I thought walking into a random exchange booth in Tokyo would be fine

That strange sinking feeling at the currency counter

I remember standing in front of a small, glass-encased booth tucked away somewhere near the Shinjuku station exit. It was my first time in Japan, and I had arrived with nothing but a vague plan and a pocket full of crisp Korean won. I had read online about checking rates beforehand, but honestly, once I got off the train, the noise and the sheer volume of people made me just want to get it over with. I walked into the first place that had a sign mentioning ‘Exchange’ in English. It didn’t look like a bank, more like a converted storage space with a flickering fluorescent light above a counter that was slightly too high for me to lean on comfortably.

The discrepancy between the sign and reality

There was a board outside claiming something about a ‘special rate’ for yen, but when I handed over my cash, the number they punched into the calculator felt off. I stood there, clutching my passport, trying to do the mental math while the clerk stared blankly at a monitor that looked like it hadn’t been updated since the late nineties. I think the exchange rate they gave me was around 155 yen to the dollar equivalent, but when I checked my phone app a moment later, the market rate was clearly better. I felt too awkward to ask for my money back or challenge them. It wasn’t a life-changing amount of money—maybe twenty or thirty thousand won difference—but it left a bitter taste in my mouth for the rest of the afternoon. It made me feel like an amateur tourist, which I suppose I was.

Why I didn’t just use the bank

Looking back, I should have just walked the extra few blocks to a major bank or even used the ATM at the 7-Eleven down the street. Everyone tells you the ATMs in Japan are convenient, and they usually are, but there’s a weird anxiety about card fees and withdrawal limits when you’re in a foreign country for the first time. I kept worrying that if I used a machine and it swallowed my card, I’d be stranded. That fear kept me anchored to those physical exchange booths, even though they were obviously taking a larger slice of the pie than a digital transaction would have. I keep thinking maybe next time I’ll just bring a multi-currency card, but then I worry about the system going down or a chip error. It never feels quite as simple as the blogs make it seem.

The weird tension of carrying cash

After that initial exchange, I ended up carrying way more physical cash than I ever do in Seoul. Tokyo is surprisingly cash-heavy for such a high-tech city. I found myself checking my wallet every ten minutes, terrified of losing my stash. It’s funny how, even after you get the money, the stress doesn’t really go away; it just changes shape. I had around 100,000 yen in my bag for the 3-day trip, and it felt like a massive responsibility. I wasn’t buying anything expensive, mostly just convenience store bentos and train tickets, yet I felt like a walking target. I don’t know if that’s just because I was new to the city or if everyone feels that way the first time they travel abroad.

Leftover notes and the cycle of regret

Now that I’m back, I have about 12,000 yen left sitting in a kitchen drawer. I’m staring at it and wondering if it’s worth going to a bank to convert it back to won, or if I should just wait until my next trip, which might not be for another year. Every time I see it, I think about that dingy booth in Shinjuku and the exchange rate I lost. It’s a small, stupid thing to dwell on, but it’s there. I wonder if it’s better to just keep it as a souvenir or if I’m just being lazy about the exchange fees. There’s no perfect way to handle it, really. You either lose money on the spread or you lose time standing in line at a counter. Either way, the bank always wins.