Working with Yen

America is no longer a cash economy. It's all on credit. We use credit cards for gas, food, bills, gum, and anything else we happen to need at any given moment. Some people use their credit cards to pull out cash for the week, but most prefer to use plastic. Either the debit or credit variety, Americans always have those cards handy.

Japanese do not.



Japan is a cash country. Actual paper and coin money.

Shopping on base is simple. American currency, American debit and credit cards, American merchandise (in the BX anyways, we get Japanese produce). Ta-da. Not rocket science.

But stepping off base takes a little more thinking.

Step one involves deciding how much money we actually need. Jeff and I both prefer cards to cash, so we hardly ever carry cash. When we go off base, our first stop is always the ATM to pick up some yen. ATM's on base (both Navy Federal and a bank affiliate of Bank of America) offer both American dollars and Japanese yen.



But wait.

That currency conversion rate is still in the way. $1 American dollar does NOT equal 1 Japanese Yen. Today, it's more like $1 American dollar is equal to 77 Japanese yen.



Need a quick math lesson? I do.

$1 -- 77 yen
$5 -- 385 yen
$10 -- 770 yen
$20 -- 1540 yen
$30 -- 2310 yen
$40 -- 3080 yen
$50 -- 3850 yen

No, I'm not able to do that math in my head most days. Yes, I always get confused and have to stop and think when converting dollar to yen and back again. I usually go by approx. 1 dollar to 100 yen, but you can obviously see that's inaccurate. Sometimes we pull out our cell phones and use the calculator, and sometimes I just leave it up to Jeff to figure everything out ;)



I'm slowly getting used to dealing with yen and adjusting to the conversion rate. Luckily it only shifts 1 or 2 digits from week to week. It makes my wallet bulky and confusing when I have both dollars and yen stuffed in there, along with the change from both.

And Japanese currency comes with a lot of change. I'm not a change person. It weighs down my wallet. I don't have the patience to count out change at the register. So having change up to 500 yen is a little different. I can pay for dinner entirely in change, even at an actual restaurant. It blows my mind just a little.



Jeff and I both started dumping our change as soon as we get home. So I put out small bowls to collect our change. They're getting a little full. We're going to invest in some larger collection bins/pots/bowls/etc. to collect our American and Japanese coins. We figure at the end of three years here, we should have a decent collection of each.

Just a quick discussion about one necessary inconvenience of living overseas. Obviously I would prefer to stick with one currency, but I'm sure within another six months I won't even have to think twice about using yen.

But for the past six months, it's been an adjustment. One of the little things about living overseas that everyone knows about, but maybe don't think about too often. I don't, unless I have to. Like when I have the urge to go buy new flowers for my balcony or try some delicious Japanese food.

Happy Sunday!