Best Gift for a traveler in Japan

Remember, I told you about a dear friend of mine coming to visit us, and sightseeing around Tokyo? A long time ago, sorry

Remember, that I try to make our friend comfortable.

I have been thinking about a gift for my friend which is useful in travel, which is specific to Japan, and which is easy to buy.

I found it.

It is an IC card. Suica to be specific…

 

It is a card for transportation. You can charge those cards, and you don’t need to buy tickets for trains, buses and so on…

I just spare my time and energy, and use my Suica. It makes all the calculations, all the thinking that I must do when buying a ticket. And I just recharge the Suica. 

Before I didn’t have a Suica. I used to buy tickets every day. Sometimes I did buy wrong tickets, especially if there are multiples lines at the same station. Some machines may not have tickets available for all of the lines. I have faced that problem mostly at Shibuya station, Shinjuku Station, Shinagawa station and so on…  Station stuff is always polite and helpful, even if I bought the wrong ticket, when I explained they refunded my money and helped me to buy the correct line tickets.

I, as a social monkey, couldn’t help realizing the fact that most of the people are just passing within stations with a click sound coming from their pockets, or phone cases or wallets…

I wanted that, the easy pass. So I learned about the IC cards. You can buy it with contracts, such as from school to home, or from home to work, with 1 month, 3 months, and 6 months durations of contracts.

I felt sad because I don’t have such a commitment, or such a long time, so I can’t have the helpful Suica.

Wrong wrong, me, wrong.

It is possible to buy IC card without any contract, it is just for 500yen, and 500yen for first time charging. So you can buy a Suica charged with 500yen, at the ticket machines, fast and easy.

Once you have bought it you are free to travel. And, of course, IC card is a wonderful invention, which offers many more helps in daily life.

The most important one, it can be used as a cash card at convenient stores and vending machines. You don’t have to worry about coins. You wouldn’t have a wallet full of coins. And you don’t have to worry about the left over amount, you can easily buy something and ask to pay with Suica and cash together, if your Suica card has not enough yen in and it is possible to complete rest of the payment by giving in cash.

And another surprising thing, IC card system is connected in the whole country. Once you have an IC card you can use it everywhere, Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Sapporo… I used it many times without worry.

So my advice is that when you land in Japan, first buy an IC card at a station. It will make your life super easy. This is going to be my gift to our friend. We are going to greet our friend at the airport, and I am going to give a Suica.

 Here is another article by me about IC Cards In Japan. 

Cheers,

Ece