Toyosu

Seconds after placing a 5000¥ note in a vending machine and having it rip in two pieces we paused and looked at each other. It was like a perfect scene in a 90s movie that no one wants to watch. Where a series of extreamly poor timed yet hilarious events unfold. And what we had now was two pieces of what amounted to about 50$. If we were home we would go to the bank where they would undoubtably peer at us as if we were trying to pull a fast one and then begrudgingly give us an intact 50 dollar bill. We're not home.
We entered what we thought was a bank only to leave the proud owners of Japanese car insurance, maybe it will come in handy one day. Second try was in fact a bank and after showing our fractured currency to the teller she nodded and handed us a paper to fill out. Normally filling out paperwork is unpleasant at best, but this time is was a near impossible challenge. The date line was easy enough to figure out, the rest no idea. Luckily the google translate was there to "help". The first line said cowboy mosquitoes. Maybe google translate wasn't going to help after all. With a bit of help from a friendly bank employee we were able to nearly complete the form except for the mosquitoes box. After some back and forth it was determined that we needed to write my name in Japanese. Having no idea how to accomplish this we resorted to google translate. We crossed our fingers and made our attempt. Hoping that google wasn't playing some elaborate trick on us and and we weren't writing mayonnaise baby
we returned the paper. Miraculously moments later my name was called and an un ripped bill was handed to us via a tiny wire basket. Tokyo where normal errands turn into mini adventures.Read more