Like the dollars all those Europeans are bringing?

I get that there is a grain of truth in what you are saying but this is mostly an outdated mode of thinking. The Japanese economy has plenty of access to $ denominated capital markets if they wanted $.

Yes, Europeans bring the metaphorical "dollars" I referred to. And there is no "if they wanted $". They do. And I mean earning dollars, not buying them on international markets. I have access to capital markets, too, and I can buy any currency I want, but buying money is not the same as earning it.

They want investment. They aren't facing a shortage of any specific currency. As i mentioned, if their shortage was currency specific, they have access to capital and forex markets.

I will repeat. The Japanese don't have any specific need for dollars that they can't fulfill on a balance of payments basis. Some countries do. But Japan doesn't.

You don't seem to understand the difference between earning dollars and exchanging currency. I'm not claiming they face a "shortage of a specific currency". I'm saying they want to earn money from foreign customers, not exchange currency with them, and that (nationally) they would prefer earning money from foreign customers to earning it from each other.

Earning money from foreign customers gives the Japanese as a nation purchasing power of future foreign assets, such as oil, food, or land outside Japan. It makes their country wealthier in the world. Exchanging currency does no such thing, because it gives the foreigners an equal claim against future Japanese assets: no net gain in wealth. Selling to each other also does not give them (as a nation) the increased buying power outside Japan that selling their goods and services for foreign dollars gives them.

Are you potentially confusing the concept of "dollars" with the concept of "money". While there are multiple currencies named "dollars" the term "dollars" is not generally interchangeable with the word "money".

Under your scheme, if a Polish person exchanges Euros for Yen in Japan and then buys a beer in Tokyo, did Japan just "earn dollars"? Because I think it's pretty clear that nothing referred to as a "dollar" moved hands here.

When I referred to tourist dollars "both literally and metaphorically" and explicitly distinguished between the two categories, it was because the metaphorical tourist dollars weren't literally "dollars". So you responded that Euros weren't literally dollars. Well, yes, that was the "metaphor" part. They were in that other category I mentioned, the one where tourist dollars aren't literal, just metaphorical. And yet you still don't get it. "But they're not dollars." The only guess you have is that maybe I'm confused and think that all money is called "dollars"? Yeah, that must be it.

So, 'if a Polish person exchanges Euros for Yen in Japan and then buys a beer in Tokyo, did Japan just "earn dollars"?' Yes, they DID just metaphorically earn tourist dollars, and no, they did NOT literally earn any "dollars". I might also have said that thanks to the Polish customers, Japanese bartenders were able to metaphorically bring home the bacon, except that you would then probably get upset and explain to me that Poles in a Japanese bar would pay in yen, not in pork products.