Living & Moving — MishapI Forgot My Wallet and Flew to Thailand Anyway: 1 Month in Bangkok on 1 Card and 30,000 Yen in Cash
March 14, 2026, 8:20 a.m. Just past the security checkpoint at Narita Airport, I was digging through my bag.
01(Image) The way to the gate at Narita was more or less a corridor like this one, I think. All that stays with me is the faint memory of walking it.
Not in the small bag. Not in the backpack I carry everywhere, even turned inside out. Not in the suitcase I spread open on the floor, even with my hand pushed all the way to the bottom. I checked the same pockets over and over with my fingers. However many times I did it, the answer was the same.
My wallet was gone. The credit cards, the bank card, the cash, all of it had been in there. So had the one and only platinum card I had made before the move, as a kind of lifeline.
I got up at 6 a.m., ate breakfast, and arrived here at 7:50 a.m. Up to that point, nothing had happened.
My head went white, and for a while nothing came to me about what to do next.
Oh, I thought. This is over.
Today Was Supposed to Be My First Day Living in Thailand
Today wasn't just a trip. It was the first day of my move to Thailand. I had prepared all the way to this point. From today on, where I lived and how my days moved were all supposed to change.
The night before, I had stayed at a hotel in Narita. Ignoring the line for check-in, I sat in a chair by the front desk for a while. Boarding for my flight would start at 9:15 a.m.
The passport, at least, was in a pocket separate from the wallet. The first hotel, 9 nights of it, had already been paid for before departure. 9 nights out of the 1 month.
My phone, my laptop, my Pocket3, the chargers, all of them were right there in the bag. The tools for work, and only those, had survived.
I had my passport. So entering Thailand itself was something I could do. The problem was everything after that. How would I get to the hotel? How would I eat? At that point I still couldn't picture myself, in any concrete way, stepping out into an unfamiliar city with no wallet. I had no answer to any of it.
The next time I could return to Japan was April 15. For about 1 month until then, there was no way back.
55 Minutes Left Until Boarding
Going back for it had already vanished as an option inside those 55 minutes. I was on the inside of security, and the wallet was outside the airport. My head understood that, and still my body kept facing the exit. In the end my feet didn't move a single step that way.
Give up the flight and go home. That might be the normal call. But I had prepared all the way to this point. I couldn't back down here.
Something, anything I could pay with. Thinking that, I searched the bottom of my bag one more time.
Out of a small pocket deep inside tumbled a plastic card. It was the Freee corporate credit card. I kept it for expense reports, carried separately from the contents of my wallet, and until that moment I had forgotten it was there. Just for the instant I found the card, color came back to the white part of my head.
I tried it at a 7-Eleven. It was declined once. I stared at the card, waited a moment, and handed it over again. At 8:59 a.m., the payment went through. The moment I knew it worked, some of the tension left my shoulders.
100,000 Yen Wouldn't Go Through, and What Came Out Was 30,000 Yen
I needed cash as well. I opened the SBI Sumishin Net Bank app and chose "ATM with the app." I ran to a Seven Bank ATM inside the airport.
Let me take out about 100,000 yen, just to feel safe. I tapped through with that in mind, and an error came up. The screen showed nothing but a refusal with no reason written on it.
What? Why? I checked the screen again, then tried several times, lowering the amount as I went. What finally came out was 30,000 yen. Why 100,000 yen was no good and 30,000 yen was fine, I still don't know.
02On a blue counter, a passport and just three banknotes lie side by side. Three notes are what the airport machine gave me, and the wallet itself is not in my hands. Notes in total 30,000 yen
03From the moment I noticed to boarding, these 55 minutes were all I had. There was nowhere to put a row for going back to get it.
After turning it over every which way, I decided it would probably work out somehow, and charged ahead.
At 9:15 a.m., boarding began. Holding nothing but 1 card, 30,000 yen in cash, and my phone, I got on the flight to Thailand.
I played a game on board, and 4 hours had gone by. There was no wifi, so there was nothing else to do.
