So, you have your passport and your visa. You've got your plane tickets. You've even started packing (which will get its own separate blog post in the very near future). But now there's another big question--how are you going to get to your money while abroad? Where are you going to get Japanese cash? How are you going to make purchases in Japan without piling up bunches of foreign transaction fees?
Before we go any farther, let me just say that I'm not being paid by anybody to suggest any of the following brands or services. I've just done buckets of research over the past few months trying to find the best places to get this stuff done, and these are the brands I've discovered seem to offer the best deals. Of course, I've just recently gotten them and haven't tried to use them abroad yet, so we'll have to wait and see whether it all works out properly or not.
First of all, you're going to want to get a checking account that your home institution can deposit your financial aid into, and that comes with a debit card you can use to get cash out of Japanese ATMs. (And yes, you will have to get cash out of ATMs. Japan is still much more of a cash-reliant country than the US, and you shouldn't be surprised if a restaurant, non-chain hotel, or shop doesn't allow credit or debit cards. Even where credit/debit cards are accepted, you're likely to find that only VISA and Mastercard are allowed. AmEx and Discover can be used some places in Japan, but far fewer than the two brands above.)
The checking account I ended up going with is Capital One's 360 Checking. This is an online checking account, rather than an account you have to set up at a physical branch (though if you have a branch near you, you can go that route as well). The biggest reason I chose this one is that, unlike literally every other checking account option I looked at (through US Bank, CitiBank, Wells Fargo, etc.), it doesn't charge foreign transaction fees. If you use the debit card provided (a Mastercard, hooray!) in Japan, it will use the current exchange rate, and won't hit you with an extra 3-4% fee on top of the cost. From what I've read, it also doesn't charge any extra fees when you use it to withdraw cash from certain ATMs in Japan.
You can look into opening a Capital One 360 Checking account here.
Which brings us to the next thing, finding friendly ATMs that won't hit you with extra fees either here or there. An interesting thing about Japan is that, for whatever reason, 7-Eleven (yes, the convenience store) is much more popular over there than it is even here in the States. You can find 7-Eleven pretty much everywhere in Japan. They and Lawson's are the two biggest convenience store brands in Japan (or, as you say in Japanese, konbini).
Okay, so there are 7-Elevens everywhere. But how does this help the globetrotting college student? Stay with me. 7-Eleven's Japanese branch also runs a bank, called SevenBank. Yes, you read that right. 7-Eleven has a bank. And every 7-Eleven in Japan has an ATM in it, which is a SevenBank ATM. And SevenBank ATMs, for whatever reason, play extremely nice with American credit/debit cards. They don't charge you any fees for using them to withdraw yen in cash. So, basically, SevenBank is your new best friend.
Assuming, of course, that you get a debit card (like Capital One 360) that won't hammer you with fees on the American end, either.
Do note, though, that SevenBank ATMs may charge a small fee if you use them during off hours or on the weekends, and some cards may not be usable for small periods of time in the middle of the night (11:50 PM through 12:10 AM for Mastercards, if I recall correctly). I'm not sure why the cards aren't accessible for those ten or twenty minutes, but I'm sure there must be a reason. It may be so that the ATMs can be updated with the day's exchange rate or something; who knows.
You can find more info about SevenBank ATMs here, and info about the hours when a given card brand is usable here.
There are options for buying yen in cash online ahead of time, but I've ended up deciding not to go that route because of all the extra fees that seem to get tacked on everywhere (and the fact that a really bad exchange rate is usually the one used). I'm going to try to get some yen out of an ATM in Tokyo first thing, and if that doesn't work, I'm going to have some cash available that I can exchange for yen at the airport. Of course, that will also mean extra fees, but even if that happens, it won't be the end of the world. (I guess.)
And, of course, even if you don't plan to use it, make sure to take at least one credit card with you. You never know when an emergency might come up and you'd need it.
I hope someone else studying abroad in Japan can find this post to be helpful! It took me a long time to sift through everything and find the best options, and while I found different travel blogs that suggested one thing or another for certain financial questions, I never found any one post that actually helpfully summed everything up like this.
I will definitely let you guys know if these solutions work for me, or if for whatever reason, they end up not working as advertised.
TL;DR: The best solutions I've found for accessing money in Japan are as follows:
Checking account: Capital One 360
Debit card: Capital One 360 Mastercard
ATMs in Japan: SevenBank (at 7-Eleven)
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