There are small and big piles everywhere in my home. Mostly the piles consist of mail. I think, when asked, no one would admit he or she likes the act of filing. I always resented it, even more so since having moved to Japan three years ago.
In the beginning a filing session would take me several hours, involving guessing and a lot of Google Translate. Nowadays I still can’t read what is written on most correspondence but I know that the first thing you should look for is the company logo and if there isn’t one look for the website name (which is always written in Roman letters) It is also advisable to know the kanji character for year, month and day, so you can easily spot the date which might give you a clue what the letter/invoice is about. It took me some time to figure out that there was a traditional Japanese calendar which is based on the reign period of the current emperor. Currently Japan is in the Heisei Era and 2018 is the year 30. We moved to Japan in year 27. And yet another thing I didn’t know was that in Japan a date is written in the order of year/month/day. I still have to think twice when I come across a date like 30/01/17.
katazukete 