Oh THERE'S that 5.93 billion yen in cash! I was wondering...


In the news on Wednesday, March 12: "Two women arrested for record-high inheritence tax evasion after Y5.93 billion cash found in their garage." http://www.japantoday.com/jp/news/430740

That's just over 57 million Canadian dollars worth of yen. The idea was to avoid the inheritance tax which would've taken nearly $28 million from the $80 million they inherited from their father (a very successful businessman who passed away in 2004), leaving the sisters with a paltry $52 million. So instead, they hid this unimaginably large amount of cash in cardboard boxes which were stacked in the moldy garage of one of the sisters. The tax man came snooping and they were found out.

It was Yoshie, a lady in my English conversation class, who brought up this story during class. We all laughed at the claim by the arrested women that she had "forgotten about the cash" kept in her garage.

Inevitably, talked turned to what we would do if we had $57 million in cash sitting in our garage. We agreed that it would be nearly impossible to spend it all, but that some leisurely traveling around the world would be nice, send our kids through university, etc.

Takao said that he would buy, like, ten dorayaki cakes and eat them all at once. "What a small dream!", laughed Kimie.

Old Inoue asserted that he wouldn't want that kind of money. "I'd have to go around with ten bodyguards all the time!".

Someone said that they wouldn't mind having the money as long as nobody else knew they had it. Interesting. It reminded me something comedian Dave Chappelle said in an interview. He said that the sudden wealth and fame he got didn't change him so much as it changed the people around him. "You know in cartoons, when a dude is real hungry and he looks at his friend and he sees a roasted chicken? That's what it's like. That's how people start to see you."

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In other news, the weather is finally starting to warm up, which means I no longer sleep with 4 layers of clothes and I don't see my breath when I wake up in the mornings.

Fig. A: Dorayaki cake (sweet red-bean paste cake). You can't get the scale of them from this picture, but they're about the size of a small pancake.