Why doesn't Japan just divide the Yen by 100?
I think the tradition within the country would outweigh any convenience it would have for the rest of the world.  The US hasn't even been able to switch to the Metric system, even though it's taught in school and used in math / science.  The costs involved with changing price tags, and re-organizing everything in their world would be pretty crazy. So their programmers don't have to deal with floating point arithmetic. This is why they're so far ahead in technology! "Currently, there is simply no reason to do so. It's not a problem. It is no more of a problem or effort to denote ""5,000"" than it is to denote ""50.00"". But if there were a reason to do so, it wouldn't be all that difficult. Of course there would be some minor complications because some people (mostly old people presumably) would take time getting used to it, but nothing that would stop a nation from doing so. In Iceland, this has happened on several occasions in the past and while Iceland is indeed a very small economy, it shouldn't be that difficult at all for a larger one. A country would need a grace period while the old currency is still valid, new editions of already circulating cash would need to be produced, and a coordinated time would need to be set, at which point financial institutions change their balances. Of course it would take some planning and coordination, but nothing close to for example unifying two or more currencies into one, like the did with the euro. The biggest side-effect there was an inflation shot when the currencies got changed in each country, but this can be done even with giant economies like Germany and France. Cutting off two zeros would be a cakewalk in comparison. But in case of currencies like the Japanese Yen, there is simply no reason to take off 2 zeros yet. Northern-Americans may find it strange that the numbers are so high, but that's merely a matter of what you're used to. There is no added complication in paying 5.000 vs. 50 at a restaurant, it merely takes more space on a computer screen and bill, and that's not a real problem. Besides, most of the time, even in N-America, the cents are listed as well, and that doesn't seem to be enough of a problem for people to concern themselves with. It's only when you get into hyper-inflation when the shear space required for denoting prices becomes a problem, that economies have a real reason to cut off zeros." "Think about moving the decimal point in a bunch of accounting software and price stickers. Think about getting confused, ""is that price in old yen or new yen?"" - not just immediately, but every time you hear a historical price figure. Think of the inconveniences. How many billions of yen would that cost the Japanese economy? It could be a lot. How many billions of yen would the Japanese economy save by enacting such a conversion? Because I doubt it's anywhere that much." Another possibly significant issue, is that the number ten thousand is very important in the Japanese language.  In Japanese, you count in ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, ten thousands, BUT instead of a 'hundred thousand', you have ten ten thousands.  and then one hundred ten thousands, and then a thousand ten thousands.   The ten thousand yen note, equivalent roughly to the $100 bill, is the main base of Japanese currency.  If you go to the bank, for example, you will almost always take out your money in ten thousand yen notes.   Knowing a little about the language, i would say it would become quite strange and un-natural to suddenly start using a hundred as the main note value.  I doubt the Japanese people would ever even consider that, and my guess is the only people who are even put out by the large number of zeroes are foreigners who are used to dealing in dollars and cents. A Yen is like a penny.  Buy a chocolate bar 100¥ or £1.00.  Should the UK get rid of pennies and only price things to the pound? What benefit vs. what cost? Benefit - none that I can think of. Cost - massive. Every system that handles money would need to re-value overnight, every store would need to re-price. In many ways it would be simpler and maybe even cheaper to introduce a new currency. Some answers already informed about denomination. There are currencies, doing the cut off of two digits, for example the french franc. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_franc#New_franc  When you look to old french movies, they often talked about 'old franc' when talking about values (at least in French original, I don't know what happens in English translations).
