Saturday, 10 October 2015

Shops and 'combini', money

One of the first things we did once I got here was go to the local 'combini', ie convenience store. There are loads of them dotted about Japan, and my nearest is just 2 mins walk on the same street. The 3 biggest chains I have seen so far are Family Mart, Lawsons and 7-11. I got my first 'bento' and the shop assistant actually microwaved it for me :) I also got some oreo daifuku, which is like mochi with icecream inside! Very tasty.
When paying, you can hand over change or put it in a small tray by the till. I wasn't sure why, and thought it might by a hygiene thing or some polite custom, so I looked it up. There's not really a solid answer, but this article has some ideas: Change Trays

You also get a lot of coins and change here, as the notes only get used for 1000 yen and more (I think of them as like tenners, but they are a lot closer to fivers in value). You get change in similar denominations to UK currency: 500 yen, 100 yen, 50 yen, 10 yen, 5 yen and 1 yen coins.  

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1 comment:

  1. Lisa22 October 2015 at 07:44

    The change trays have a handy purpose - have you noticed that in some shops, the tills have a chute that they just tip the coins into, then the till automatically counts the money, and spits the correct amount of change out of another chute into another change tray? No counting needed!

    Also do cashiers do that thing with you where they type the amount of money due into a calculator and point to the numbers, and on the one hand you're like "stop underestimating me just because I'm a gaijin!" and on the other hand you're like "THANK YOU now I don't need to work it out in my head because no matter how long I've been here, numbers are hard!"

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