by Anna Kunnecke
Here are the choices:
a) Japanese banks. b) Traditional carved seals much like ones used to inscribe sealing wax. c) Online banking. d) A tidy paper booklet printed with your bank balance, kept in its own little pouch.
Ding ding ding! You're correct! Even this far into the bright shiny future, Japanese banks are totally uncomfortable with internet banking.
It's still relatively new, for one thing. Until recently, the only way to check your bank balance was to actually go to your own bank's ATM. Once there, you could open your nifty passbook to the correct page, insert it into the machine, and have it print out every single transaction since your last printout. That part was handy. However, most ATMs are only open until about 7pm, and are closed on holidays. Even when technically open, they will probably do some functions but not others, according to a complicated date/time matrix no one can quite decipher. (Hence my theory that Japanese ATMs are not actually fully automated; I submit that there's a human being back there who slides the money into the slot, counting out the bills and then punching a number into a screen; otherwise, why would there be any reason for the ATMs to close at all? Isn't the point that they're machines and need so very few smoke breaks?)
But just going to the bank in person isn't enough. You must have with you your hanko, your engraved seal. This is considered the only proof-positive ID; no amount of photo IDs, passports, or DNA testing will substitute for the little piece of carved bamboo that you can pick up for $20 in any neighborhood. Being a seasoned Japan-dweller, I've simply gotten used to carrying around my little carved stick if I need to do any business at all at the bank--mine has a pouch! and its own little jar of red ink! and sparkle stickers! --okay, no sparkle stickers. The whole thing makes me deeply uneasy, because most people just keep their hanko lying in their desk drawers. The same drawers, naturally, that hold their passbook--the two items with which a burglar could easily withdraw ALL the money from any bank account, even without a card or a PIN number or any kind of ID. The banks often have signs saying, "Keep your hanko in a safe place!!" Which of course is another way of saying, "None of you idiots are keeping your hanko in a safe place!"
But it turns out that you need your hanko another time too. You need it if you want to end your internet banking contract. (Yes, where 'internet banking contract' means paying $20 a month for the privilege of simply viewing your current balance online.) The reason you are ending it, let's just say hypothetically, is because you have yet to be able to actually view your account online, and you're tired of paying $20 a month to haggle with customer service representatives. No, they won't e-mail you a new password. No, they can't tell you why the current password won't work. No, there's nothing you can do online, even though you filled in eight thousand security questions. The only way you can fix this situation, the one that you brought on yourself by daring to dream that checking your balance shouldn't require an actual train journey, is to go to the bank itself. Not an ATM, not even any old branch office, but the central one where you first opened your account years ago, the one that requires not one but two trains. You'll need your passbook and your hanko. Also, quite possibly, the soul of your firstborn child, and if you have any sealing wax, well, you'd probably better bring that too.
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