Help with identifying a foreign coin?!??

Question

Hi! I have had a strange coin for a while and I can't remember where it came from but I would like to know. Here are the pictures of it. Any guesses?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/naturegirl912/?saved=1

Answer 1

Well, it's got 日本 at the top, which means "Japan," so I would say it comes from Japan. The 十円 along the bottom just means "10 Yen."

The rest is a bit complicated. We have:

平戊十ハ年

å¹³ = something broad and flat

戊 = 戊辰戦争 is the name of the Boshin War (Japanese civil war between Imperial and shogunate forces, 1868-1869)

十 = ten, as we've seen before

ハ = third

å¹´ = year / age

It could be that the coin is from that era, but as I'm not sure what current coins look like, I'm not sure if they're just paying an homage to their history or not. Definitely though, you have a Japanese ¥10 coin.

Edit: Oh hey, I found a picture of your coin on the Wikipedia article for Yen! There's also a list of imperial reigns that are printed on the coins, and I found "平成" (oh, so close with that second kanji!) which means "the Heisei era" - those coins were printed in 1989. Eek, not too long ago, sorry!

Edit2: That other kanji is 国 and when put together with 日本 as 日本国 makes "province of Japan." Oh, just for grins (because I'm a language person), I'll stick in the pronunciation for everything, so you can read your coin out loud.

日本国 = ni hon kuni

十円 = to en

平成十ハ年 = hei sei to ha toshi

Hurray, what a fun project you gave me. Thank you! :)

Answer 2

It's a coin from Japan （日本国）- NihonKoku

十円＝Juu En　『１０　Yen)

And it's "Heisei 18 Year"- Heisei Juu Hachi Nen" (平成十八年）

Not sure how old it is, I'm not really good with Japanese years.

PS: Just checked at Wiki about the Heisei year.

Apparently "Heisei 18 Year" is year 2006