50 State Quarters

Until recently, I always tried to use debit card anywhere anytime because dealing with coin is annoying. They are very confusing: Nickel (5 cents) is bigger than Dime (10 cents), and Dime is as large as Penny (1 cents) is in size. I don't like to hold many coins in my pocket or wallet, so I had a habit to use as many coins as possible at the payment in Japan. For example, when I pay five hundred twenty-eight yen, I seldom pay six hundred yen to prevent to receiving nine coins: seven ten yen coins and two one yen coins. I pay the exact amount or six hundred eight yen or something to reduce my coins. However, I have to abandon this deeply rooted habit because I cannot distinguish Penny, Nickel, and Dime immediately at the payment. When I bought a cup of coffee at Starbucks on the first day in Princeton, I scattered many coins on the cashier desk and asked the employee to choose the amount of pay appealing that I was a foreigner. While she kindly explained the difference of coins and I understood it, it took some time for me to learn it intuitively.

But I sometimes use cash recently because I need Quarters for two reasons. First, I need them to wash my clothes. The washing machine and the drier at the public space of my apartment accept only Quarters. To wash and dry my clothes, I need four Quarters in total. It was very sad that I found the other day that I couldn't wash my cloths due to the lack of Quarters and finally went to the convenience store to get them.

Second, I started to collect fifty State Quarters. The 50 State Quarters program is the release of a series of commemorative coins by the United States Mint. Between 1999 and 2008, it is intended to feature each of the 50 individual U.S. states on unique designs for the reverse of the quarter (cited from Wikipedia). They are good tool to learn the history and the character of each state. Delaware Quarter says that it's "the first state." Washington Quarters, "evergreen state," features salmon leaping in front of Mount Rainier. North Dakota has two bison at dawn and badlands, and Kentucky does thoroughbred racehorse behind fence.

Also, they are useful to learn the location of each state. To understand the geography of this country, I bought 50 State Commemorative Quarter Map Holder Album Book. The seller of this album raises ten reasons to buy it on their website. It's interesting that most of them feature financial reasons such as saving and investment. It's very American for me. If Japanese Ministry of Finance issued this kind of coins and somebody tried to sell coin albums in Japan, they would feature the educational utility on their advertisement. By glancing the marketing communication of such small products, we can easily find the cultural difference of the notion on money.

By the way, I visited my colleague who also enjoys his sabbatical in Pennsylvania two weeks ago. His family entertained me with authentic Japanese food, the udon with homemade tempra (a deep fried lightly-battered vegetables and seafood). It was yummy! Thank you very much, Karube-san. After the fine lunch, he showed me his daughter's coin album. It seems that I, a thirty five years old man, shares same hobby with a nine year old girl. Am I childish? Yes, I am a cultural child here.

Luckly every commemorative coin will be released during my stay in the US. To grow up, I will complete this collection.