Beau's Blog

Intro

I’ve done many 30 day experiments. I have not done many experiments on longer timescales. I found a fun opportunity here last fall when I moved into my Tokyo apartment.

Context

Upon settling into my new place, I was surprised to find a couple glasses full of coins. That said, coins are used more in Japan than many counties so I suppose it sort of makes sense. Here’s my understanding:

• The smallest paper bill is 1000 yen. Roughly $6.35 USD but in the past few decades this has been equivalent to more than $10. The biggest coin is 500 yen. The 500 yen coin is the most valuable coin I’ve ever witnessed!
• While things are changing, Japan is still more cash oriented than most advanced economies.

The Experiment

Anyway, I like games. I figured I could make a game here. Why not challenge myself to get down to 0 coins? It would be free money after all! Or at least, the only cost would be the incremental time spent hassling with coins.

I decided to track this effort through a weekly photo. Every Friday, I took a picture of my two glasses in as close to the same position as possible.

What Did It Look Like?

I ended up using the coins in a way that minimized my inconvenience; I barely jeopardized my typical behavior of not carrying coins with me. The biggest pain with carrying coins is that they make noise and I don’t have a dedicated space for them. Whenever I decided to go on a brief one spot trip from home to a local convenience store or lunch spot, I would carry a handful of 100/500 coins as well as 50s and 10s adding up to 90 and 5s and 1s adding up to 9. My goal with each of these outings was to make progress and not “go backward” in my goal. In other words, getting change was a failed outing!

I will admit there may have been some occasions where I altered my purchases to use up more coins. Usually this meant making sure the price ended in 90 and/or 9. Additionally, this affected my choice of convenience store. My two closest options are 711 and Family Mart. 711 has an automatic coin counter whereas Family Mart requires an employee to count the change – hence 711 received significantly more of my business over this period.

Result

I began my experiment on November 3, 2023. In the early afternoon of April 26, 2024, via the help of 711 and a sparkling grapefruit water, I became the proud owner of 0 Japanese coins and two empty glass jars.

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Takeaways

• Things that may seem to be a hassle can be fun
• Creativity, perspective and games are powerful
• The fact that this took so long made it more rewarding upon completion
• For similar-ish future projects, I would like to push myself with visual storytelling. The GIF and pictures are good but I think there more more creative opportunities.

Notes

While it would’ve been nice to know the value of the coins before starting the challenge, I was not motivated enough to count it out.

To clarify, this was not a huge amount of money. By far, the most common coins in these jars were 10s and 1s (less than dimes and pennies).

Thank you: https://gifmaker.me/