I forgot to send write something yesterday, whoops.  Meant to clean the bathroom as well, but ended up on the phone to London for a few hours.  Anyway todays topic is something that I have been meaning to write about but others things crept ahead of the list.  It has all to do with currency and sex!  (got you attention there).

How many of you have coin jars, you know what I mean, the jar that you empty all the coins out into when you wallet is getting to heavy?  I’ve had one of some sort all the time, it also seems to aquire alot of foreign currency as well.  The UK’s love of having prices £2.99 or similar means you are forever getting handed 1 and 2 penny coins, and they are just to much effort to do anything with.  Didn’t help when the company stopped the vending machines from taking them as well, as that was always a useful outlet for them.  May take you a forklift to get 50p worth of coins to the machine for your coke, but think of all the calories you burnt lugging that metal so you could have you sugar ladened drink (and don’t even start me on what Diet Coke does to you, I am still frightened from being told).

So back the coins, well after moving to London I needed another coin jar, actually it ended up being a water bottle with its top cut off.  Odd I know, but once started it seems wrong to change it.  Naturally it started getting filled up until one ill advised one night stand which resulted in me trying to figure out where the hell my coin jar was two days later.  I had to reach the conclusion that my ‘friend’ had decided to take a little reminder of me.  What really made me giggle about this was that I had actually raided said jar for practically all it decent coinage (10p and above) just a few days earlier.  Said companion probably saw a sprinkle of silver on the top and thought it was treasure time.  Instead it was basicaly a very heavy cointainer of 1p coins.  Sometime I absolutely adore karma.

(oh after that little incident I aquired another coin jar – water bottle, yep – and when I left London it yielded a very respectable £130 )

So now that we have dealt with the sex part the main point of this blog was that in Japan you routinely walk around with about \10,000 of folding notes in your wallet.  I was slightly perplexed to see in the shops products on sale for \237, but figured some type of rounding system was in action.  Imagine the shock when the bill was added up and I was handed back my change included \1 coins.  This was going to require a very very very large coin jar.  Yet some how I have not aquired one, and not for lack of suitable water bottles being around.  I have in a small box from Syria a few \10 coins, and I’m actually going to do something very odd and that load them back into the wallet.

I don’t know why it works over here, but everyone gives the closet change they can, all the way down to the last yen. Or if thats not possilble sort out the small stuff.  Perhaps it because you are given time to rummage around in your wallet to try and find suitable coins to give, with no withering looks from the clerk.  After a while you get completely used to searching for small change and don’t just empty it out into the coin water bottle.  End result is that all the coins seem to stay in circulation and waterbottles get recycled!