Do you get a good deal when you exchange your currency at narita airport compared to here in the states?

Question:

I am going to Japan next week and was originally going to get 1000 dollars exchanged for yen here in the states at a local shop, however my friend said that you get a better deal when you exchange your currency in the country you are going to visit. Is this true? Also are the currency exchange booths at narita usually open 24/7? Because my flight doesnt get arrive in narita until 9:00 pm...

Answer:

Your friend is correct. There are 2 reasons:

1) Exchanging money for a foreign currency in your home country will not get you a good rate if the value of your money is sliding against that of your destination country such as in your case where the US dollar is sliding (losing value) against the Japanese Yen. The reason is that when the exchange in the US takes your US dollar and gives you YEN, they are losing money because the YEN will increase in value. This means for the US based exchange to get any more YEN in the future, they would have to pay more and therefore ANY exchange you do with them is going to have a built-in cost adjustment which means you get less YEN.

2) You get better rate of exchange in Japan for your dollar because it is a win-win situation for the Japanese. After all, where are you going to be spending all the YEN you just exchanged your US dollar for? They get the US dollar, and they get the YEN back. Win-win for them.

The currency exchange booths at Narita are not the best or the worst in Japan, but they are still better than any exchange in the US. The difference in rate for Narita and the banks around Tokyo is not worth fretting about. Are you really going to lose sleep over a .001% difference?

As for the booths' hour - the ones in Terminal 1 on the 1st floor of the North and South Wings are opened till 11pm. So are the ones in Terminal 2 on the North, South, and Centeral area. NOTE: I'm referring to the booths before the passport control area.