Dollar Eases Against Yen in Cautious Tokyo Trade
The greenback traded at 133.84-87 yen at 2:00 pm (0500 GMT), down from 134.00-05 yen in New York and 134.28-31 yen in Tokyo late Friday.
Investors were also reluctant to make moves before the Bank of Japan (BOJ) policy board meeting on Thursday, AFP quoted dealers as saying.
"Everybody's waiting for events this week, including Greenspan's testimony, the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy and the boj policy meeting," said Minori Takeuchi, forex analyst at the Tokyo branch of JP Morgan Chase.
"The market is waiting for further clues to direction," she said, with movements in the meantime affected by options-related trading.
Greenspan is due to testify to the House Financial Services Committee on the outlook for U.S. Monetary Policy on Wednesday.
In Japan the government's top policy-making panel chaired by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi will unveil new measures to combat deflation, which has driven prices down since the middle of the 1990s.
Most analysts doubt the government will reveal anything new as the measures bandied around so far have all been tried before.
But there is mounting speculation of a combined offensive by Tokyo and the Bank of Japan to tackle the problem, which could include pumping more public funds into the nation's debt-laden banking sector.
"The initial impression was that the deflation package would contain little new, and even less of importance," said ING Barings chief economist Richard Jerram.
"However, the government is clearly scrambling to try to make this more substantial," he said.
The U.S. unit might rise this week, but gains would be limited, said JP Morgan's Takeuchi.
"The dollar/yen is facing slight upward pressure because (Japan) has been saying the recent levels are okay but I don't think this pressure is very strong," she said, noting "Japanese stocks are doing well."