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Travel to
Japan Blog Articles
The intent of our Travel to Japan
articles is to provide essential travel planning information, practical
advice and tips for saving money while visiting Japan. Also, we have
included strange and unusual tourist attractions that you might be
interested in visiting while in Japan. All a travel articles are written
by native residents of Japan.
TRAVEL TOPIC: Travel Tips while
in Japan
New Japanese Yen Notes and Higuchi Ichiyo
As you might have already know, new Japanese Yen notes were issued beginning on Nov 1, 2004.
Have you seen them yet?
I have received them when I bought something at a shop, although, I still use former bills much more often.
However, the Japanese government is going to accelerate the conversion from old notes to new bills as fast as possible to cope with counterfeiting. They say that the new Yen notes are hardly ever counterfeited, due to recent technologies like holograms.
The new bills are for 1000 Yen, 5000 Yen and 10000 Yen. All three are smaller than the former ones. The portrait printed on the new 10000 note is of Fukuzawa Yukichi, an educator who had a great influence on the Modernization of Japan. The portrait is the same as the former 10000 Yen.
The portrait for the new 1000 Yen is of Noguchi Hideo, a bacteriologist and physician. And the portrait of the new 5000 Yen is Higuchi Ichiyo, the first professional female writer in Japan.
I am personally so pleased that she was selected for the new note. Although she was born in a Samurai Family, she had to suffer from poverty, after her father died. She was a woman who had a Samurai spirit, she never relied on anybody, but she also struggled to support her family (her mother and her sister) all by herself.
As a writer, she had a real talent and wrote great works, but, unfortunately, died at the age of 24 due to pulmonary tuberculosis.
Higuchi had lived in Ryusen, near Minowa and there is a tiny museum called the Higuchi Ichiyo Memorial Museum At the museum, there is many of Ichiyo 's diary's exhibited and it touched my heart as I found out how much she suffered from money problems, but never quit writing, until her death.
Not only did she live a tragic life, her literary works are great. I like her artistic and poetic writing very much and was very moved when I read her most famous work called, Takekurabe.
Every time I see the 5000 Yen note I think of Ichiyo-san's life story.
Higuchi Ichiyou Memorial Museum
3-18-4 Ryusen Taito-ku Tokyo Japan
Admission: 130 Yen
Open: 9:00 AM - 4:30 PM (16:30)
Closed: Monday. (also Tuesday, if Monday falls
on a National Holiday)
and at the end of the Year. ( Dec 29 - Jan 3)
A 10 minute walk from Minowa Subway Station (Hibiya Line)
, sorry only in Japanese...
Posted by digi-escape at January 12, 2005 11:16 PM
All Travel to Japan articles
were written by staff of digi-escape.
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