The free riders?

I have to admit that it's really interesting to se how people react when the proffessor enters the room. They bend their head and keeps on nodding...no comments on anything he says and IF they say something they say it as shortly as possible. He keeps on interrupting them while they have the presentations and so on.

I figure this out way to late. I did criticize an experiment two weeks ago and he did not turn out to be happy about it. Then I got quite and now he asked me something else and I just keep on nodding. But before he left the room, he said something about "I am to nice but I try to be harder. You are a hard student and I do not like it so I should not be nice to you".
Waz???


Ok, just to make a long story short, here’s what happened. I found out one week ago that I had to pay 74 000 yen in situation fee here in Japan. The problem was that my university in Sweden were suppose to take care of that so the asked my to send over the bill. The problem was that the university here did not accept that. They want the students to pay the fee so they can se that it’s from the students. Ok, so I paid from my Swedish bank account 74 000yen plus 20 euro+ the receiving bank fee. Fine.

Three days ago, the office called and asked for their money, they will arrive I said by the end of this week. But No, now!!! The deadline was the 29th anyway so why did they get all so excited? Relax, they’ll arrive, and as I said, 10 days after the transfer the money arrived today.

Three days ago, I had to transfer another 74 000 yen from my bank account. Nice. So I paid 40 extra Euro and got the transfer directly here in Japan at a bank.

Now, they will refund me the university, but only 69 000 yen. Nice? They try to give you the idea of being so official with everything and that we foreigners all are some kind of cheaters. I told my bank that I would pay for the whole transaction fee, so why do I only get 69 000 yen back.

They say that corruption is weak here. I say that it’s not. It’s just invisible. Another instance is my apartment. The extra fee I had to pay for cleaning (was not in agreement when I signed the contract) or the different depositions fees for everything?
Either that or the fact that there are free riders?

(BTW, the phot is taken outside the fountain of the unviersity, really cute turtles...)