Coins, Coins, Everywhere, but not a Yen to Spend
One of the most striking things about buying things in Japan is how much you can spend without really noticing. This is largely due to the fact that they use coins for everything up to 500 yen (~$5). And those 500 yen coins look a lot like an American $1 coin, which are pretty rare, and we usually use paper money for $1 values. The 100 yen coin here is very, very similar to an American quarter ($0.25).
The smallest bill currently in circulation is the 1000 yen ($10) bill. The other two pieces of paper money are the 5000 (~$50) and 10,000 (~$100, though about $110 with the current exchange rate). I cringe every time I have to break a 10,000 yen note, but the 1000s and the 500 yen pieces feel like 1/5 to 1/10 their value, so they disappear really quickly. Add to that the fact that everything here is at least twice as expensive as I think it should be...
Now, that said, the coins are really convenient like that. They're actually useful, not just something to have to put up with. That said, it's still frustrating to carry around ten nickels and twenty cents in pennies on top of all of your money with enough zeroes after it to matter. I've been tossing excess coins into a little baggie basically since I got here, and I had forgotten about it for the past two months or so. I have to go to pay rent today, and once I pull out the money for that, I'll be at (thanks to the exchange rate) about $50 left for the last week that I'm here. Now, that's no small amount of money, but given that $15 of that will go to getting me to the airport, and I will need to have some money on hand or at least in my account in the event of baggage handling fees or something, well, I remembered my little yenny bank. That was a pun on piggy bank. Please tell me someone got it.
So I decided to see roughly how much I've got in it. About an hour later, it turns out I've got a little over $80 in random change that has been gathering. Now, there is a slight problem with this, and that's that clerks are not so happy when/if you come in with 226 dimes and want to buy something. So, for the sake of international relations, I'm going to take everything under the 50-yen coins down to the bank and have them turn that into real money for me. Hopefully. I also hope the processing fee isn't super-high, but Japan does love its paperwork, so I'm only vaguely hopeful on that one.
Here are the statistics:
The smallest bill currently in circulation is the 1000 yen ($10) bill. The other two pieces of paper money are the 5000 (~$50) and 10,000 (~$100, though about $110 with the current exchange rate). I cringe every time I have to break a 10,000 yen note, but the 1000s and the 500 yen pieces feel like 1/5 to 1/10 their value, so they disappear really quickly. Add to that the fact that everything here is at least twice as expensive as I think it should be...
Now, that said, the coins are really convenient like that. They're actually useful, not just something to have to put up with. That said, it's still frustrating to carry around ten nickels and twenty cents in pennies on top of all of your money with enough zeroes after it to matter. I've been tossing excess coins into a little baggie basically since I got here, and I had forgotten about it for the past two months or so. I have to go to pay rent today, and once I pull out the money for that, I'll be at (thanks to the exchange rate) about $50 left for the last week that I'm here. Now, that's no small amount of money, but given that $15 of that will go to getting me to the airport, and I will need to have some money on hand or at least in my account in the event of baggage handling fees or something, well, I remembered my little yenny bank. That was a pun on piggy bank. Please tell me someone got it.
So I decided to see roughly how much I've got in it. About an hour later, it turns out I've got a little over $80 in random change that has been gathering. Now, there is a slight problem with this, and that's that clerks are not so happy when/if you come in with 226 dimes and want to buy something. So, for the sake of international relations, I'm going to take everything under the 50-yen coins down to the bank and have them turn that into real money for me. Hopefully. I also hope the processing fee isn't super-high, but Japan does love its paperwork, so I'm only vaguely hopeful on that one.
Here are the statistics:
| 4100 yen | 41 coins | 100 yen | |
| 2050 yen | 41 coins | 50 yen | |
| 2260 yen | 226 coins | 10 yen | |
| 435 yen | 87 coins | 5 yen | |
| 350 yen | 350 coins | 1 yen | (guess) |
| 9195 yen | Total |
Labels: money
posted by William at
2/10/2009 01:31:00 PM
4 Comments:
Good luck with the coin exchange. I hope they can manage that without charging you something but, yeah, Japan...paperwork.
Yes, the pun was at least somewhat effective.
Anyway, it sounds like a nice little bit of bonus to have from coins. :)
Safe and comfortable travels to you!
I got the pun as well.
If "Yenny" were a name, would it be a male or female name? It sounds like both "Penny" (from "Penelope") and "Lenny" (from "Leonard"?)
I think it is one of those multi-gender names. Could go either way.
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