[princessmarisa]

Originally Posted by xkmkmlmx

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.

I do not have a credit card, nor do I want one. Also I got massive charges last time to withdraw using my debit card. I do a lot of shopping in random stalls and such in Japan and paying on plastic is not always going to be feasible, espeically for a UK-based credit card (if I did get one) plus credit cards will levy at least some charge abroad not to mention any APR % and charge to pay on card etc that hotels charge. I see this as a waste of money

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.

We have already looked into it in detail and the national JR pass won't be suitable this time, we mayend up getting the local regional ones you can get whilst in Japan, again I need the Yen with me for this.

As for everything else... most places take credit cards.

as above, depends where you like to shop in Japan and what you like to buy, it is just a lot easier with cash too.

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).

I think I mentioned I would use a money belt, but yes I will and transfer the needed amount to my purse each day. Wow how do you manage to drop tht amount of money

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.

The hotels are already decided and booked, I didn't need a deposit because they are places I have stayed before and I did it by email.
I liek to have the money on me for emergencies anyway , plus the cheap bussiness hotels/ryokan will not have these only the expensive western styles hotels.

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'd rather not pay my bank any more money than they already take from me.
The withdrawal % is quite high and I would be subject to whatever the exchange rate decided to be that day and would have to look it up before withdrawing to know exactly how much I was taking out.

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.

My job does not offer any kind of insurance, it is pretty rare in the UK to get any such perks unless you work for massive corporations in a very responsible position.

Pretty against the whole credit card idea in general, but thanks for replying.