In the local supermarket they like you to give them change if you have it. Today my bill came to 3,109 yen. They have a tray that you set your notes in and I put down a 5,000 yen note. They then wait till you try to find coins to make up the 109. I hoked about in my purse and was able to come with 110 yen (a 100 and a 10 piece) or 107 (a 100, a 5, and 2 1s). As the 107 wasn’t very useful I put 110 on the tray. The shop assistant looked at it and started to point at my purse. I quickly looked at the till to make sure I had understood how much the shopping was – which I had. I then looked at the purse as I thought that maybe she could see 2 single yen pieces that would allow me to make up 109. At this point I became aware of the queue building up behind me. It always takes me longer to find coins than the Japanese as I still get these mixed up.

I started to look in my purse again but I just couldn’t come up with a better amount of change to give her. I looked at the assistant and told her that I didn’t have 9 yen. But she kept pointing and talking. Just when it was getting to the stage when I was going to hand my purse to her I realised that she was pointing at the pieces of paper in my purse. I know I shouldn’t keep paper in the coin part of my purse but sometimes, when I’m shopping in that supermarket, they give me these green coupon like things with my change. I usually just shove these into my purse as I want to move my shopping out of the way of the next person. I’ve never known what these are for. They have a number written on them and then lots of writing that I can’t read. I did ask Marty at one point but he didn’t have a clue either. I found out today. These are coupons that give me money off my shopping. So while I was frantically trying to find change in my purse the assistant was trying to tell me that I had coupons worth 150 yen in my purse.

I’m going to have to see what I did with the rest of them as I think they’ve been giving me these since January.