I landed in Bangkok. At 2:23 p.m., I bought an eSIM on AIRALO. At 3:46 p.m., I called a taxi on Grab. Both went through.
What went through was the card inside the wallet I had left behind at the hotel in Narita.
The slab of plastic is in Japan. The numbers had been sitting in an app on my phone all along. The eSIM, the taxi, the hotel bookings, all of them need only the numbers. I kept paying with the card I had supposedly lost.
The corporate card that came out of the depths of my bag was the opposite. That one I had in hand, so I could put it into a terminal in a shop. Convenience stores, meals, everything paid face to face went on that 1 card.
The line waiting for Grab had dozens of people bunched in the same spot. My turn came, and I headed for the place I was staying in Thonglor.
At 8:12 p.m., the Hotel Wrote Back
It was only after I got to the hotel that it came to me where the wallet was. I looked up the contact details of the hotel I had stayed at the night before and wrote to say that I wouldn't be back in Japan until after April 15.
We will keep your wallet at the front desk until the date you are expected to visit us (around April 15).
That came back at 8:12 p.m. Along with it, they asked me for a contact number reachable inside Japan. From this day on, I am not in Japan.
To end that day, I ate sukiyaki at a place in Thonglor called "1 Person Shabu." Around me were Thai, Korean, and Chinese people, and hardly any Japanese.
That same night, I booked a place for 9 days ahead. A room with a view of the pool. All of it on the same day I learned my wallet was in Japan.
04A low sun drops into the city from between one rooftop and the next. I didn't pick the height of this window; it came with the room I was shown to.
It Was the Low End of the Price Tags That I Could No Longer Buy
At midday the next day, I ate a steak at the Sizzler in CentralWorld. Then I moved to the Starbucks in the same mall and wrote the first draft of this whole business.
05On an iron plate sit meat with a seared crust, a potato torn open in its skin, and a small silver pot. It came out still hot, and the sound didn't stop even after it reached the table.
The 30,000 yen in cash I changed into Thai baht at Superrich, the exchange counter people say has good rates. 5,985 baht. Looking at the figure of 30,000 yen had left me steadier than looking at 5,985 baht in a unit I wasn't used to. Only the way of counting had changed, and the amount itself should have been the same, and still that is how it felt.
I couldn't buy a grilled skewer from a street stall costing a few tens of yen, yet I could sit down to high-end sukiyaki costing a few thousand yen without a second thought. I couldn't ride a train costing a few tens of yen, yet I could take 1,000-yen taxis as often as I liked.
Down where the prices were low I could buy nothing, and up where they were high I could buy anything. Before I lost the wallet, I had assumed the worry would run the other way. I had imagined, on my own, the worry of scraping by on nothing but cheap things. What actually happened was the reverse. The things I couldn't buy were, every time, at the low end.
06On a stone countertop, coins are scattered, matching neither in size nor in the color of their edges. Which counters will take them is something I don't know until I put them down.
Street stalls, the local trains, the buses. Every one of them could only be paid in cash. People with a Thai bank account could use QR codes too. My 5,985 baht became the funds for that and nothing else.
April 11: The Payment to That Hotel Was Declined
On April 11, the payment for my nights at the hotel in Narita was declined. It was that same hotel, the one holding my wallet.
Pay again before the booking cancels automatically, the email said. 9 minutes later, I paid again. This time it went through.
Adding up every charge notification that reached the card I had left behind in Narita, from the day I left Japan to the day I returned, came to 440,857 yen. The cash, and the card that came out of my bag, are not counted in that.
For 1 month I kept thinking the card might be cut off at some point. It actually stopped just this 1 time. And that one time was the payment to the place where my wallet was waiting.
07On a wooden tray sit a clear tea, a made flower, and a rolled cloth, one of each. All three came out before I ordered anything, and I drank it in the time before things began.
On April 15, I stayed at the same hotel. The wallet had been held at the front desk for 32 days.
I know in my head that with a card I can manage. But having it cut off is frightening. It is because the many risks are hedged that I get through ordinary days at all. This was the thing that made me feel it.
