Visiting Japan? Get A Suica!

This is somewhat of a dry topic but it will probably save you a lot of time and energy whether you're living in Japan or just visiting. If you live here, chances are you already know about it and have a Suica card, but if you only staying for a week or so it could slip right by you.

Suica is a rechargeable magnetic debit card that is able to be used on all of Japan's train systems. At first, it will cost you 2,000 yen ($20 US), 500 yen of which goes to the purchase of the card itself and is completely refundable when you leave. While a rechargeable train card may not seem like groundbreaking stuff, it really helps in that you don't have to stare up a big map in the train station written entirely in Japanese in order to figure out how much your train ticket will cost.

Furthermore, it can also be used at stores both in and near the train stations. Since all money in Japan lower than $10 is in coinage, it can really help to cut down on how much change you have to carry around. Plus the penguin is pretty cool too!

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