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Due to insinuations that I was stupid for taking so long to open a bank account and that it was my own fault I couldn`t work a bank machine in Japanese (though very interesting advice about “pulling an American”) I asked you if you knew what thing was needed to open a bank account in Japan. Voila it is the image below. This is an Inkan and I only wish that the one below was mine. I deeply want a Hanshin Tigers inkan now I have seen one.

An inkan is a personal stamp or seal used to underscore official documents and contracts. Wikipedia has a great entry about them including:

Traditionally, inkan are engraved on the end of a stick of hard wood, bone, or ivory, with a diameter between 25 and 75 mm. Carving them is a kind of calligraphic art.

and I found this page about them from the Nagano city council`s English page.

I had wanted to put a picture of mine on here but Reiko said I might as well have printed my credit card number and expiry date here as well whilst I was at it but here is an example of what a stamp can look like.

Mine is similar to this with Katakana characters instead of Kanji for my surname. It cost about 4000 yen or twenty quid or 40 dollars. It seems a bit funny to me as anyone could go into a shop and ask for a stamp and pretend to be somebody else and then with that stamp open a bank account in a false name. They didn`t ask me for any identification. It is fun using them although I`ve only used it properly when opening the account. It`s like I`m in the Middle Ages stamping my seal on a scroll. It`s definitely a novel experience.