Like in any country, declaring your income/filing your taxes is a tedious process. It’s even more of a bother if you have to learn a whole bunch of Japanese tax vocabulary just to fill out the forms. For most people, the HR department at the company they work for will file their taxes so there’s no need to go through this process unless you have other sources of income. Also, the Japanese government gives tax breaks to people who have babies and purchased real estate, so if you want to take advantage of these benefits you have to file for a tax return. I didn’t have a baby last year, but I did purchased a house so I’m entitled to getting up to ¥300,000 of my tax money back. A fair bit of cash. It could pay for a new MacBook!! But I think I’d rather use it to buy a new door for the house. The one it came with is falling apart. I think I could kick a hole through it no problem.

So I took the day off work, again, to do my 確定申告 kakuteishinkoku (filing tax return) at the local tax office. During this season, lots of staff are on hand to assist people in filling out their forms. I had already filled out most of my forms but I wanted to double check if it was correct. Also I wasn’t sure about which documents I had to submit so I wanted to confirm that too. When I arrived, there were already about 100 people in the room seated along several long tables. In between, a few government workers were giving advice to a dozen people at the same time. They pointed me to a seat where I’d be assisted by a goofing looking guy with bad breath. Now why couldn’t I get the nice looking young lady at the other table? Figures. Anyways, I explained my situation, he looked at my papers for 2 seconds and then began giving me simple instructions like “write this number here” while simultaneously shouting orders at other people. You could tell he was in the zone. Then an old guy with a huge stack of documents sat down beside me and started to explain some insanely complicated tax situation he was in with all kinds of property being inherited, then changing ownership, sold and then bought again and so on. Everyone else was getting impatient as we waited for this guy to finish explaining but the story kept going and going and the documents kept coming and coming. In the end, my forms took about 45 minutes to complete but in hindsight I could have finished it in about 5 minutes. It was a relatively simple process after all and I don’t think you need to take a whole day off work to do it. While I was sitting around waiting I thought I might take some random photos of the tax office but there were government types patroling the aisles. I’m sure they wouldn’t really care but you never know what “the man” might do to you.

Unfortunately, I was missing a document so I had to go to the ward office in Shimokitazawa to get it. Drag. Since I had all day, I ate some Chinese food and enjoyed walking back along one of Setagaya’s green walking paths. Setagaya ward is about the size of Manhattan and there are nature paths crawling through the residential areas. You can literally walk from one end of the ward to the other enjoying Sakura trees, plants etc. I noticed that they had rebuilt some of the paths adding benchs, better maps and a nice creek. It’s still too early in the year for hanami so no cherry blossoms along the paths, but when I got back to the tax office I saw this tree at the entrance in full bloom (above photos). Strange. Did they import this one to attract people to declare their taxable income?