In my year and 8 months in Japan I've collected quite the pile of 1, 5, and 10 yen coins.

Womacks23 wrote:

In my year and 8 months in Japan I've collected quite the pile of 1, 5, and 10 yen coins.

I have only about 300 yen worth of all coins combined. Why not just do the mental math when you pay and use exact change, or at least reduce the amount returned?

I have a bigger problem with 1000 notes, since that's how most of my private students pay me (all but the hostess girls). I must have like 50,000 in 1000s in my wallet.

I collected all my 1/5/10 yen coins in a sack over my 15 months in Japan and then just took then to the post office bank a couple days before I left. They put it straight into my account without a fee.

52 pounds worth of coins! That's like 23 kilograms! That must have taken up a whole suitcase! (har har)

*cough*

Last edited by Babyrat (2010 March 02, 5:19 am)

Tax is included in the listed price so it is really easy to have exact change ready.  In Japan, if the bill comes to 467 yen and I hand them 517 yen, whether they are much smarter than American cashiers or told never to question the customer, they don't bat an eye and give me my 50yen coin back. 
In the US, if a bill comes to $4.67 and I hand the cashier $5.17, half the time she will push the change back and tell me I made a mistake.

It is scary how much easier it is to spend a 500 yen coin compared to a $5 bill

Two quarters are much easier to carry around than 50 cents in pennies, nickles and dimes!

Just want to add that the full £52 I will sell for around £40 which is a massive discount to give incentive to take it off my hands!

You can buy smaller amounts ofcourse.

In America, making a cashier put down her cell phone (if they do at all) to ring you up annoys them.  So yea, I can see where forcing them to divide change into the individual slots of their drawer would cause them mental anguish.

Jarvik7 wrote:

Does that include free shipping (to Japan)?

Haha wish I could send it to japan, its £40 to send it there lol

It weighs 200grams. I cant belive how much it costs to send to germany.. £20.  I dont exactly want to send it via normal post as its common for people to just steal it.

Guess I am going to have to go back to begging banks.

Jarvik7 wrote:

True, but it annoys cashiers when you treat them like an exchange service, which is why they give the look or ignore the extra money (they do it in Japan too).
-former cashier

Probably depends on the kind of shop, I mean you shouldn't pull out the pennies in a fancy shop, but at a combini or more casual place I've found that in Japan cashiers are usually on the same page about trying to reduce the amount of change.

In Japan I use cash often so I got used to using my change and not building up a pile of it, but in the UK or the US I hardly ever use cash, and when I do I end up with lots of change that goes in a bottle.

Last edited by vosmiura (2010 March 02, 12:56 pm)

bodhisamaya wrote:

In the US, if a bill comes to $4.67 and I hand the cashier $5.17, half the time she will push the change back and tell me I made a mistake.

Really? Where I live they just enter the Amount Tendered in the cash register and the machine tells them how much change to return. No problem for them, especially since they no longer are required to count the change back; they just dump it all - bills, change, receipt - in your hand.

Babyrat, I'll be mighty surprised if you find anyone who wants to lug that much coinage half way around the world.