The words I never thought I would say

In Spring 2019, after an exhaustive job search, I took a job as a junior high school ALT in Tokyo. The work contract was as an 'independent contractor', called 'gyomu itaku' in Japanese. There is controversy about this type of contract, particularly for ALTs. The details are a bit outside the scope of this post-basically it's similar to an UBER contract. Under Japanese labor law there are no protections and few rights, other than the right to organize. This Spring, I signed on for another year, all the time hoping that something better would come along. Instead, as everyone knows, it was something worse. The virus happened. We were informed that the schools were cancelling the rest of the year. We have no unemployment insurance. We were told that the Board of Education would not compensate us for lost work, still an arguable point legally. It was an answer to the question, how can things get any worse?. Then, in an online meeting in April, the company supervisor said-tentatively-that due to our contract status, we may be able to file for a substantial payout from the central government as 'sole proprietors'. Basically we were business owners. In the U.S., unemployment insurance has been extended to cover those types of workers where it would usually not be available. I thought, okay-maybe this contract is good for something after all. I did some checking-in order to qualify, one has to show a 50% or greater loss of income in a designated month between 2019 and 2020. I started my current job in late April 2019. I didn't make much money that month, which set the bar to qualify low. But I had no work at all last month, I thought it would not be an issue. I filed my Japanese taxes on April 15th. As a contractor, no taxes are deducted from my salary. I have to pay everything myself. I was terrified of a huge bill, but after outlining my expenses, in fact I got a little back-600 yen. Well chain me to a bedpost. At least I didn't owe anything. So yesterday, I went to the bank to get a few thousand yen. I had 3,000 yen in my account . I had transferred 5,000 yen from my paypal account. There should have been 8,000 yen. Instead there was 36,000 yen. 'What? WHAT? WHAT IS THIS? WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME? DON'T PAY ME!' I was furious. To me, it looked like someone was trying to sabotage my eligibility for the government assistance. That amount was over 50% of my income in April 2019. At this point, I have no idea where the money came from. Did I misread the amount of refund from the tax office? I am anxiously awaiting the April pay statement from the company. Stay tuned for the conclusion of this mystery. 'Don't pay me'. I seriously doubt I will ever say those words again.