On Wednesday the dollar was lower against the yen, as the latter was supported by the comments of Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda who said that the yen's effective exchange rate is unlikely to weaken further.
USD/JPY was last at 122.88, declining 1.20%, while AUD/USD traded at 0.7731, down 0.52%.
"There is no asset bubble in Japan at this point," Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda told the Lower House pf Parliament's Financial Affairs Committee. He declined to comment on daily swings in the forex market
but repeated foreign exchange rates "must reflect economic
fundamentals."
He also added that "a rate hike by the U.S. Federal Reserve Board may not necessarily cause the dollar to appreciate and the yen to depreciate."
BoJ board member Takehiro Sato said to business representatives in central Japan that it was not necessary to change the pace of government bond buying now around ¥80 trillion annually.
Earlier, data showed that Japan's core machinery orders for April rose 3.8%, well above the
2.0% month-on-month drop expected, and the corporate goods price index,
or CPGI, for May rose 0.3%, better than the 0.2% increase month-on-month
seen.
The authorities signaled it has upgraded its views on machine order prospects after the latest data.
Elsewhere in the currency market, EUR/USD rose 0.24% to settle at 1.1307.
Concerns over Greece weighed on the market sentiment today.
A new reform proposal submitted by Athens earlier did not impress creditors, spurring concerns about whether Greece can agree on a deal to unlock new funding to ward off a debt default.
Meanwhile, Asian shares regained ground after hitting three-month lows on Wednesday.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan climbed 0.8 percent after touching a fresh three-month low. At one point, it was down 9 percent from the seven-year peak hit in late April.
Japan's Nikkei lost 0.1 percent to three-week lows while European shares were expected to dip further.
Germany's DAX, Britain's FTSE and France's CAC40 are exptected to fall 0.1-0.2 percent, a day after a pan-European stock index fell to a four-month low.
