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The story
On September 9, 2026, after the yen slid into the 140s against the dollar in foreign exchange trading, a breaking-news thread went up on 5ch’s “Nandemo Jikkyo G” (Live Commentary) board. Posters piled in with wildly opposing wishes—”still not weak enough, let it break past 120,” “hurry up and bring it back to 100–110″—and opinions on the “right” exchange rate ended up scattered anywhere from the 100s to the 300s. The thread laid bare the gap between investors welcoming the weak yen and everyday people who hate rising prices, with talk of familiar price hikes—like Bireley’s soft drinks going up—mixed into the debate.
What people said
This is only the opening act of rate hikes—keep holding and you're in for a world of pain.
Companies when the yen strengthens: "Oh really? 🙄"
Keep going till we break through 120.
because prices that got hiked during the weak-yen period never come back down.
So a weak yen's better—it's nothing but upside.
Why does America get to just act like their country's automatically the strongest?
Should we just send it back to 360, then?
If it's 1 yen, that'd make it 1 cent.
The weak yen is hell.
Only 10% fruit juice and it costs this much? That's overkill.
It's not a daily necessity, so it can be pricey, no big deal.
It tastes like garbage—who's even buying this?
Wouldn't touch it unless I were stranded in the middle of a desert.
I play Uma Musume too, don't underestimate me 😤😤😤
If that's not possible, 130.
This feels like haggling over a price on Mercari (Japan's flea-market resale app).
Never locked anyone up before, so I wouldn't know.
Handle it properly yourself.
Take it to an exchange counter and they'll often shift the rate by a few yen and call it a "fee"—
the more you exchange, the more you get ripped off.
Guess that's about the right level, then.
If it all comes down to the exchange rate,
that just means it's a meaningless indicator.
even though my S&P 500 holdings would take a temporary hit.
If anything, that's a good deal—you get to buy way more.
a strong yen won't last.
Given the country's actual strength, the yen's too weak to begin with.
Shinzo Abe: "Once it hits 300 yen, Japan's economy will be revived."
Either infinite averaging-down or a double-or-nothing revenge trade.
A "short sleeper." (pun: also reads as someone stuck holding a losing short position)
At the end of the day, is the weak yen actually a bad thing? Companies exporting overseas sell more and the economy does better because of it, right?
I don't really get it.
Don't worry about it.
Background and Key Points of This Debate
This thread sprang up after the yen slid into the 140s against the dollar, with 5ch users each weighing in on where the “right” exchange rate should actually sit. The fact that opinions scattered anywhere from the 100–110 range to 180–300 is itself evidence that there’s no clear “correct answer” for either a weak or a strong yen. Exporters and people holding stocks or other investment assets tend to welcome a weak yen, while everyday consumers who feel the pinch from pricier imports, overseas travel, and daily goods tend to want a stronger one. One comment in the thread—that prices raised during a weak-yen period don’t come back down once the yen strengthens—points to something that’s easy to overlook when thinking about the relationship between exchange rates and prices, and shows that the simple “weak yen bad, strong yen good” framing doesn’t fully capture reality. As a side note, the exchange about “360 yen” was a joke referencing the fixed-rate era that lasted until 1971—worth noting that Japan operates under a completely different, floating-rate system today.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (“Nandemo Jikkyo G”) thread “[Breaking] Yen Hits 140s Against the Dollar.”
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