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I traveled to Japan last Summer and noticed many vending machines had problems with the new bimetallic 500-yen coin.

Must be a huge headache upgrading all those machines. But then I can understand you'd want to keep the 500-yen coin hard to counterfeit since it's quite high-denomination.

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It is not just vending machines. I have had the new 500-yen coins rejected on buses, in food stores, etc. It will happen gradually, but I think it is the first time in my 15 years of experiencing Japan that there has been any change to a coin so I expect it to take at least another year.

There’s also upcoming changes to paper bills too, vending machine operators might be waiting to do both at the same time.

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