Dealing with Money

Today I worked from home, which was nice. It not only allowed me time to work on work w/o any interruptions but it also let me make calls to our bank, cell phone company, AAA, etc... I have found that 1) T-mobile does not work in Japan (no service and no internet on my phone, it will basically be a fancy clock and a calculator) 2) the bank (Chase) has to order Yen for us but will do a currency conversion for us (takes 2 business days) 3) so does AAA but it seems the bank will not charge us fees since I have an account and lastly 4) USAA will allows us to use our ATM card in Japan and reimburses us the fees up to $15 a day. I love USAA!

With Japan being more of a cash society we're going to actually have to carry cash with us versus relying on our debit cards or travelers checks... So we plan to take a small chunk and they just deal with ATM's while there. It seems ATM's have a better exchange rate versus, say, the airport (thanks for that info Dad!).

If you were wondering 1 Japanese yen = 0.010903 U.S. dollars (as of right this moment). You can track the yen here or you can go to google and type in the amount of yen and then hit enter and it will tell you how much it is in US dollars. It seems that right now we can assume that 10% of the yen is equivalent to our dollar. For example 1000 Japanese yen = 10.90300 U.S. dollars... thats just a little over 10% so I'm sticking with that equation for this trip so it'll make it a bit easier to figure out how much things cost.

Google is such an amazing tool. I was telling my Dad that I have found Google to be helpful so far with our trip. I went to Google Maps and searched on how to get from Narita Airport to our hotel and it gave me exact directions but in Japanese so I then went to Google Translator and translated it. So now I have exact direction on which train to take and then to transfer to and then how far to walk, etc.. So, hopefully it will all work out alright. Oh and I even bought a mini compass for my backpack so I would know which direction we are pointing once we emerge from the train... Jeff laughed at me but I assure you one of us will be prepared and able to navigate Tokyo... I'll give you one guess on who that will be.