This makes no sense

I'm up late again because apparently 11pm is the "cool" time to start guitar practice these days. Reading about the latest blasts in London and hoping that nothing too serious occurs.

I went to the bad post office today to close my account and told them I no longer have my bank book, but would like to cancel. I went to the woman because I had an unpleasant experience with the man, but apparently the man is the postal savings guy so I got stuck with him and I filled out a form and he just canceled my ATM card and told me I would have to order a new bank book and wait 1 week to cancel the account. I don't really understand why I need a bank book to cancel the account since they have my ATM card, inkan (identity stamp) and ID which verifies I am who I say I am or why I have to wait a week to get one since my bank was able to make me one in 30 minutes when I lost it. Secondly, why couldn't the guy have told me to get the money out before deciding to cancel the check card, which wasn't want I wanted anyway? He just gave me this "Are you a dumbass?" look when I told him that no, I had not removed the money through the ATM prior to closing the account. Seeing as we can only take out about $500 at a time in the US and only in $20 increments, it is not something Americans would think of as normal behavior. Here you can take out a million yen at a time, and then hear the absolute disbelief when you tell someone not from Japan that "Oh yeah, I was just carrying around 1 million yen in cash in my wallet, no biggie." I digress. I was extremely irate and stomped out in a huff because the guy was annoying the hell out of me and really didn't have enough English ability or gestural ability to be able to get by at all. Then I went to the good full-service post office near my house (there is a good micro branch near school, but it's like ultra basic) who called up the bad branch and the guy was clearly psyching himself up to get Irate American Customer, but I told him I wanted the money out of there and he told me I could use the card one more time to get it out and clear the account, thereby essentially canceling it without having to wait a week to get a new bank book. See how easy that was?