Bank Notes

While I was in Yanasegawa last year, I came across something interesting in a Familymart. I withdrew 4,000 yen from an ATM and to my surprise the sum was presented to me in.. 2 notes! Until then I thought Japanese bank notes were limited to 1,000 5,000 and 10,000 notes but it turns out 2,000 notes exist as well. I wasn’t too sure at first if it was real money, to be honest, so I spent my first 2,000 note in mentioned konbini straight away to confirm its validity. After successfully buying my drink with it I felt a bit stupid as surely no ATM would happily hand out monopoly money in the first place.

And so, I decided to keep the second note until I leave Japan. This turned out to be a good idea, as Hyun-Hee (sorry if I misspell your name >_>) explained to me, because apparently these notes are rare and are said to bring the owner luck. Yay! A couple of days later I proudly showed Tatsu my note and he said there existed another rare-ish note: 100 yen. Tatsu works part-time at a konbini so he said he’d check the register for me next time he went to work. Sure enough, next time I saw him we traded two 100 coins for two notes!

So here they are, my monetary all star team! (well, duo):

Look at these bad boys

Yen has never been this sexy.

Old Year, New Year

This entry is a bit late, but when aren’t they. 2009 has passed and we now live in the future: 2010. Let me try a straight off the top of my head review:

• Manchester life
• Oberursel life
• Manchester life
• Oberursel life
• Milton Keynes life
• Oxford, PA life
• Milton Keynes  life
• Katsu kare

Add in a bit of university, a depressing Christmas and an uneventful New Year’s Eve and you’ve got the essence of what I felt about 2009. Of course there were countless highlights, but the dragging of time has dominated last year mostly. Coming to Japan this changed at first to the total opposite, but daily life has set in and the novelty of being in this country has disappeared.

With that out of the way, I have enjoyed these past 12 days so far doing mostly nothing but sleeping, watching anime and playing games. The few times I didn’t was when Kat and I met up with Mariya and Jesse for お節（osechi, food served during the New Year’sHolidays) at Mariya’s grandparents’ house somewhere in Chiba.. I think. I also had ramen from a proper street vendor for the first time, so I can tick that off  on my Japan todo list! Next on the list would be leaving the Tokyo area for the first time which was actually planned for this week. However, the Japan Rail representative at a station misinformed Tom about the deadline to buy the 青春十八切符(seishunjuuhachikippu, lit. Youth 18 Ticket), so our trip to Nagoya and Kobe fell flat. I’m pondering going to the Zoo or Yokohama instead this week-end….. or maybe BOTH.

Anyhow, apart from New Year and Mariya and Jesse’s visit, not much really happened. It was a good opportunity to recharge my batteries and the sleepins will be missed.