Our oldest is convinced she failed today’s high school entrance exam. She may have, but it might just be stress and panic talking.

The past couple weeks included occasional arguments between our oldest and She Who Must Be Obeyed about which school our oldest should try for. She chose, as her first choice, a high level public school with fairly strict admissions standards. However, before the final registration fee was paid, it was possible for her to register to sit the exam for a different, easier school.

Note: Most schools in Japan have their exams on the same day at the same time, with private schools having their exams a couple weeks earlier. This means students have to choose which schools they want carefully as they only get one chance at each type of school. I suspect there’s too much registration fee money involved for this to ever change to a single test system.

As parents our dilemma is that if our oldest doesn’t get into her first choice it’s going to cost us a lot of money to send her to the private school that is her second choice (and to which she’s already earned admission). It is also a good school, but it has private school tuition (and boys–more on that some other day).

This leads to the other dilemma: although changing to a slightly lower level school might increase her chances of admission, it can also hurt her chances for getting into a top tier university. Schools in Japan are ranked by academic prowess and by their ability to place students in good universities. (Both our oldest’s choices have good reputations in that regard.)

Unfortunately, the school handed out the answers after the exam and our oldest is pretty sure she messed up at least part of the mathematics section. She was in tears and apologizing for messing up. We got her calmed down and told her she deserved to relax for a while.

Now, however, we enter the phase of second guessing. She Who Must Be Obeyed is second-guessing the decision to let our oldest sit for the higher level school. Our oldest is doing the same thing.

I personally would rather have our oldest try for a school she likes rather than one we prefer or to hedge her bets by picking a lesser school.

She may have failed her exam, and it will cost us money if she did, but I’m glad she went for it. I’m proud of her for that.

We’ll find out what happened next Thursday when the school posts the results.

I spent the day freezing whilst watching girls in leotards simultaneously freeze and dance. My main job, though, was to serve as navigator, but I even let a female do that. Sort of.

Today was the it’s-the-end-of-something-so-let’s-dance-in-the-cold-performance (something like that) for our youngest’s Rhythmic Gymnastics group. The RG powers-what-are assemble clubs from around Saitama Prefecture and they put on an afternoon show. (There is, in fact, a morning performance with different clubs, but we didn’t have to go to that.)

They choose the end of February because, well, I’m not sure. I think it’s because many of the girls are finishing with the clubs before moving on to high school and/or junior high. Or it’s because that’s the best time to schedule an unheated gymnasium.

I started the day with a private class that I’m teaching while the regular teacher is out of Japan. I then got to serve as navigator during our trip to the performance site. However, this time I used my smartphone as the navigation system because real maps require effort. The navigation system (Google maps with its female voice) is pretty good–I especially like its on-the-fly traffic warnings–but has an annoying tendency to announce a turn a few hundred meters in advance and then to say nothing until saying “turn —” without any warning.

Once we got to the arena, we managed to get a good seat, but our youngest’s performance was the 13th or so on the program. This meant we got to sit in the cold gym watching performances that had to meaning for us. (Note: for reasons involving sadism, Japanese public gymnasiums are neither heated in winter nor cooled in summer making them hellish pretty much all the time.) At one point I broke out my gloves to keep my hands warm.

Our youngest finally performed, did a good job, and then we got to wait for a few more performances.

That was followed by decades of picture taking.

The return trip was mostly uneventful. We pitted our car navigation system versus Google Maps. (I’ll post about that result another day.) Along the way home, though, we managed to buy chicken and bourbon.

All I wanted was a bank card issued in this millennium. After a while I was afraid it might take a millennium to get it.

On Monday I went to the bank to get a new bank card. My card had been issued in 1999 after I moved to Tokyo. It had held up reasonably well over 16-and-a-half years but it had a couple problems. 1) the magnetic strip, which had been hidden, had been exposed and begun to wear out. 2) Although the ATMs still recognized it, the bank that had issued it no longer existed.

I arrived at the bank before closing, explained what I wanted, and then was sent upstairs where I filled out a form, was given a number and waited until my number was called.

Once my number was called, a very nice clerk, lets call her Miss Patience, started to process my application. The first problem was with my address. I’d said that I didn’t want to change my address but Miss Patience pointed out that the address I’d written on the form didn’t match the address on my card. After she told me part of the address, I thought she was talking about the company I work for but she assured me the address was listed as my home address.

The problem was the address listed on my account no longer existed. In fact, it hadn’t existed for several years because the building had been torn down and new buildings put in its place.

I do not know if this means I’ve been breaking the law for several years–and it might explain why I was rejected for a credit card last week–but Miss Patience managed to get the address changed. That, however, led to the next problem: my signature didn’t match the signature on the account and since the card was older than my marriage I couldn’t remember how I’d signed it.

Every time I wrote my signature Miss Patience sighed, told me that was wrong and dropped a few hints.

Clearly I was pathetic enough that she didn’t believe I could be a con artist.

Eventually I figured out how I’d signed it (long story involving miscommunication) and everything was changed. I also managed to get my first and last names on the card rather than both my given names (another long story).

Along the way Miss Patience kept disappearing and reappearing with different forms and we both made mistakes requiring new forms. After an hour together, I was finally informed that my card would be mailed to me exactly “some time next week” and that if I needed money I should go to the counter.

Because the lower level of the bank had closed, I had to take an elevator to the ATM room in order to escape the bank.

As banking encounters in Japan go, it was surprisingly painless given how long it took. Now I’m just waiting to see if the card arrives to see if things actually worked out.