All our bills are gone. The 500, 100 and 50-yen coins are gone. And yesterday, I scrounged out the last of our 10-yen coins– about 80 of them– as a gas leak in the kitchen of our run-down guesthouse quickly spread through the building. It seemed that at any minute, a spark and then fireball could have rushed through our rooms and destroyed every last one of our possessions, from film equipment, to laptops and passports. So we did what any rational person would do, and spent all our remaining coins on the 99¥ menu, waiting in the snow for an explosion that, luckily, never came.

Later that evening, I foolishly took a late train to Meiji-jingumae station, spending 320¥ out of my whole world of 410¥, without enough for a return ticket. When the last train left for home, I found myself still out somewhere near Shinjuku, with snow still falling, very far from our subway line in Shibuya. I was disoriented and totally broke. So I just walked, scanning the horizon where I could for familiar shapes, and eventually found my way to Shibuya in a process that took around 3 hours. I had to deliberately overdraw my checking account to afford the train ticket home.

And so here I am: back home and tired. Out of coins; $20 in the hole.