Save ¥100,000 with voice recorded encouragment

In our coverage of the latest generation of interactive digital is designed to help you save ¥100,000.

That is not small change. That’s about $1,000 (give or take the fluctuating exchange rate), or about what a young-ish couple might need for a weekend at a hotspring resort, a package trip to Okinawa, or matching Louis Vuitton key holders. It is also a sum that might be worth investing, but the popularity of these banks just continues to confirm the stereotypical Japanese tendency towards mattress-style saving.

The key sales point of the Voice Memory Bank is that you (or your significant other, as the press material notes) can record an encouraging (nagging?) message that gets replayed with every ¥500 coin deposit. The bank itself requires an investment of ¥1,995 (about $20).

In other savings related news—and I don’t know how we missed this—a coalition of toy bank manufacturers, including ).

Apparently because the number “10” looks like a coin going into a slot, as demonstrated by the picture above.