Money

How much cash do you actually need in Japan?

Last checked: 25 July 2026

Around ¥20,000–30,000 per person for a week. Not because Japan is a cash country any more — in a city you can go days without opening your wallet — but because a handful of situations still refuse plastic entirely, and one of them will find you.

That is the answer most guides give, and it is right as far as it goes. What they miss is when you need it. The most likely reason you will want yen in your hand on day one is not a shrine or a ramen shop. It is a ticket machine.

The thing nobody warns you about

The standard advice for Japan is: get an IC card — a Suica, a PASMO, an ICOCA — and tap your way through the country. It is good advice. The card covers trains, buses, convenience stores, vending machines, and a lot of small shops. It is the single best purchase you make on arrival.

Here is the catch. Most station ticket machines will not take a foreign credit card to load that card. They take cash. So the first thing you need money for is buying and topping up the card that then lets you stop needing money.

People discover this at the machine, jet-lagged, with a queue behind them. It is completely avoidable and almost never mentioned.

There are two ways round it, and you should pick one before you fly.

If you have an iPhone

JR East runs a dedicated app for visitors, Welcome Suica Mobile, which accepts foreign credit cards through Apple Pay. You issue the card inside the app and top it up from your own card, with no counter, no queue and no cash. It runs for 180 days — far longer than the 28 days on the physical tourist card — and because it lives in your Apple account, replacing a lost phone does not mean losing the balance.

Set it up at home, before you fly, along with your eSIM. It takes a few minutes and removes the single most common day-one friction point in the country.

If you have an Android bought outside Japan

Almost certainly you cannot use a mobile IC card at all. Japanese contactless payment runs on FeliCa. Most phones sold outside Japan either lack the chip (Samsung Galaxy, at least until the 2027 models) or ship with it disabled (Google Pixel). Either way there is no workaround.

Plan on a physical card from an airport counter, and plan on paying cash for it. You will see two on offer: the long-standing Welcome Suica, and Tourist PASMO, launched in May 2026 and sold at Narita and Haneda. They are near-interchangeable — both 28 days, both no deposit, both non-refundable. Take whichever counter has no queue.

Two things to know before you do:

• The physical tourist card is unregistered. Lose it and the balance is simply gone — there is nobody to call.
• It expires, and the remaining balance is not refundable in practice — the operator will refund a genuinely faulty card at a JR East ticket office, and that is the only route. Load it in small amounts as you go rather than dumping ¥10,000 on it at the counter.

Where cards genuinely fail

Outside the ticket machine problem, the cash-only pockets are narrower than Japan's reputation suggests, but they are real and they cluster:

• Shrines and temples. Offerings, charms, fortune slips. Coins.
• Small independent restaurants. Particularly the ones worth eating at, and particularly the ticket-machine ramen places.
• Market stalls and street food.
• Local buses and some taxis, especially outside the big cities.
• Small accommodation in rural areas. Confirm before you arrive, not on the night.

One practical note that sounds trivial and is not: carry ¥1,000 notes and coins, not only ¥10,000 notes. Bus fare boxes, small vending machines and coin lockers will refuse the big note, and breaking one is its own errand.

On card networks — Visa and Mastercard are accepted most widely, JCB is strong domestically, and American Express is patchier than its holders expect. If Amex is your only card, bring a second one.

Getting yen: what to do

Use an ATM, not an exchange counter. Seven Bank machines, found in every 7-Eleven, and Japan Post ATMs both accept foreign cards, run around the clock, and have English menus. They are the default answer and there is rarely a reason to look further.

Expect a small withdrawal fee, on the order of a couple of hundred yen, plus whatever your own bank charges. Seven Bank caps a single withdrawal at ¥100,000, which is far more than you need.

Withdraw once, properly. Several small withdrawals means several fees.

Getting yen: what not to do

Do not change money at the airport exchange counter. The rate on that board is typically several percent worse than what an ATM thirty metres away will give you. On ¥30,000 that is a meal. On a large exchange it is a night in a hotel.

The counters exist because tired people walk past them first. That is the entire business model.

Do not bring a large amount of cash from home either. The weak yen makes it tempting to buy a stack at your home bank and “lock in” the rate. Two things about that. First, your home bank typically charges 3–5% on top of the mid-market rate for yen, and an exchange counter is worse; a Japan ATM through a good card charges a fraction of either — the rate you are locking in is not the rate it looks like. Second, whatever you do not spend has to be changed back, at another spread. Bring a small amount to cover the first hour if it settles you, and get the rest here.

Do not tip. Not in restaurants, not in taxis, not at hotels. It is not modest reluctance — staff will genuinely chase you down the street to return money you left behind. The correct amount is zero, and that is one budget line you can delete entirely.

Your first hour, in order

1. Clear customs. Nothing before this point is worth doing.
2. If you did not sort a mobile IC card at home, find the tourist card counter and expect a queue.
3. Find a Seven Bank or Japan Post ATM and withdraw once — ¥20,000–30,000 covers a week for most people.
4. Load the IC card with ¥3,000–5,000. Not more. You can top up anywhere.
5. Walk past the exchange counter.

The short answer

Twenty to thirty thousand yen per person, per week, withdrawn from a 7-Eleven or post office ATM after you land — not exchanged at the airport, not brought from home in bulk.

And if you take one thing from this page: sort your IC card before you fly if you have an iPhone. The cash is easy. The ticket machine that will not take your card is the part that ruins an hour.