Day 381 { Steak House / Why Do They Do This?? } Saturday, April 4, 2009

Day 381 { Steak House / Why Do They Do This?? }

Today I went to a restaurant in a nearby city called Soja... The restaurant is known as Steak House, and I went there with 2 of my friends.... I remember when I visited Virginia in 2005, I went to this same restaurant, but I never knew they had them in Japan...

So all this time that I am doing my voluntary radio show on camnet... I had no clue whatsoever that this was some sort of club that I had to pay a fee for... So 2 days ago, I was surprised with an email by the guy who runs the camnet radio station, telling me that my fee is due??? I was like "what fee are you talking about, I know nothing of this"... I also asked him how much is the fee... He said it's a yearly contribution of ￥１２０００　(US $120) .... Now why didn't this guy tell me that a fee was involved for volunteering my services from the get-go??? The worst thing is that I sometimes find it so difficult to record and edit this program, not being paid, and now I have to pay a fee to do all this work????? If I was aware of this, it would have been much easier for me to make a decision if I wanted to join this club or not....

Tell me what do you think I should do??????

1)Keep possibly wasting my time, effort and energy for maybe a few more months, pay the money then quit...

2)Quit now because he should have told me this from the start

3)Just continue doing it and pay the fee because sometimes it's fun...

I am currently working with option 1... But maybe tomorrow my mind will change..

This is about the 10th time a Japanese person is doing this to me.... Where they invite me out or invite me to do something, then tell me afterward that I had to pay.....The Jamaican custom is that, if you are invited out...then the person who extends the invitation should pay...

It happened with Thursday soccer, it has happened several times at restaurants and now the radio show.... I am starting to wonder if I am going to have to pay to do my TV show as well????

My friend who is in another prefecture said something similar happened to him... But his is much worst... He said he thought that his apartment rent was coming directly from his salary.... But suddenly at the end of 11 months his landlord decided to tell him that he owes a whopping ￥５２０,０００ (US $5200)... Why did he wait for 11 months???? I had to ask him though if he didn't notice that his monthly pay was a little too high.