Yen - What to bring

[jgraves 0]

Every cash machine at every post office (even in the remotest corners of Japan) is wired into the major international ATM systems like mac, plus, star, cyrus, etc which means that you can withdrawl cash directly from your own bank account in your home country as if you were in your own country.

 

The PROBLEM is, ironically, that (at least as of September 2005) you could only do this if you read Japanese. No joke, you could not access the necessary function from any of the english menu options.

 

If I have some time, I'll swing by the local post office later this week and see if I can't give a write up of instructions to follow. Many long-timers don't even know this and would find it useful.

[quattro 1]

TB

 

Not totally sure were your going with this.

 

But with my card stateside account. I can access only the withdrawal function in English.

[jgraves 0]

I clicked the most recent post link to this thread, so I read the very first post and then it immediately jumped to the last posts with Sailor boy talking about getting trashed and Cheeseman talking about cheese and I thought poor Panhead wasn't getting an answer.

 

You all pretty much said what I was trying to say, but last year, the machines were f'd up (or at least the one I was using was). If I hadn't noticed a small sticker in Japanese posted next to the upper right hand button to access the "foreign account withdrawl" function, I would've been absolutely screwed. 20 minutes of trying using the english screen and I couldn't for the life of me get money to come out of the damn machine.

 

Glad to see some things have changed.

[thursday 1]

Again, the trick is to take enough to not be hit with ATM fees for withdrawals.

 

10,000 a day is ample.