Question is as the title suggests.
I’m being asked to leave 400,000 yen to include paying my residents tax off in a lump sum (fair enough, about 112,000) and the rest for ‘bills’. Can confirm none of these bills include cleaning fees or tatami / door replacement as those have already been resolved. When asked for exact details about these bills, I get hit back with a ‘I don’t know’ from my supervisor. Are there others in the same boat as me?
Previous JETs, did you see any money returned after leaving that wasn’t used?
25 comments
Sounds like the OP is having his pants pulled down.
If this is personally your school requesting for this money, I would inform the BOE and ask if this is even legal for your school to do. I would also refuse to leave any money (other than resident tax) unless they have a carefully itemized list of the bills they will be needing to pay on your behaf.
Line item invoice or no dice.
If they won’t provide you with details I’d not leave the money. Simple as that.
I have seen a colleague leave money for bills but it was a regular, itemised amount e.g. her final lease car payment.
I think I left something like 40,000 yen for various bills (residence tax was already taken care of) and it was all itemised and I got about half of it back before I’d even left the country. 400,000 sounds extremely excessive.
My first month of rent, I paid the security payment or whatever, which is what they will use if anything in the apartment is broken. Whatever amount is not used will be sent to my Japanese bank account.
Other than residence tax I am not paying for anything else
As you’re staying in Japan, it’s not to cover your plane ticket if you did a switcheroo like said you were leaving and then stayed in japan and had them pay for a plane ticket. Apartment had your deposit and such, so nothing for that. As you’re continuing to stay in Japan, just say they can contact you. imo
I mean, you made payments on your residence tax, right? That’s the only thing I can see coming out to around 400,000 yen.
But as everyone else has said, a shrug and “I don’t know” isn’t anywhere near enough.
Don’t leave a dime. You’re a big boy, you can pay your own bills.
Thanks everyone for your comments, glad to know this isn’t normal lol. Will be fighting to not leave that much and make the suggestion they can just forward any unpaid bills to my new address
I hate this kind of shit here – earmarking a set amount of money for some undefined purpose and there’s no way in fuck you get any of it back if it’s not used.
Don’t leave a goddamned yen. Take care of your bills, leave with zero debts, and tell them to stick it where the sun don’t shine if they push you to leave some cash on the table on the way out.
My boe used to take ¥10,000 every month in a way to cover any of these taxes and remaining bills with the intention of giving the remaining money back to us
I left probably 200,000. Have no idea what for but I had a great time, made a bunch of money, met great friends and was happy enough to leave the cash.
The previous JET left a shit heap car to get taken care of….
I’m currently in the leaving process. My supervisor and I talked about this issue this morning. They want me to leave 70,000 yen.
I couldn’t get a straight answer. My residence taxes are automatically being taken from my last paycheck on the 21st and I pay my bills in cash, which I’ve made arrangements for so I have no idea why they want me to leave that much. I couldn’t imagine leaving 400,000. Definitely follow up with them exactly why you have to leave that much.
I didn’t leave anything. I’d refuse unless you can get an itemized list and verify it’s really this amount. I can’t see why you’d ever need to pay off that large of a bill
I was a CIR but I don’t remember having to leave behind any money, but this was in 2000.
I was asked both times leaving to ( and the first time i was highly sus bc the building was being demolished in less than a year and was barely inhabited). While your bills may not come even close to that- there’s been plenty of times we’re rental damages / breaking contract early fees, have fallen back on the the BOE needing to pay. I had zero issue getting my monies other than the inconvenience of waiting for it. Worked out in my favor in the end as the exchange rate was higher when my BOE sent it to me.
It’s really common but not really well explained most times. It’s also not done for native Japanese in my experience.
It’s “just in case” there’s a missed payment somewhere and the BoE is asked to eat the cost. Most COs will do anything to avoid a surprise bill, even if it means inconveniencing people down the line when they need to give the money back.
All of my fellow JETs left some amount of money just in case. Whatever wasn’t used was always returned, painstakingly.
The only exceptions were for people who remained in Japan. We just explained that anything we forget would be forwarded to our new address.
Most of the supervisors didn’t know that was possible for foreigners to do but was a huge relief once they knew. One less thing to do.
