A rainy Thursday was the perfect opportunity to attend to a few errands that I have been procrastinating to complete. The most exciting was a visit to the local bank. I needed to exchange my ¥500 ($4.56) rolled coins for paper bills. I forgot to take a picture of the rolls before I went to the bank. These are the leftover pieces and an empty coin roll. It gives you an idea. 


The ¥500 is slightly larger than a U.S. Quarter. It takes 50 of the ¥500 pieces to make a complete roll. I know you are capable of doing the math, I just wanted you to realize how many ¥500 pieces we had when I tell you we had three rolls!! (150+) And now you’re wondering, why did we have so many? 


During our Area Orientation Brief (AOB), one of the presenters told us his family saved all of their ¥500 pieces and then used them to pay for trips exploring Japan. Dave and I agreed this would be a great way to save for excursions. For the past 10 months, we have saved our ¥500 pieces. Recently, I rolled them into ¥25,000 ($228) coin rolls. The three rolls of coins we accumulated equaled ¥75,000 or approximately $684.33. The paper bills of ¥75,000 is much more impressive and worthy of a photo. 


Now that it is raining both inside and outside our house, I need to start planning our next Shinkansen adventure!