Job Discussion Forums

[flyingkiwi]

At this time last year, one New Zealand dollar could buy 68 yen, today it is a whopping 88 yen. Either the NZ dollar has gone ape, or the yen is struggling bigtime. Is it the same with America and Canada, etc?

Is anyone sending money home at this time? I have a NZ student loan to pay back, but I am thinking now is definitely not a good time.

[Michael188]

It is the same with the Canadian $. When I arrived last year 100 yen got me $1.05 Canadian. Today, 100 Yen gets me 92 cents Canadian.

The Japanese Yen is weak. The government and Japanese business like it that way. It means Japanese goods are cheaper abroad and foreign goods are expensive in Japan. It is win win for the Japanese. It sucks if you are sending money home to pay for student loans etc.

But hey in a year you may be saying the opposite about the Yen. The value of money is cyclical. It will change for the better for for the worse, but it never stays the same.

Mike

[Gordon]

When I came to Japan 5 years ago, I got 73 yen to the CDN dollar. Today it is 109.95. That is a huge loss of savings, almost 40%. Check rates at: ttp://www.golloyds.com/en/today/index.php

There is also a thread here in the Japan forum http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic.php?t=31496

[ironopolis]

Same for the yen versus lots of currencies. The one that it has lost least against is probably the US dollar.

Just 3 years ago I transferred some money from the Uk to Japan and got 180yen to the pound. Now it's over 240yen to the pound. That's about the same in percentage loss terms as what Gordon mentioned above. I have Aussie, Kiwi, German and Korean friends in Japan who all say the same about their home country's currency versus the ever falling yen.

Might be saying the opposite about the yen in a year's time?? 'Fraid I've been trying to console myself with that thought for nearly the last THREE years and it's showed little sign of going back the other way.

If anyone's thinking of coming to Japan with their savings from elsewhere, that's good because those savings are going to go a lot further than they used to. But if you're hoping to save a packet here and take it elsewhere, it's not looking so good.

[Apsara]

The yen has been getting weaker as the NZD has been getting stronger. I remember the happy days back in about 2000 when 52 yen bought NZD$1- now that was good! Luckily for me I was paying off my student loan then and got it paid off in record time.

Unfortunately for me I ran up some credit card debt at the beginning of this year while travelling and now have to send yen back to NZ to pay it back. Horrified to see the current exchange rates- have made note to self to stop using credit card...

[dodgee]

And the NZ dollar has been getting stronger due to the attractive high interest rates on savings. trouble is most of the money being invested in savings is from off-shore (Japanese housewives in fact make up a sizeable chunk of those investors) demand for NZ dollar pushes up the price and hence money from this end becomes worth less. For many kiwis overseas paying off student loans this is not a good thing. Bad for our economy too as our banks free these funds up by extending more credit to NZers to buy houses and credit cards pushing up prices. I am lucky I paid off my loan earlier (and I was getting an exchange rate of 49 at one stage). However there are a tonne of young Kiwis over-committed on mortgages/credit cards and when the economy there crashes there is going to be major pain I believe.

[furiousmilksheikali]

I thought it was only my students who said "Japanese yen".

[Genkikiwi]

hi Furious

can u explain... i say that ..well I used to ...

being serious here

cheers

[JimDunlop2]

I think what he was getting at is that putting "Japanese" in front of the word "yen" is rather redundant, unless of course you've heard of an American Yen or a Swiss Yen or a British Yen....

[flyingkiwi]

Dear oh Dear, I need to work on my English. Maybe I'll study it between teaching classes

[Genkikiwi]

gotcha..

phew...

ok I can keep my day job now

thanks

[womblingfree]

[furiousmilksheikali]

Yes, I did indeed mean that "Japanese yen" is redundant and I usually tell my students this. I also tell my students that "nihonshu" is usually translated as "sake" rather than "Japanese alcohol" or "Japanese sake". I also usually tell my students that "Japanese, traditional food" has the wrong adjective order and it should be "Traditional Japanese food". I also tell students to avoid saying "We Japanese..." and tell them that "A lot of Japanese..." is a better way of expressing generalizations.

I tell them this not simply to be a pedant but because a lot of English speakers believe that the Japanese have a very inflated sense of themselves and their supposed uniqueness. If our students speak in a slightly less Japanocentric way then perhaps this opinion wouldn't have so much... er... currency.

By the way, I'm sure that many [sic] unique currencies are prefixed by the countries name [sic] but that is hardly surprising. Just about every currency is prefixed by the name of the country it is used in with the obvious exception of the Euro. It doesn't mean that it reflects common usage.

[japanman]

I had a tricky time telling a teacher at my school not to say "Japanese enka". I tried to explain that there is no such thing as Chinese enka or German enka etc so the adjective "Japanese" isn't needed, it's just enka. But he said that enka is only in Japan so we should say "Japanese enka" I tried again to explain it but he didn't quite get it.

[furiousmilksheikali]