Japan Holiday - Spending Advice Needed

WAYT

chocgirl wrote: »

I had never heard of WeSwap but I am looking now!

Forget about it. Monzo
Refer to post #5 too.

chocgirl_2

Thanks yes after some googling I think I am edging monzo but had completely forgotten about prepaid cards!

WAYT

Since you have time, you should definitely have a travel credit card, from Halifax Clarity, Creation Everyday, Santander Zero, Barclay Travel Platinum...

ERICS_MUM

I was there a few years ago, organised tour. Most lunchtimes we ate at small cafes, some seemed to be in a room of people's homes ! We always paid cash in those places. Evenings in larger towns meant larger restaurants and no trouble using cards. We travelled by coach and I'm now a fan of their service stations - never seen so many vending machines !

Liliwanderlust

Japanese people tend to pay things cash, and sometimes, even in Tokyo, restaurants don't take cards and can have a hard time using foreign cards. Don't even think about using your debit card.
For lunch, you can get by on 1,000-2,000 YEN per person for something very decent. But for dinner, it's harder to say, as it depends on whether you're going to an expensive dinner and if you drink alcohol or not. For an izakaya, it can be around 3,000 YEN, but you can easily pay up to 10,000 per person per meal.
This website tends to be quite helpful for finding restaurants:
favy-jp

beeg0d

Supprisingly one thing nobody has mentioned yet with the Japeneese food culture is department stores. In the basement of any department store in Japan is their food hall, and entire floor (sometimes 2) full of prepared hot and cold food pretty much the entire of japeneese cusiene can be experenced in these places. personally i recommend Mitsukoshi in Ginza, Tokyo.

As far as the ops origional question gose. In the major citys cards are taken in major restruants but the smaller 10 seat ones (makes up 90% of the restruants in Tokyo) are cash only. There are 2 types of ATMs in Japan, ones that require 6 digit pins (usless for UK cards) and "international" 4 digit machines. All the 7-11 machines take 4 digit pins (you'll find a 7-11 every 100-200 meters so that should be all you need) i beleave the post office (Yūbinkyoku) ones also take 4 digit pins but most (though not all) bank machines require 6 digits