the bank loses our paperwork

You have to hand it to Japan's bureaucrats. They made be insanely rigid and micromanaging, but they don't tend to screw around.

Unlike in Canada. After the debacle with the customs people, I've come to appreciate that Japan's bureaucrats at least don't seem to make arbitrary decisions in violation of their own copious rules. That happened again today in dealing with the CIBC. I'd asked them for nothing more than to simply add my wife's name to our account. We visited the branch in our area, spent twenty minutes filling in all of the paperwork, and then .. nothing. When two weeks had gone by without any change to my account status online (and no card in the mail for Mari) we dropped in to the branch again, and they couldn't figure out what had happened. I then made five calls around the organization yesterday and got nowhere.

Today a teller at the local branch named Kristen called back to say that they had lost our paperwork. The bank had lost our paperwork...?