"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-economy-labour-analysis/japan-inc-turns-contract-workers-into-permanent-staff-as-labor-market-tightens-idUSKCN1BC3PJ) reduced by 88%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; Last year, the average monthly pay for regular workers was 321,700 yen while for contract workers it was 211,800 yen, so a change in status can mean a big jump in pay plus benefits workers weren&amp;#039;t previously receiving.  &gt; LABOR LAW REVISIONS. The trend is expected to accelerate toward April 2018 when a revised labor contract law starts forcing companies to provide permanent status for temporary workers who have served more than five years, if the workers request it.  &gt; The share of non-regular workers has almost doubled as companies saddled with excess capacity, debt and excess workers have replaced regular employees with cheaper contract workers.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6xgsde/japans_labor_market_is_getting_so_tight_that/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~202637 tl;drs so far."") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr ""PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome."") | *Top* *keywords*: **work**^#1 **employee**^#2 **year**^#3 **job**^#4 **contract**^#5" "Yes, there are a lot of places you can research stocks online, Google Finance, Yahoo Finance, Reuters etc. It's important to understand that the price of the stock doesn't actually mean anything.  Share price is just a function of the market capitalization divided by the number of shares outstanding.  As an example take two companies that are both worth $1 million, but Company A has issued 10,000 shares and Company B has issued 100,000 shares.  Company A has a share price of $100 while Company B has a share price of just $10.  Comparing share price does nothing to indicate the relative value or health of Company A versus Company B.   I know there are supposed to be no product recommendations but the dictionary area of investopedia.com is a good source of beginner investing information.  And as Joe points out below the questions here with the ""stock"" tag would also be a good place to start.  And while I'm on a roll, the book ""A Random Walk Down Wall Street"" is a good starting point in investing in the stock market." "Depends. The short answer is yes; HSBC, for instance, based in New York, is listed on both the LSE and NYSE. Toyota's listed on the TSE and NYSE. There are many ways to do this; both of the above examples are the result of a corporation owning a subsidiary in a foreign country by the same name (a holding company), which sells its own stock on the local market. The home corporation owns the majority holdings of the subsidiary, and issues its own stock on its ""home country's"" exchange. It is also possible for the same company to list shares of the same ""pool"" of stock on two different exchanges (the foreign exchange usually lists the stock in the corporation's home currency and the share prices are near-identical), or for a company to sell different portions of itself on different exchanges. However, these are much rarer; for tax liability and other cost purposes it's usually easier to keep American monies in America and Japanese monies in Japan by setting up two ""copies"" of yourself with one owning the other, and move money around between companies as necessary. Shares of one issue of one company's stock, on one exchange, are the same price regardless of where in the world you place a buy order from. However, that doesn't necessarily mean you'll pay the same actual value of currency for the stock. First off, you buy the stock in the listed currency, which means buying dollars (or Yen or Euros or GBP) with both a fluctuating exchange rate between currencies and a broker's fee (one of those cost savings that make it a good idea to charter subsidiaries; could you imagine millions a day in car sales moving from American dealers to Toyota of Japan, converted from USD to Yen, with a FOREX commission to be paid?). Second, you'll pay the stock broker a commission, and he may charge different rates for different exchanges that are cheaper or more costly for him to do business in (he might need a trader on the floor at each exchange or contract with a foreign broker for a cut of the commission)." So the Japanese are better at the circle jerk.  An amusing note, if you pay attention to this stuff at all, you will notice that Japan can't actually just print the money.  The process you refer to is considered inflating the debt away.  When Japan prints money now, their currency gains value.  So they are actually pretty fucked.  http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-10-30/when-¥11-trillion-not-enough-japans-qe-9-disappoints-halflife-zero-time-qe10  edit:spelling/grammar sorry "Bingo, great question.  I'm not the original poster, ""otherwiseyep"", but I am in the economics field (I'm a currency analyst for a Forex broker).  I also happen to strongly disagree with his posts on the origin of money.  To answer your question:  the villagers are forced to use the new notes by their government, which demands that their income taxes be paid with the new currency.  This is glossed over by otherwiseyep, which is unfortunate because it misleads people who are new to economics into believing the system of fiat money we have now is natural/emergent (created from the bottom-up) and not enforced from the top-down.  Legal tender laws enforced in each nation's courts mean that all contracts can be settled in the local fiat currency, regardless of whether the receiver of the money wants a different currency.  These laws (and the income tax) create an artificial ""root demand"" for the fiat currency, which is what gives it its value.  We don't just *decide* that green paper has value.  We are forced to accumulate it by the government.  Fiat currencies are not money.  We call them money, but in fact they are credit derivatives.  Let me explain:  A currency's value is inextricably tied to the nation's bond market.  When investors buy a nation's bonds, they are loaning that nation money.  The investor expects to receive interest payments on the bonds.  The interest rate naturally rises as the bonds are perceived to be more-risky, and naturally falls as the bonds are perceived to be less-risky.  