, using convenience stores to do so instead.) I have to pay at the branch of a regional bank that resides on the 1st floor of my city office. Alas! All who are employed in the building, with the possible exception of the convenience store in the basement, are infected with the bureaucratic virus and even the bank’s branch in the city office was on lunch break, so I had to return after their break was over. I had some other errands to attend to so came back a little after their lunch break ended. On my person, I had 6 rolls of ¥100 coins, each roll worth ¥5000 and two rolls of ¥50 coins each worth ¥2500 for a grand total of ¥35,000 to pay two months of nenkin/pension totaling ¥33,960. The bank teller freaked out. Didn’t know what to do. Called over another employee from the rank of desks behind the tellers who panicked even more than the first, which did nothing to help the first to calm down any. Despite the denomination, amounts and collective values for each hard roll of coins clearly labeled, they made several abortive attempts to determine the total. Abortive because the two tellers kept interrupting each other in Laurel and Hardy fashion.

Dead in the water, they summoned a supervisor who told them to use the coin counting machine but only if I accept the coin counting fee which is now ¥550. They conjured up a plastic basket for me to open the coin holders into, gave me a number and asked me to wait on the couch provided. I could hear the coins being dumped into the machine and then being sorted. Took far longer than it would for me to count by hand and had me wondering how they could charge anything, especially so much, to just dump coins in a machine.

Before I visited the city office, I paid my bill to the soon to be defunct health insurance company. Used bills for that. Not going to burden the convince store with that many coins. While reading the news online the other day, I saw an add for expat insurance. Knowing my policy ends next Fall, I clicked on it. On the 24th I got a phone call from them, after which they sent various plans from various providers. One has an annual cost greater than my prewithholdings yearly income. The cheapest is almost 3 times what I am currently paying but does not cover outpatient, as my current plan does. Guess that may be why my current company is closing up shop. The cheapest plan that does offer outpatient coverage costs 9 times as much as I am currently paying. However, as with my current plan and unlike the Japanese national prepaid health care scheme which has a 30% deductible, these plans reimburse 100%, up to a limit. My purpose in life now is to pay for insurance that does not suit my needs, a pension that is not obligated to provide any benefits to me until I have no money and then leech off my wife until I become too much of a financial burden.

There is good news, but not without confounding factors. First, I landed a new position at a new med school working for my all time favorite boss in Japan. Actually, the completion is close, though there are few in the competition. One class on one week day and a full schedule on another day of the week. I have also been offered a new elective class at my current med school (Oh is there ever so much to get caught up on reporting on that place!). Now the bad news, the one class at the new school and the new class at the old school start April 1st for which I will first see an increase in pay at the end of May. I have to wait 6 months before I can begin to earn more. I liken it to being aboard the Titanic and receiving word that the S.O.S. has been received and a ship is on its way at All Ahead Full (I don’t think merchies have Flank Speed.), and will arrive in only 12 hours when we expect to in the water in less than two. The remaining all day of classes at the new school are for the 2026 school year.

Masks are still everywhere, up again at times to close to 50% in and around Tokyo. Many kids wearing them.