Greetings from Japan,
Only one week left of the term, I bet you are all counting down till the holidays!
I've had a busy week.  Suddenly my classes seem to be a lot harder and it's hard to learn so many new words.  I'm expected to learn about 20 a day, but I find that really tough!  I'm glad tomorrow is Friday!
I'm going to go to an island that has been designated a National Park and UNESCO reserve.  It has a lot of endemic species of plants, birds and insects, so I'm really looking forward to tramping and exploring the island.  It has the World's largest nesting area for endangered Loggerhead turtles.  I wonder if I will see any.

I thought today I'd tell you alittle about buying things in Japan.    

Don't hand the shopkeeper your money...... Use the money tray. One of things that struck me about Japan was the use of a little rectangular tray for your money when you pay for something. For having a reputation of being so technologically advanced, nearly all shopping transactions still use cash. After the cashier tells you the total amount purchased, you place your Japanese Yen in the money tray- you don't hand them your cash directly.  Most Japanese people don't know what an EFTPOS card is because the banks don't provide them here.  It's credit card or cash only.  And most places don't except credit cards.



Here is what Japanese money looks like but this photo is a little old, 500Yen notes aren't in circulation any more:

1000Yen equals about $17.  So can you work out what 1Yen equals?  (answer is at the bottom of this blog).

Japanese cash registers- A lot of the bigger shops and chain stores have these. When you give the cashier cash to pay for your things, the cashier doesn't open the register and give you change... the register spits out the exact change. Thus, if your purchase cost ¥2,800 and you give her ¥5,000, she "feeds" the ¥5,000 bill into the register (like how you would feed a vending machine a dollar bill to buy a Coke), and the machine will automatically spit out ¥2,000 in bills and ¥200 in change (and the register never once opens).


Interesting aye.
That's all for now,
Bye bye
Amelia

P.S 1Yen equals almost 2 cents.