I’ve been living in Japan for more than 4½ years now and tried many times to get one, always to be turned down. This especially includes applying for ones from my bank, Shinsei Bank, that I’ve used exclusively for all my time in Japan, and where I now have “platinum” status, meaning that I have many million yen entrusted at their bank, a significant part of which is in risky assests where they make a lot of profit. So they clearly rank me as one of their best customers, and I’m clearly bound to keep significant assets in their bank for the immediate future (so I cannot just “escape”), but still turn me down every time I apply for a credit card. Why is that?

Being turned down for a VISA credit card by my Japanese bank

When I visited one of Shinsei’s branch offices recently for a completely different, but somewhat time-consuming and complicated issue, I got to talk quite a lot with one of the staff there. As I have “platinum” status, they treat me quite well too, not hurriedly at all. This was one of the branches where a lot of foreigners visit, and she seemed quite used to working with foreigners, although we spoke only in Japanese. So at the end she asked if there was something else I’d like to inquire about, and I asked something along the lines of why do you turn my credit card applications down all the time, despite me being a “platinum” level customer and having millions of yen in your bank?. And surprisingly, she did have a good answer for that, not just the usual appologies.

The reason, it seems, why Shinsei Bank (which is, by the way, founded by a foreigner based on foreign capital) systematically turns down foreigners’ credit card applications is that the company that is contracted to handle credit cards for the bank doesn’t have any support line in English. Since we’d just been having a conversation about quite complicated banking matters in Japanese for half an hour, that reason obviously seemed very silly at that point. Still, that’s why. And since Japan doesn’t have any laws against racial discrimination, systematically turning down anyone with a foreign-sounding name (they don’t actually check your nationality) is just fine here.

Anyhow, at long last I went to Citibank to beg for a credit card there, since I’ve heard they’re more open to foreigners’ business. Considering the bank would have gone bankrupt if it hadn’t been bailed out by the US government, it’s not exactly my primary choice for doing banking, but anyway. And they gave me a credit card within less than a week, with a 1 million yen limit, which I think is very high. And unlike Shinsei Bank where I have the highest available “platinum” status, that was the first time I walked in to a Citibank office. I have no prior history with them at all. And they still gave me a pretty sweet credit card.

Finally got a Japanese credit card.

So what is the conclusion from all this? Go to Citibank. It seems Shinsei Bank and Citibank are the two somewhat modern banks in Japan, with Shinsei being about 10 years behind the average Swedish bank instead of the Japanese average of 50 years behind. Citibanks seems just as (comparatively) moderen. Shinsei seemed very foreigner-friendly when I opened an account there, but in the end they certainly do practice discrimination against foreigners, so I must say that I regret my decision – I should have gone with Citibank instead. That is the best advice I can give to anyone non-Japanese who’s getting a bank account and/or credit card in Japan.

You don’t have to be Jesus to walk on water when it’s frozen!

This year however awards us with a great cold and snowy winter. Yesterday morning when I was still up at my grandmother’s place in the village of Vittangi, outside Kiruna, a good couple of 150 km or so north of the Arctic Circle, where the sun doesn’t rise for a month during the winter, we went for a walk with the dog in -29℃. My beard froze to ice from the water vapor in my breath, but the dog doesn’t mind the cold at all.

It’s been an eventful year for me, with some turbulence and good stuff, but also a lot of tiredness. In the end I find myself in a better position than a year ago, all things taken together. Tomorrow we’re getting on the plane home to Tokyo, via Amsterdam, including a 6 hour visit to Korea where we plan to stop to have some spicy barbecued meat and kimchi on the way.

Right now I’m in Uppsala, the old university town north of Stockholm – also, conveniently, the city closest to Arlanda airport. We had sushi with miso soup for lunch today at Yukikos sushi, the new one in the market hall (Saluhallen) in the center of the city. Quite good, especially – as expected – the fresh salmon.

Swedish sushi.

The second, and more interesting, experiment in merging Swedish and Japanese culinary cultures today is this Ramlösa chūhai that I made as an apéritif before New Year’s dinner. Chūhai, for those not in the know, is a simple drink made by mixing barley shōchū (a Japanese spirit, not to be confused with rise wine) with soda and some fruit flavoring, usually some citrus fruit in a highball glass, on ice.

One thing that Sweden has right is the ubiquity of tasty carbonated water. These are often flavored in very imaginative ways. Since my mom happened to have a small bottle of Iichiko shōchū (one of the best when making chūhai) in the fridge (!), I bought some Ramlösa, the king of Swedish carbonated waters, with blåbär (“blueberry”, a delicious type of bilberry) flavor, and also one with pear and lemon balm flavor, and mixed these together with a slice of lime. Here’s to a happy 2010!

The ingredients.

Finished Ramlösa chūhai.

Surprisingly, the bilberry one tasted better than the pear and lemon balm one. Actually, the bilberry-lemon chūhai was one of the best drinks I’ve ever had. The contrasting tastes of bilberry and lemon complement each other superbly!

It’s been two years since I left my first repressive employer, Opera Software, which means that I am finally free of all non-competitive agreements as of today. Of course, disclosing that fact might in itself be against said (or non-said) agreement. So I’m not saying it’s the case, just that it might be. Anyway, it’s cause for celebration.

I was young and free, still enrolled at university, and eager to put my l33t coding skillz to use so what was I to do? No, looking back I realize – thank Providence – it was a good decision. It kick-started my career and set me off on an an interesting path.

But let me tell you kids: non-competitive agreements and the like are bad. Stay away from them and stay away from companies that will only offer you employment after signing one. I was lucky, but I don’t think most people are. Of course, whether or not they’re enforceable is another matter, especially when the nationality of the parties and the country where work is carried out are all different. But it smells of bad employment practices.