The risk comes from the fact that governments sometimes get really close to not being able to pay their interest payments.  They get into so much debt, and their tax-revenue shrinks as their economy worsens.  That drives up the interest rate they must pay when they issue new bonds (ie add debt).  So the value of a currency comes from tax revenue (interest payments).  If a government misses an interest payment, or doesn't fully pay it, the market considers this a ""credit event"" and investors sell their bonds and freak out.  Selling bonds has the effect of driving interest rates even higher, so it's a vicious cycle.  If the government defaults, there's massive deflation because all debt denominated in that currency suddenly skyrockets due to the higher interest rates.  This creates a chain of cascading defaults - one person defaults, which leads another person, and another, and so on.  Everyone was in debt to everyone else, somewhere along the chain.  In order to counteract this deflation (which ultimately leads to the kind of depression you saw in 1930's US), governments will print print print, expanding the credit supply via the banks.  So this is what you see happening today - banks are constantly being bailed out all over the Western world, governments are cutting programs to be able to meet their interest payments, and central banks are expanding credit supplies and bailing out their buddies.  Real money has ZERO counterparty risk.  What is counterparty risk?  It's just the risk that the guy who owes you something won't honor his debt.  Gold and silver and salt and oil aren't IOU's.  So they can be real money." "Yes, but the rates at which they're borrowing make all the difference.  Japan's central bank is borrowing at about 2 percent on a 30 year bond, and Greece is borrowing at 18 percent. Japan would thus be paying 4.6% of GDP on debt service for government borrowing, while Greece would thus be paying 27% (assuming that all current bonds could be converted to current rates).   [Japan](http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/rates-bonds/government-bonds/japan/), [Greece](http://www.ecb.int/stats/money/long/html/index.en.html).   Further, as many other commenters have noted, Japan retains the ability to print money and thus inflate their debt away, while Greece relies on the European Central Bank, which would not hyperinflate the entire Eurozone to help out Greece's government.  As a comparison, the US is currently paying 1.3% of its GDP on government debt service.   (My calculations are amateur. Please correct me if I'm wrong.)  As [Dean Baker notes](http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/cepr-blog/the-devasting-interest-burden-of-the-debt):  ""It is important to remember that most of the people in Washington debates on economic policy do not know much economics. They tend not to be very good at arithmetic either. That is why they were blindsided by the collapse of the $8 trillion housing bubble that wrecked the economy.  As we get endless pontification about the crushing debt burden it is worth touching base with reality on occasion. In that spirit, CEPR brings you the latest data and projections on the ratio of the federal government's interest payments to GDP, courtesy of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).  [T]he interest to GDP ratio is currently at a crushing 1.3 percent, near the post World War II low. However this figure overstates the burden somewhat. Last year the Federal Reserve Board refunded almost $80 billion to the Treasury. This was interest earned on government bonds and other assets it now holds. That leaves a net interest burden of 0.8 percent of GDP, by far the lowest of the post World War II era.""  **TL;DR**: what matters is not total size of debt alone, but also borrowing costs and ability to inflate the debt away. Japan is paying very little on its large debt; Greece is paying a lot.   **TL;DR TL;DR**: I'd like to borrow a few trillion dollars at 2%, too." You might want to see this question and its answers.  If it was me, I'd prefer to exchange the currency in Germany.  Why?  When you are in the US you will be on vacation.  It does not seem fun to spend vacation time in a bank. "Depends. The short answer is yes; HSBC, for instance, based in New York, is listed on both the LSE and NYSE. Toyota's listed on the TSE and NYSE. There are many ways to do this; both of the above examples are the result of a corporation owning a subsidiary in a foreign country by the same name (a holding company), which sells its own stock on the local market. The home corporation owns the majority holdings of the subsidiary, and issues its own stock on its ""home country's"" exchange. It is also possible for the same company to list shares of the same ""pool"" of stock on two different exchanges (the foreign exchange usually lists the stock in the corporation's home currency and the share prices are near-identical), or for a company to sell different portions of itself on different exchanges. However, these are much rarer; for tax liability and other cost purposes it's usually easier to keep American monies in America and Japanese monies in Japan by setting up two ""copies"" of yourself with one owning the other, and move money around between companies as necessary. Shares of one issue of one company's stock, on one exchange, are the same price regardless of where in the world you place a buy order from. However, that doesn't necessarily mean you'll pay the same actual value of currency for the stock. First off, you buy the stock in the listed currency, which means buying dollars (or Yen or Euros or GBP) with both a fluctuating exchange rate between currencies and a broker's fee (one of those cost savings that make it a good idea to charter subsidiaries; could you imagine millions a day in car sales moving from American dealers to Toyota of Japan, converted from USD to Yen, with a FOREX commission to be paid?). Second, you'll pay the stock broker a commission, and he may charge different rates for different exchanges that are cheaper or more costly for him to do business in (he might need a trader on the floor at each exchange or contract with a foreign broker for a cut of the commission)."