Money Matters

Japanese people are a little weird when it comes to just about everything. One of the things I have recently learned is that money is just another one of those things.

First of all. I had the grave misunderstanding of being in this exact scenario. When you open your wallet and coins, coins everywhere, just go in a downward tumult toward the floor. So what would you do to minimize the damage? You don't want these little buggers to go sprawling everywhere now. I mean sure in America it isn't so bad. What did you have? Three or Four quarters and about eight dozen pennies. Eh who cares. It is like a dollar. And you wanted those pennies gone anyways. No one will be sadder if you don' pick up two or nine of them. In fact kids love finding those little suckers. Well here too. People would love to find your coins. Since You could very easily have twenty dollars in change. In Japan the one dollar and the five dollar are in coin format so if you spill them, you could really be letting loose a very nice chunk of change. So again, what do you do?
You step on them. You aren't letting those crafty little buggers escape you, no! You need those things for this here ticket machine.
You good sir or madam have just made a grave error. That there action is nicely frowned upon by the good and gentle Japanese folk. It is very disrespectful to the money you see. And in Japan you must respect all things. So you don't step on your money. You just let it roll all over the floor and have to rely on the goodness of Japanese people to either ignore you are most often happens or the kind stranger or two who help you out and pick up a piece or two and hand it back to you. Otherwise you just have to look like a giant oaf of a dog sniffing for a place to poo chasing your money around and picking it up.

The next lesson is a subtle one. One that I am not even sure most Japanese people either know they do or why they do it. This one is much more simply and not a huge social fallacy if you neglect to partake in it. This one is simply the way you carry money around in your wallet. First off, most Japanese people don't like to fold their money, and have been tending toward those longer wallets that keep the bills crisp. Even the men. And they still stick them in their back pockets. It is like a thieves paradise. Though I mean usually there is a chain or something connecting them to a belt loop. Or that murse(man-purse) they carry around like its cool. The other thing is to put the money in your wallet head first. Meaning the head of who ever happens to be on the bill you are inserting would be diving into the riches of your wallet. That way when you take him, depending on the way you hold your wallet, he will come out facing the direction of the cashier.
I cannot even fathom why they really do this. So many silly rules for me to go and mess up about this culture