The loudest thunderclap I have ever heard woke me up last night. Around 2 AM, I confusedly hopped out of bed to an enormous, violent explosion. Then, as if I were in a bad movie, it instantly began to rain like crazy. I haven’t experience a good thunderstorm in a few years. Nebraska has always been one of my favorite places because of its fantastic spring weather. Since August, I have come to enjoy Murakami quite a lot. Last night, after a pleasant day of errands, wandering, and a short mountain climb, hearing a violent and unexpected thunderstorm was a pleasant confirmation of my happiness here.<\/p>\n
One of my errands on Monday was to send some money home from my most recent paycheck. I signed up with a remittance service with Lloyds TSB in Tokyo that allows you to send money home using the ATM at your local bank. After a rather long process at the post office last month to send money home, I decided this would be a better deal. The price was the same as the post office – 2000 yen, and seemed much more convenient. While the post office charges a flat rate of 2000 yen for any amount, its money orders are mysteriously limited to $700 US. It took me considerable time to write out my mother’s address four times and I figured using the ATM would be easier and just as cheap. Well, that is not so.<\/p>\n
The exchange rate on Monday was a pretty good 114.83 yen to the dollar. I sent 100,000 yen home. My bank charged me \u00a5530 for the furikomi<\/em> transfer (which was a mind-boggling kanjifest that took me about 10 minutes to finally get right), My recommendation to others in this situation is to simply make it to the post office before they shut down their bank section at 4:00 and avoid Lloyds, unless you really like the convenience of the ATM. The postal method is especially recommended if you are sending home large sums, since it is a flat rate. The only advantage to Lloyds’ service is that it takes only one business day, which, now that I think about it, is<\/em> really convenient.\u00a0 I submitted the remittance yesterday at noon and the money is in my account now. If you don’t have someone trustworthy in the states to deposit a large amount of money for you, or if you are in a rush, then Lloyds does make sense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The loudest thunderclap I have ever heard woke me up last night. Around 2 AM, I confusedly hopped out of bed to an enormous, violent explosion. Then, as if I were in a bad movie, it instantly began to rain like crazy. I haven’t experience a good thunderstorm in a few years. Nebraska has always […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jet","category-murakami"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48","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=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}and then Lloyds, in addition to the flat \u00a52000 fee, charged 1% on the \u00a5100,000,<\/strike> and then Wells Fargo charged me a $10 wire transfer fee to put the money in my account. So it cost me \u00a54725 ($40.50)<\/strike> \u00a53675 ($32.00) to send home $843 dollars. Last month at the post office, it cost me about \u00a52500 ($21.75) to send home $1466 dollars, including the international registered mail for the money orders.<\/p>\n