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!

Something's Not Quite Right...

Life in Japan isn't all that different from life in America, especially when living on a U.S. Military base. In my day to day life, I still communicate in English, use debit cards and American currency, go to work and talk with American children going to school and learning English, Math, Science, etc. My husband and I live in a very Americanized apartment building, with little identifying it as a Japanese built apartment complex. We cook on American appliances and do our laundry in full-sized American dryers. We sleep on our American furniture that we shipped over here when we moved. If you wanted to, you could forget for a few hours or even a few days that you didn't actually live in the states.

Until you want to go somewhere other than the BX or Commissary of course, and have to exchange some of that American money for yen. Or drive to work and get in the car on the right side instead of the left, and then drive on the left side of the road. Oh, and recognize the Japanese road signs. And if you drive off base, you leave a lot of that American safe bubble behind. Quite a few Japanese do speak English and there are a lot of places that cater to American business right outside the gate, but things are different.

I thought I'd try to share a little more detail about what's different over here. Everyone can guess the obvious language barriers and quick math needed to convert American money to yen and back again, but there are obviously a lot of little things that add up to make the overseas experience unique.

Today I'm going to show you how that unique experience plays out on my computer!

If I have deleted my browsing history or stumble upon a new site, it will often identify my location (Japan) and guestimate who I am and what I speak/read from there. So I stumble upon a lot of sites in Japanese.

Even familiar ones...



Like Google..





(I have to click a "Google in English" option, and then the computer remembers my preference until I delete my history and have to do it again.)


I also experience it when I decide to do some online window shopping. Like at American Eagle...



Who very nicely identifies my location and uses my local currency of yen. (Again, there's an option to change your location, which takes some guessing since everything's written in Japanese, and it will save your preference.)


Blogger never communicates with me in English unless I'm signed in...



Most of the time I can't even figure out what it's asking or telling me because its default communication seems to be Japanese, which I cannot understand. Even when I'm logged in I still get some Japanese, which confuses and frustrates me!


Facebook is my favorite...mainly the sponsored ads section. Sometimes I get ads written in English but focused in Japan. I see one pretty frequently about hiring a personal trainer in Tokyo. Sometimes they're in Japanese and I'm lost.







So my internet experience is often finding Japanese writing and prices in yen and then searching for something that looks like it will change everything back to English. It provides a little entertainment or frustration depending on my mood and reason for being on the internet.

Luckily, this little quirk doesn't really affect my life much. Because the internet is so huge now, almost every site has the option to change languages and even currencies. Most stores are willing to ship to APO addresses, and stores like Amazon offer the same shipping costs and ship consistently quickly all the way over here.

I should provide more detail about shopping in another post, but obviously shopping is limited to the BX and Japanese stores. Online shopping has become a favorite of mine, and Amazon is particularly dangerous because it does ship so quickly and at an affordable cost. And it stocks nearly everything a person could ever want. And I find a lot of things I want, need, or never knew I needed until Amazon helped me find them. But I'll save my love for Amazon for another post too.