very useful lesson indeed

thanks JPOD TEAM ~

　　　Great lesson’s topic!!! Thanks a lot!!!

When I was living in Japan 6 years back I found it impressive that one could just throw coins into the banking (ATM) machine and have them counted and deposited automatically. I still haven’t seen this in US banks, how sad…

Andreas -
There are the “Coinstar” machienes in some stores that count your change for you. They do take about 5% off the top, however. I’d like to see that in an ATM as well. I’d be even more impressed if it would handle depositing checks and cash. (I just use ATMs for taking cash out of the bank.)

I believe that Bank of America is trying to start something like that.
They have drive through machines (not the ones with the people) that you put the check in.
It reads the check and you can automatically deposit it and get the money.
The coin thing hasn’t really been fully invented yet though.

Talk about a coincidence, recently I have been thinking about saving from my paycheck while in Japan. Hopefully, I can put the money in a mutual fund or some other kind of saving vehicle as Japanese banks offer less than 1% interest, it is almost 0%!!!

But so far, there is NO information online in English. Anything in English is aimed at overseas individuals who want to invest in Japan and not for people living here. Plus many require 1 to 10 million minimum deposits! Even the websites of Japanese banks in English are only for investors and not for customers.

When I lived in Korea, the Korean banks had information for customers on their websites, not much but some…

Anyways, I hope that you guys might mention some useful vocabulary or ways to invest your money for the average guy who will be around Japan for a few more years. 楽しみ！

Phil

Phil,

Citibank has a website (In English) for savings accounts in Japan.

http://www.citibank.co.jp/en/index.html

Multiple currency deposits and Yen savings.

I live in Tokyo, but still use my Citi U.S. based a/c and am very happy. When I open an account with Citi in Japan will let you know how it went.

Todd

Thanks Todd, I checked out citibank before but the interest rates are so low that it is better to try and stick to my bank(MUFG) so that I do not have to pay a furikomi or transfer fee to a different bank. Also I want to set up the savings plan automatically so that it is done every month without me lifting a finger. The citibank site also has no information on mutual funds or something similar, all the have are the super teiki(minimum 100000yen deposit, interest is 0.23%-0.76%) and Oguki teiki(mimimum 10 MILLION yen, interest is 0.25%-0.66%).

Good job getting the video vocabulary back online but what about this lesson? I still can’t access LI#77 on iTunes…

Thanks for all the info Todd, I will go to the bank with my girlfriend and try to navigate all the options they have. Plus, I will follow this series to see if it can offer any other help ^_-

I’m also never getting a completed download of the file. Over a month and a half of trying to download it. I get it on the feed, and it gets added to the download managers list automatically. Might need to check on this….

I just now sent an email. The URL that my download manager had was misspelled. Since I get that URL from the feed, it must have been misspelled at one time, though it has been corrected in the feed listing now. So, updating the URL from the feed let me download the file.