Cards I used in Japan

I'll be making a more useful post this time, it's about the cards I used when I was in Japan, mostly to commute but some can do even more than that! Hehe..

1. JR Pass

The holy JR Pass everyone's keep wondering if it's worth it to buy JR Pass when visiting Japan. For me, it is! Like totally! Because I landed in Kansai and traveling all the way to Tokyo and then get back home from Kansai again, it really saved my money (A WHOLE LOT) by having JR Pass, since Shinkansen can be reaaaally expensive I'd rather spend it on something else.

Honestly, when I first bought my ticket and realized that I had to buy a JR Pass I got a mental breakdown, because although it was supposed to help us save money, it still cost quite a lot too! I bought mine around 29,000 JPY (around 260 USD), as it could only be purchased outside Japan I wasn't sure if I should (but thank God I did!)

So more about this card, as I've mentioned before, can only be purchased outside Japan and for non-Japan residents only, in short, this card help tourists to explore Japan. Once you have purchased it, you can use it whenever you're traveling on JR train and other JR transportation. This includes most of the train in the city and Shinkansen. All you had to do is show this card on the exit/entrance gate (where there's an officer) and they'll check if your card is still valid, if it is, then you can go everywhere all you like~ (as long as you're using the JR lines)

So if you're going to use Shinkansen a lot like me (I traveled back and forth Osaka and Tokyo, I also visited Nagoya), I advise you to purchase it, I've said it multiple times, but it really saved me lots of money.

2. Suica/Pasmo

Bought this card when I met my friend and somehow my JR pass was rejected (they said the JR pass doesn't cover that station-but I still firmly believed that we just went to the wrong gate and showed the pass to the wrong person, I mean, it was Akihabara! No way JR pass doesn't cover that!)

Anyway, this card is useful for many things, if you don't need to purchase JR pass, then this card is the way to go. You can use this card for all train stations, including the smaller subway ones. I mostly use it for that (my station was a subway away from Shibuya).

Other than that, you can use the card for locker, and also to purchase goods in most convenience store. So I think this one is pretty much like the T-card in Korea.

I noticed there are several brands of the cards, but most of the time I saw Suica and Pasmo, guess they're the most popular ones (or the ones from biggest companies).

Bringing this card is pretty useful to lessen the amount of coins in my pocket, so I don't have to bring them everywhere and instead just tap this card and go.

3. One-day card (in Nagoya)

I'm not sure if other cities (or Tokyo) have this, too. Since I only used it when I was in Nagoya. The card costed me 740 JPY, and once purchased I can use it to go to every station in Nagoya. The concept is pretty much similar with JR Pass but this one you insert it into the machine instead of just showing it to the officer.

According to my friend, Mekkan, we saved quite a lot with this because we traveled to lots of stations back and forth. So instead of purchasing one-way ticket, if you're going to go places, you may want to consider this one-day card.

Well, that was all the cards I used in Japan. Hopefully some of you who'd planned to travel there find this useful :) If there's any misinformation, please tell me, I'll edit them since it's only based on my knowledge and experience when I was there.

Ah! Can't wait to travel and discover some more!