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| Re: gimbels passageway (1488897) | |||
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Re: gimbels passageway |
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Posted by Henry R32 #3730 on Sun Oct 7 12:40:18 2018, in response to Re: gimbels passageway, posted by Spider-Pig on Sun Oct 7 10:35:07 2018. Japan is very tourist friendly, but yes, the average ATM will not take a western card, and very few places will take western (or any) credit cards. However, there are three common brands of ATM that will (with the first two readily available at the airports):1. The post office Japan Post (which is also Japan's largest bank). 2. 7-Eleven (really their subsidiary 7th Bank, but they are in all the convenience stores). Some Lawson's (another convenience chain) also do, I found these through trial and error. 3. American banks but these are the hardest to find. There's a Citi in Shinjuku which was the first non-post office ATM I found that worked. There's also Travelx which is a total ripoff, never use those, because it always forces you into their BS currency exchange rate. It is worth noting that Chinese tourists can use significantly more ATMs than westerners (mainly Mizuho ATMs which annoyingly are the 2nd most common). As for credit cards, a large number of Japanese retailers gave a collective F.U. to credit card fees and simply do not accept them, and the country is safe enough that carrying around the equivalent of $5,000 cash in your wallet has never been unwise. They instead use in-house debit systems like EDY, transit passes, and now mobile wallets to pay for things at stores / vending machines. It has gotten to the point where the credit card companies are giving merchants money to get them to accept their cards. Hasn't helped much, the same places that always took credit (big chains) still do and the ones that don't still don't (virtually anything else). Hell, at the airport I had to pay the extra luggage fee of ¥7500 (at the time around $80) in cash, after I'd already spent my last large bills of yen. I had to run to currency exchange then back to the luggage counter, and still ended up giving her a bunch of ¥100 coins... |
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