Quote:
Originally Posted by princessmarisa
I don't get on well with travellers cheques or forever paying withdrawal fees so like to just carry my cash on my at all times in a money belt.
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I don't exactly understand the problem. Why are you not using a credit cards for most of your expenses?
I would pay for hotels and such in advance with credit cards (don't most expect you to anyway?). If I were to transfer hotels mid-trip, I would still use credit cards.
As for Shinkansen... How many trips are you going to be taking? If you are taking more than a couple, you might want to look into the JR rail pass for tourists. They cover a lot of Shinkansen lines as well as the JR lines (yamanote, etc.). You can just buy one and not have to worry about the cash.
As for everything else... most places take credit cards.
If you insist on carrying cash, definitely carry it in a money belt that is secure. You should be fine. I doubt you would be robbed, but you don't want to drop it anywhere (I had a friend lose about 100,000 yen the first day of her trip).
You can also look into hotels that have safes. So you don't have to carry large amounts with you everywhere you go and you don't have to risk your cleaning person or someone else coming across it while you are not in your room.
As for withdrawing cash from your bank. You could do it say, every 5 days. Should give you enough cash to spend without having to have *that* much on you and the withdraw fees wouldn't be enough to break the bank so to speak. Certainly not more than how much it is going to cost you to insure your money?
I see you live in the UK and I am unsure of what type of insurance you may have... but do you have insurance programs through your job? Does your country's healthcare plan offer any type of medical insurance from abroad?
Another plus for credit cards is some do in fact offer travel insurance (not just on purchases). Could look into that.