Did you watch the news? Korea beat Japan (and therefore Ichiro) in the World Baseball Classic. Anyways... I can't get it into my head that 1400 = 1. One of the hardest things to wrap my head around in this country is the currency....or more specifically the exchange rate. There are no cents here. Just the won. The penny is 10 won. The smallest bill is 1000 won. Well, that does make a little bit of sense (pun intentional) as 100 pennies go into a dollar. But the largest bill they have is the 10,000 won....so basically the 10 dollar bill...but they have no larger paper currency. Try paying for everything in $10 bills everywhere you go...that $150 (suddenly 150,000) grocery bill at Costco?...that $400 (400,000) lap top....just try it back in the states...yeah...you might just get a dirty look or two. Those extra zeros keep distracting me. If suddenly I was asked to pay 500,000 for anything...my first instinct would be to call a banker about a mortgage. But no I took 500,000 out of the bank yesterday from the ATM..I get paid millions every month (sadly its not millions of dollars)..and if that's not enough. I can't wrap my head around the fact that one dollar doesn't mean 1000 won (as it did a year ago) So 1000 won is actually around 68 cents. or conversely a dollar is 1400 won. But like America (or everywhere) there seems to mental barrier of a 1000 (the smallest bill) So everything in the convience store...everything is 1000 priced. That bag of chips...1000? That candy...1000...and that ceramic panda? 1000 won. Which brings me to the major side affect of paying for everything in cash....spare change and lots of it. So my panda bear/piggy bank is coming in very handy.
I feel your pain. Sounds like it's even more of a headache than yen. 100 yen = $1.00 Easy to do the conversions, but still a bit disconcerting when the cashier at McD's tells you your meal is 1,800 ANYTHING.
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