“High” interest banking in Japan

A long while ago, I recommended to my readers (all five of you, and I do appreciate you browsing my page!) to check out Shinsei Bank. Unfortunately, they have been experiencing a bit of turbulence lately, having lost a fair amount of money and are currently playing musical chairs in the board of directors’ suite. The results: American CEO-out Japanese ex-CEO-in. And so I started thinking a bit more about where to put my money.

Having recently learned the Japanese word for interest （金利 kinri）I did a search on the internet for “high interest bank accounts” (高金利口座　kou-kinri-kouzai) in my broken Japanese. Not amazingly, some results came up (even this country of notoriously low interest rates) including this site with a handy-dandy bank interest rate comparison chart. (位　i means place in Japanese with １位　meaning “first place” ２位　”second place” and so on. Before you get too excited with Yen rates over 0.5%, keep in mind the minimum deposit amounts listed on the right hand side of the chart. They are listed in 万　man or 10,000 yen units and many of them are yen time deposits which will not mature from a month’s time to several years from now.

While none of these are wonderful for long range investing (there is such a high chance of inflation gobbling up your money), yen time deposits might be good places to stash your cash for your next trip home/Thailand or storing up money to send home or invest. Hey, why not grow your investment by 10 yen while you wait to move it along to something better overseas? “Better than a kick in the teeth” as a friend of mine once said.