Viewing page 49 of 240

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

WHEN a serviceman lands in Japan he waves sayonara to American dollars, dimes, and nickels, and bows in greeting to the Japanese currency - yen. Stacking 360 to the dollar, yen comes in varied shapes and sizes. Paper bills are printed for 1, 10, 50, 100, 500, and 1,000 yen, and there are 1-, 5-, and 10-yen coins. Yen bills are large and the serviceman can build a towering pile of the through 100s and still not have enough okane (the stuff the GI pays back on payday - money) to do the town. A one-yen note is a rather worthless bit of currency because it won't buy much more than a small piece of ribbon for girl-san's jet hair.

When purchasing from a Japanese merchant, the GI's brain gets quite a workout. He is continually making a mental conversion of the yen price into greenback price. And figuring the not-so-round number of 360 yen to the dollar - when a yen amount is quoted at, say, 9,250 - can result in complete mental chaos.

44