Word: yufuin
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...decade of economic decline. The excess and hubris that once bought Rockefeller Center and Pebble Beach golf courses have been replaced by a growing malaise. Joblessness, bankruptcy, crime and suicide, once rare in Japan, are now just average headlines. In the recession-ravaged hot-springs resort town of Yufuin, citizens are hedging their futures by resorting to barter trade. Taxi rides, sake and even hospital bills can be paid for with a local scrip called the yufu. What backs it? Locals do odd jobs in return for yufu. "Our wealth is slipping away," moans Eisuke Sakakibara, a former Vice Minister...
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...
...inspired dozens of other towns across Japan to dabble in their own currencies. In other countries, barter clubs are frowned upon because they can be used as a glorified tax dodge - people don't have to report yufu revenue, for example, or pay Japan's national 5% sales tax. (Yufuin itself doesn't 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...
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