I was actually contacted a little more than a year ago about an interesting employment opportunity that I would definitely have been interested in if it weren’t for said (or non-said) agreement, so it’s not just all hypothetical. And regardless of the probability of such an unmentionable agreement being upholdable in court, I am a man of my word when signed in triplicate under witness and after review by lawyers. And specific knowledge of the Opera source code wouldn’t have been an advantage either – so it’s all just self-flattering from the oppressive party’s part.

Not coincidentally, today is also two years since I joined my second repressive employer, Picsel Technologies (also known as Picsel Research, Picsel Malta, Lescip, Picsel Holdings, Lescip H, Picsel Trustees, Lescip Seetrust, not to mention the Geurnsey-based Picsel Group Holdings, and a number of other names). Picsel was fun in many ways. If I get the salary they still owe me it’ll seem even funnier. But at least they didn’t require me to sign anything oppressive.

If you’re interested in understanding what happened to Picsel, a seemingly flourishing mobile software technology company, there’s a site for that. Highly recommended reading.

Anyway I’m better off now, thanks largely to these two repressive employers. Happy independence day!

So Friday was my last day in the office at Picsel Technologies. Not just because the office is moving, but also because I’ve resigned. I now have two weeks to get some real programming done before starting my next job on June 1. What that is I’ll get back to later.

I’ve been at Picsel for a little over one and a half years. At many times I have for various reasons not thought that I’d make it to a year there, so I am satisfied with having endured for this long. I’ve learned a lot, both some good engineering practices and also how not to run a company, which might come in handy some day. (Hint: if you’re going to run a company with authoritarian top-down management, it’s important to put smart people at the top.) Working with Picsel’s excellent technology has been a pleasure. I’ve seen things done that I wouldn’t have thought possible before. I hope the technology ends up somewhere where it can be put to good use.

I consider myself very fortunate to have worked at both Opera Software and Picsel Technologies. On the surface they look very similar (enough so for Opera’s lawyer to fedex me a very unfriendly letter when I was leaving) but they’re actually complete opposites. By working with similar kinds of projects (mobile applications for Japanese mobile operators and manufacturers) but with completely different approaches, I’ve gotten unique insights into what works and what doesn’t. Balancing the priorities between technology, products, processes, customers, and employees is essential. I’ll give it a little more time before I write about it though. I am going to utilize this knowledge in my future career.

Anyway, a company is just a shell with logo and a legal department. What matters are the people in it. And the people are what has been the best part of working at Picsel’s Tokyo office. I’ve met the most incredible, competent, and friendly people at the office. Most of them are not there anymore though, so it doesn’t make sense for me to stay either. But the connections I’ve made at Picsel Tokyo, both personal and professional, is what has really made the time there worth while. I consider myself lucky to have worked at Picsel!

First of all, citizenship seems important to Americans. By which I mean USAmericans, but I could imagine that Canadians feel the same since, after all, they look, walk, and talk like Americans. I suppose that if the country you’re born in only has a short history and no common ethnicity, and the common language is the most widely spoken in the world, then citizenship would be a defining characteristic for people of your country.

For most Swedes though, I suspect it’s not that important. Being Swedish, I feel, is more closely associated with speaking Swedish. If you’re born in, say, the US and are a US citizen but live in Sweden and speak near-fluent Swedish, then I most people will probably consider you Swedish. Or if you’re born in some poorer country and have migrated to Sweden, gained citizenship or at least permanent residency and speak good though heavily accented Swedish, I’d still consider you Swedish. You don’t have to eat fermented herring to be Swedish – I sure as hell don’t. I suppose the “Sweden Democrats” would not be as lenient, but the rest of the world’s Swedes are probably more sensible than they are.

I wouldn’t be surprised if I applied for Japanese citizenship good couple of years from now. For the “Japanese” though, me having Japanese citizenship and speaking fluent Japanese, living in Japan and paying the taxes, even eating natto for breakfast, wouldn’t make me “Japanese”. I don’t have a problem with that though. Anyway, it’s clear that being Japanese is very important for the Japanese, but citizenship isn’t an important part of being Japanese – just look for instance at the recent Nobel Prize winner Yoichiro Nambu who was always referred to as “Japanese” in the Japanese media, even though he doesn’t hold Japanese citizenship.

Anyway, back to the article. One thing that hit me was that if citizenship is only automatically bestowed on the first generation of children of Canadians, wouldn’t it be quite easy to manage to not burden your children with any citizenship at all? If two Canadians who were born outside of Canada by Canadian parents had children in a country that doesn’t give citizenship to anyone who happens to be born there, then the kids wouldn’t automatically have any citizenship, right? It would suck not to get a passport (why don’t countries allow people in without a passport anyway? what’s so special about carrying a passport?), but I suppose the possibilities of escaping taxes and bureaucracy would be good.

In the end, I think this citizenship business is taken too seriously. It would make more sense to me if people were citizens of the country in which they live, and it should also be easy for anyone to change citizenship. That would eliminate much of the need for dual/multiple citizenship as well, since you could easily regain your old one if you decided to “move back”.

I’ve read that in order to naturalize as a US citizen you need to answer a couple of questions correctly, and one of them is “What is the most important right granted to US citizens?”, to which the correct answer is “the right to vote”. I have never voted in a political election in my life and I don’t intend to start, so you might correctly infer that that answer sounds pretty stupid to me. I guess the most important right granted to Japanese citizens is that they don’t have to go to the immigration office to renew their “reentry permit” every three years, and the police don’t have the right to demand that they identify themselves without being suspected of a crime.