Sidebar: ATMs and Credit Cards

Well, it isn’t much of a surprise given my other travels to Asia and Europe that credit cards are not accepted everywhere.  However, more places than I expected willingly take my AmEx.  Good thing, too, since I rarely carry cash and definitely don’t have enough cash to foot the bill for all of this travel, food, etc, for an entire month.

ATMs, on the other hand, are an interesting phenomenon.  At Narita airport, for example, it is no problem to find an ATM that accepts my card.  I also had no problem getting cash on day 1 near my hotel.  But, once I got to Okinawa I could barely even find an ATM.  Then, when I did find an ATM, it accepted about 20 different card networks…none of which were Plus or Star, you know, the only two on the back of my debit card.  That’s helpful.  This same situation exists throughout Japan, it seems.  Citibank is in Japan and they accept my ATM card.  But, they aren’t very common.  Luckily, the ATMs on US military bases accept my card and give you the choice of getting Yen or Dollars.  Not the most convenient place to get cash, but it will get me by…