Your IC card takes only cash: the conbini ATM loop that funds it

Japan lets you pay for almost everything with a plastic card the size of a train ticket, then refuses, at the machine that fills it, to take anything but paper money. The IC card is the most useful object in your pocket, and it runs on a supply of cash you have to keep replenishing.

What the tap actually covers

Suica, Pasmo, Icoca and their regional siblings work across most of the country's gates and most of its shops, whichever city issued them. Beyond trains and buses, the same tap opens coin lockers in station basements, pays at conbini registers, and settles vending machines that carry a reader panel. The ceiling is 20,000 yen, which is worth knowing before you feed a 10,000 note into a card that is already half full.

The top-up is cash, and the cash is in the conbini

The word on the button is cha-ji (チャージ), top-up. Station charge machines and the grey fare-adjustment terminals beside the gates take banknotes and coins, and a small sign on the slot usually says exactly that.

チャージは現金のみです。

This is where the convenience store earns a place in the itinerary rather than a footnote. Seven Bank ATMs stand inside nearly every 7-Eleven, run around the clock in most branches, accept overseas cards, and switch to English before asking for a PIN. Withdraw once in a sum that covers several days of cha-ji, and the ATM stops being an emergency.

A card with 180 yen on it is not a card.

If your phone will carry it

Adding a Suica to Apple Wallet moves the top-up onto the phone, where an overseas card may or may not be accepted depending on the issuer. Test that on the first evening, not at a gate with a train already on the platform. If it will not take, a Welcome Suica from Haneda, Narita or a major JR East counter needs no 500-yen deposit, lasts twenty-eight days, and asks nothing of you at the end.