Nippon Currency Exchange

Traveling to exotic places is well and good, but sometimes the exotic comes to you.

Last night I had sushi in the Castro with my sister. We went to the so-called No-Name Sushi restaurant on Church Street, which turns out to have a name after all. Nippon something. I forget. It will always be No-Name Sushi to me.

It was great--probably the best sushi in the city for the price. Hilary, who knows her sushi better than I do, thought it was better than Blowfish, which is considerably more expensive.

Almost as exciting as the food for me was finding what I thought at first was a euro coin sitting on a windowsill. It wasn’t a euro, though; it was a Paraguayan 100 guarani piece dated 1990.

I wasn’t even sure I dared take it. (Did I expect an angry South American to come back looking for it? I’m not sure.) I felt like I ought to leave something in return, so I put a dime on the sill. I wanted to leave a quarter, but I didn’t have one on me and Hilary thought even the dime was probably overpaying. She’s right. I looked it up this morning and 100 Paraguayan guarinies is worth the tiniest bit less than two cents. With currency-exchange fees, I’d be lucky to get a penny for it. No matter. I left the restaurant feeling like I was the one who had gotten a tip.