Of mice and yen

Despite the title, this entry has nothing to do with mice. I just needed some kind of cultural reference in the title - so I'm not going to bother telling you that the Japanese word for "mouse" is 鼠 (nezumi), or that the Japanese onomatopoeia for a mouse's squeak is ちゅー (chuu). No, that would be all be quite beside the point and not worth mentioning.

Indeed, the actual topic here is the dollar-to-yen exchange rate. All of my plans are loosely based on the current exchange rate, but I didn't consider the possibility that the rate might change.

Right now, we are faced with a weak dollar and strong yen. This means that when I exchange my dollars for yen, I won't be getting as much as I would at a better exchange rate. What's more, the rate is getting worse and worse.

So, I'm faced with a predicament — the money that I am saving will probably be worth less next year than it is now. My options are to either order my currency early (as I earn it), to raise my saving goal as time goes on, hope that the rates improve, or some combination of the above.

In any case, a fee would be levied if I exchanged anything less than $1000. Because of this, I will wait until I have put that much into my travel fund, and then decide on the next step.

If you're planning a trip to Japan, or to any foreign country for that matter, be sure to keep an eye on the currency exchange rates!

First image created through several painstaking hours in GIMP... okay, it was only fifteen seconds. The Pikachu element was retrieved from Creative Uncut, and the yen element was retrieved from And Still I Persist.

The second image was retrieved from Google, and was automatically generated in the search results for "dollar to yen exchange rate".