"mr.sumo snr." <mr_sumo@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:bldaih$atuq7$1@ID-141600.news.uni-berlin.de...
> Congratulations Ryan!

Thanks! feels good.

> Welcome to thirty years of "a reason to work" apart from securing funds in
> order to buy brown water.

We actually chose a 20-year loan. Even if interest rates stay the same, we
will save 3 million yen that way -- more if they go up.

> We both signed the loan documents (if I remember correctly there were
about
> 36 name-stamp marks required - each - including even the spine of the
> folder)

Yep, there were quite a few. The bank had to huddle for a bit, and make a
couple phone calls, before they decided how I should write my name. In the
end, it was name as appearing on passport, in all caps, with my gaigin card
katakana above it:

ライアン　　　ジンストロム
RYAN FRANCIS GINSTROM

I wrote that about 10 times, along with my address & phone number several
times, plus seal stamps galore. I think they just stamp everywhere they can
think of, just in case.

It was like an assembly line. I write, pass to my wife who writes, she
passes to the loan official who starts letting fly with the stamps.

>and had the money in the bank about a month before my wife quit her
> nursing job.  We made no secret of her plans to leave - but neither of the
> banks seemed particularly bothered about how that might affect our
financial
> situation.

I guess it just shows that the banks know what is up, and are just playing
the government reg game enough to keep the govt boys happy (government
employees have a ring of hell reserved for them just above the needle-hiding
surgeons)

> Of course, being an uptight Brit, both the mortgage rate and the entire
> property cost was very cheap compared to something similar in semi-rural
> Worcestershire or Warwickshire.

It was fairly cheap here too, compared to the mainland (and dirt cheap
compared to San Francisco).

-- 
Regards,
Ryan Ginstrom