Japanese Currency

I realized in all of the posts about Japan, I did not touch upon their money.

Compared with the United States, there are a lot more coins, and a lot less paper money. From left to right:

500 YEN coin -- roughly $5
100 YEN coins -- roughly $1
50 YEN coin -- roughly 50 cents
10 YEN coins -- roughly 10 cents (or, as I called them "dimes")
5 YEN coin -- roughly 5 cents
1 YEN coins -- roughly a penny

Bills started at 1000 YEN ($10) and went up. I only saw 1000, 5000 and 10000 YEN notes. Only saw the larger two because the ATMs spit out money in increments of 10000 YEN ($100) and with the lousy exchange rate (fluctuated between 100 YEN=$1 before we left, and plummeted to 88 YEN=$1 on our last day), and only being allowed to take out up to $310 a day from the ATM, this meant when we did use the ATM, we could only take out 20000 at a time. Fortunately we were able to exchange money with Masumi.

We came home with about $10 in coins. Good planning on our part.