jenJapanese Yen (¥)behold!/look!

"Behold, my brothers and sisters! The Yen!" The man spoke the words with awe.

"Look at that guy, sis. I think he's crazy." My sister said to me.

My sister called everyone crazy. But this time I was inclined to believe her. The man was holding some foreign paper money in the air. His appearance was somewhere between that of a street preacher and a bum. I was intrigued.

The man latched onto my gaze. "Take notice of what I'm about to show you!" The man was now talking directly to me. "We can learn much about their civilization by studying their currency. Just the mere fact that they have a currency tells us volumes about their social structures and their sciences!"

As he approached more closely, I could see that he was holding some Japanese currency, also known as the Yen. He motioned to the images on the back of the 1,000-yen note. "Look! The life forms of their planet seem to be carbon-based like ours!" he shouted in apparent ecstacy.

"But their writing is very alien." He continued. "I believe they communicate directly using abstract concepts. I will decode their language and make a scientific breakthrough!"

Did I have the heart to tell him? I suppose I did, because I found myself talking to the strange man. "Sir...you do realize that this foreign civilization you've discovered is actually a race of earthlings from across the sea...don't you?"

The man stared back at me blankly. It seemed his mind was taking a minute to process what I was saying.

"Look here." I told him, pointing to the front of the 1,000-yen note he was holding. "You're correct in deducing that they have a foreign writing system. But if you look closely at the back..." I flipped the yen over, "you'll see that there are clearly roman letters here." I pointed at the word "Yen" near the 1,000 denomination. "How else would you have know to call it 'Yen'?"

"That's the brilliance of it!" The man had regained his footing and was speaking more quickly. "They must have researched the dominant language of this planet before sending their little paper ambassador here!"

"OK. Then what about the picture on the other side of a perfectly normal-looking human man?" I retorted.

"Again, such brilliance. It would appear that they can disguise themselves as one of us." he shot back.

"Then...what about their use of Arabic numerals? Why don't they use their native number system everywhere and Arabic numerals only as a translation guide?" Surely he couldn't refute that, I thought.

"Ah, but the language of mathematics is universal!" he replied confidently.

I thought of how to explain the absurdity of his last statement to him. But then I decided that there is just no reasoning with some people. I sighed to myself and walked on.

As I left, I could hear the man shouting again. "Behold, my brothers and sisters! An unbeliever! She doubts that the Yen is the true and infallible currency of an alien race greater than us, sent to guide us and instruct us on how to live our lives!"