It’s very unlikely that anyone is trying to fleece you. They’re probably just assuming that whatever method works for native Japanese doesn’t work for foreigners.
My advice is to show them you know how it works. If they refuse, do your due diligence but it’s not your fault if they can’t wrap their heads around it. You don’t need their permission but a little tact can go a long way here.
I’d flat out refuse if they couldn’t tell me what it was to pay for. When I left I had to pay cleaning fees for my apartment, but that was pretty much it, and I knew exactly what it was for. It sounds like someone is trying to get free money out of you.
400,000 is definitely waaaaay too much. I left absolutely 0 yen with anyone there, but I also stayed for about three weeks (my apartment was monthly so I stayed till the end of the month) after my contract ended and let everyone including my BOE know that when I left it was final. If there’s any bills after that it’s their problem not mine.
“I don’t know” is not good enough. That is an insane amount of money to just hand over without question. There is nothing else to pay for if you’ve paid all your bills and residence tax.
Is this them trying to get money back for the flight in some weird roundabout way so they don’t get in trouble with CLAIR?
Not Tax, mine comes from paycheck, but I do have a large amount of about 1000 to pay upfront for a combination of stuff for rent deposit and fees and stuff
Did you say 400,000. Not 40,000… someone has lost their mind!
My BoE asked me to leave 60 man (60,000) yen when I left my apartment, and after asking around, I found it was a pretty routine thing in my area. But in my case, our senpais had warned us about it within the first week or so of arrival. “Once you leave, the BoE wants you to keep about 60,000 yen in your account in case they need to pay for any cleaning fees.” so it was always in the back of my mind. The Boe “promised” to return any unused money, and I scrubbed every inch of that apartment top to bottom (and even had my dad come over to help, since he was visiting in Japan at the time) but after I was back in America, they emailed me asking for MORE money and gave me an itemized list of repairs. One that they claimed I needed to pay for that REALLY pissed me off was the sink–it had ever so slowly developed a leak over the two years I’d been living there, and when my dad looked at it, he said it wasn’t anything I did and it could happen over any amount of normal wear and tear, so on inspection day, I pointed it out casually and was like “The sink leaks and it’s the sort of leak that develops with normal wear and tear over time and my dad said it’s not anything I did (my dad is really good at repairs and house-stuff for context)” and they looked at it and *agreed with me* that it wasn’t my fault. Yet they still wanted ME to pay for it, and it was going to be an extra like 30,000 yen. It was even more frustrating because my washing machine had started to break down about three months after I’d first arrived and my supervisor at the time (very nice man, I liked him a lot) came over to look at it and was like “Yeah, this thing is completely busted. I can make it usable for you and then we’ll replace it for you later.” So I kept assuming that he’d mention it to his supervisor. He left after that year and we got a new supevisor, and when it broke completely six months before I was due to leave, I told my BoE that it was broken and needed to be replaced and “The previous supervisor said that it would get replaced,” and they were like “Okay, we’ll look into it.” But I never got a new washing machine and kept having to use the laundromat down the street. I estimate I probably spent like 30,000 yen doing laundry at the laundromat, not to mention the extra time I had to put all my clothes in a bag that would fit on my bike, then bike down the street, then sit on my arse in the laundromat while the clothes washed (because no matter how safe Japan is, I still felt anxious about leaving my clothes in the washer at the laundromat, like someone would steal my 1XL clothes when no one in my neighborhood wore anything above a medium lol) then bike home with a bunch of wet clothes and hang them up to dry. On leaving day, I was so upset that I’d never got a new washer and I wanted to make sure my successor didn’t try to use it (because it would damage clothes beyond repair if you tried to use it) so I stuck a sign on the lid saying “Do not use! It is broken! Needs repairs.” My BoE saw that and was like “Why is this sign here?” and then acted shocked when I reminded them I’d been waiting on a new one for six months and it had destroyed three of my favorite T-shirts when I’d tried to run a load. (one T-shirt I’d gotten from a local event in my city and I couldn’t replace it because it was limited edition so I was *pissed*) So when I got that email like two weeks after getting back home, I just kind of ignored it. I also never filed for my pension refund, either, because I’d ended up coming home with a nice little bundle of $20,000 USD and didn’t want to go to the extra trouble just to get some pocket change.