Word: yen
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...investment-banking business, Shinsei also launched a retail business featuring fee-free, 24-hr. services at its network of 56,000 atms--a concept considered revolutionary here. Shinsei offers savers returns higher than those of traditional banks, at which, Yashiro notes, the annual interest income on a 1 million yen deposit--about $7,700--earns the equivalent of two bus tickets. The lobby of Shinsei's steel-and-glass headquarters in central Tokyo looks more like an Internet cafe than a bank, with customers lounging at flat-screen computers while making transactions and checking stock quotes. Other bank branches share...
Recession-ravaged residents of this tiny hot-springs town found a way to improve their standard of living. Stuck with low-paying and seasonal tourism-related jobs, Yufuin's citizens solved a chronic yen-flow problem by boosting the local monetary supply: they print their own currency...
...Yufuin you can get a taxi ride, buy a bottle of sake, eat lunch, book a train ticket and supplement your wardrobe using a self-generated scrip the townspeople call yufu. "The yen isn't very stable anyway, is it?" says Ryuji Urata, a 38-year-old liquor-store owner who came up with the scheme two years ago. "So instead of being subject to what the national government does, we have our own strong currency...
...Strong" isn't the adjective that leaps to mind when one fingers the flimsy funny money. Roughly the size of a business card, the yufu doesn't have pictures of Presidents; it doesn't come in denominations (although by local convention one yufu is equal to 100 yen, or 75 cents.) The only embellishment distinguishing a yufu from a Post-it note is a rendering of the mountains that surround the town of 12,000 people in Oita prefecture on Kyushu Island...
...have a local sales tax.) So far, tax authorities in Japan are looking the other way. "This kind of activity is not large enough to attract our attention," says Masaki Omura, a spokesman for the Ministry of Finance. Says Eisuke Sakakibara, the former Vice Finance Minister known as "Mr. Yen": "There's no deep implication to this. If it helps strengthen solidarity in a local community, that's probably good. In the end I think people want real money." Sometimes, though, the pretend money will do just fine. "It's all based on trust and credibility," says Mutsumi Nagai...