It’s a new word. \u00a0But I didn’t create it. \u00a0The Japanese did.<\/p>\n
I’ve been having problems with my taxes since I moved to Saroma. \u00a0For some reason the tax exemption that I receive as a resident foreigner didn’t transfer from the tax office I was using last year. \u00a0Apparently I had to request an entirely new $35 IRS form <\/span>6166: “Certification of US Tax Residency,” which costs $35 dollars and requires the submission of IRS form 8088<\/span>\u00a08802, Application for United States Residency Certification. Well, until that document arrives (still waiting) I am being taxed.<\/p>\n The tax man from down below, Mr. Kobayashi (he also changes my PC password for me) explained the situation to me in Japanese; that once the district tax office received the letter confirming my exemption, all of the previously taken taxes will be returned to me, and I will stop being taxed. \u00a0As he was concluding his explanation, he says “puramaizero ni naru wake de<\/em>,” basically “it will all even out in the end.” \u00a0Well, I almost laughed at him, because of the first thing he said, “puramaizero<\/em>.” \u00a0It’s basically the title: “plus minus zero” phoneticized into Japanese: “purasu mainasu zero<\/em>” clipped and blended into the much shorter “pura mai zero<\/em>.” I just love this because it encapsulates a fairly complex idea with just a few clipped English words. \u00a0Try using it on your friends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s a new word. \u00a0But I didn’t create it. \u00a0The Japanese did. I’ve been having problems with my taxes since I moved to Saroma. \u00a0For some reason the tax exemption that I receive as a resident foreigner didn’t transfer from the tax office I was using last year. \u00a0Apparently I had to request an entirely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,16,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-japan","category-japanese","category-saroma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}