The Poetist

I got a paystub from Nova in the mail. It claims that money has been deposited into my account. I was 99% sure that wasn’t true but I checked my account anyway. I was wrong! There was more money there than before… ¥1! Yeah, I have one yen more. That doesn’t even have the value of a penny. Thanks Nova! That wasn’t the insult.

Even though I got a raise before I left Nova this paycheck was far less than I usually get. It’s not exactly clear to me where the money went or why but it seems like it has something to do with taxes. I’m taxed every month, why would you take a lump sum out of the last paycheck? Especially when I was told that once I left Japan I wouldn’t be able to get my Japanese tax return it seems strange and hugely unfair to take out money you know I can’t get back. It doesn’t make sense for me to take a huge amount of money out of a person’s pay just because it’s the last paycheck from the company. I could understand taking it out when a person leaves the country if there is a mechanism in place for people to recoup that amount after they’ve left. But to tell people that they can’t get the money back and then take it out anyway? That’s greedy, exploitative and just wrong. Thanks Nova! Thanks Japan! Wow, you’re leaving such a good impression.

It amazes me how messed up this situation continues to get, how far the impact reaches, and again, how messed it up it continues to get. I can’t access Let’sJapan.Org right now but when I last checked it the latest developments showed some kind of Sahashi-yakuza connection and apparently he embezzled money from Nova and transfered it into his private company. There is one nugget of good news, the American press has finally caught on to the story. The Wall Street Journal asks, “How do you say ‘taken for a ride’” in Japanese?