BANKING

I like change. Now for those of you who know me you are probably thinking, "someone has figured out Donn's password and is writing a blog." But it's true, I like change. No, not the kind where you have to do something different from what you've always done but the kind of change you get when you buy something. If my final cost at checkout was $4.01 I'd give the clerk a $5 bill. Then I'd put the change in a can and about once a year I'd wrap it up, take it to the bank and trade it in for bills so that we could buy something special or go some place special. My total time at the bank might have been 30 seconds.


Daisy is the treasurer for our new church and last summer we had a special activity that we charged 500 yen (which is a coin in Japan worth about $5.00) to attend. So Daisy had a roll of fifty 500 yen coins and a roll of fifty 100 yen coins. She asked if I'd take them to the bank and get bills.


Since I wasn't sure how well I'd be able to communicate at the bank, I asked our secretary if she would call the bank first. They said if I had more than 500 coins there would be a service charge, but I only had 100 so I asked our secretary to write the bank a note explaining about the exchange and off I went.


When I arrived there was no line, so I went to the teller, laid out my coins and gave her the note. She read it and looked a bit confused and started to get out a form. Then she said something to the girl beside her who rattled off some Japanese and she put the form away. Then she asked me for my bankbook (I assume that's what she wanted cause when I gave it to her she didn't say anything else). She looked toward a little room on her left and it appeared occupied with the door closed, so she said something that I took to mean, "Please sit down and wait," so I did.


In a couple minutes the door to the little room opened and a lady left, so the teller gathered up the change, bankbook and a banking card that she had. She took me into this very small room that was almost big enough for what I later discovered was a money-counting machine. It was one of those places that really isn't big enough to change your mind. So anyway she did something to the machine with her card and two places opened up, one for bills and one for coins. But she couldn't just drop my coins in, she had to put them in a basket first and then dump them in.


So the machine counted my money and gave her a slip of paper with a number on it. So now it's back to her window, and between her and the other teller was another machine. She put my bankbook in and entered the secret number from the money machine and voila!! the amount of coins was now entered as a deposit in our account in our book.


It only took about 15 minutes. Why they can't just give bills for change I have no idea. Maybe it's a culture thing and since this is their culture, it probably will stay that way because they don't like change!!!