U.S. Elections impact on Japan

I don’t know if we will see any real difference here with Democrats instead of Republicans at the helm over there. All I know is this made me laugh right after lunch.

A friend of mine who works in a cargo ship brokering firm forwarded me a market report written by another broker:

Following the American erections last week, it is expected that Mr. Obama will decrease the Japanese car import ratios starting next year.
[…]
Thankfully, most Japanese cars exported to America sport an automatic transmission as most Americans are not comfortable holding a stick, according to a poll conducted few hours after the erections.

More tax fun!

January sees its share of administrative tasks for the new year that just started. So I received some new forms from my office’s executive assistant and as usual the English information sheet is of great help:

Special Tax Credit
Inform of special tax credit (deduction of housing loan) system like house loan etc. of residence tax. It comes to be able to deduct the amount of a special deduction like the house loan etc. that were not able to be deducted from the income tax is able to deduct from the residence tax in 2008 fiscal year.

Okay… As usual I’m going to stamp the paper with my hanko and give it back praying that I have not signed over my soul to the devil…

Year-end tax adjustment

I was just handed by my service’s executive assistant a 2 page “Year-end tax adjustment declaration for 2007” with a little not saying the deadline is in 5 days. The forms are accompanied by an English leaflet full of statements like this one:

Special exemption for spouses
Due to the change of income low (sic.), special exemption for spouses for the spouse qualifying for exemption for spouse is abolished from 2004.

Great info, as long as you can decypher it, and no indications as to what any of the boxes’ labels might mean. I’m going to have a fun time this week…

A tip about teeth

In exactly 4 days I will officially become a fully local employee in my company. My salary will be in Japanese Yens, I will pay Japanese taxes, be under a Japanese pension plan (although I still retain an extra pension plan in France as a bonus) and be protected by a Japanese health insurance.

Although this will only start from Thursday 1st, I already began receiving the Health Insurance’s newsletter which has an English version for us foreigners. This is where I found this little gem:

A tip about teeth
We are now in the autumn.
You see, I would like something nice to eat.
Is everything fine in your mouth?
If plaque or tartar has formed on your teeth, let’s use this opportunity to remove them.

Remove what? Plaque or teeth? Poor grammar or barbaric oral surgery practices? I let you be the judge… Anyways, this does nothing for my fear of Japanese dentists…