Been using this reddit and its threads for great tips and forming my plans for my Japan trip next year (I'll be chilling in Ikebukuro 🙂 ) and there's one thing I haven't seen anyone mention and just figured I ask in order to calm my overthinking brain.
The main advice I see when it comes to currency exchanges is to withdraw money from any ATM and while I have no problems with that, I also have no experience doing it either and it makes me a little nervous.
My only experience with exchanging currency is my trips to Peru, we would always just have our USD cash already withdrawn in the states and once we land we find a currency exchange booth with the best rate and get our local currency that way.
The idea of just using my debit card on an international ATM is new to me, so I try to see other ways of having some yen ready to go before I get to Japan, but either certain apps have difficulties with their services, not being available through Android, or additional fees I'd rather not add on to my budget; From all the threads I've read, I think it's better to just get the currency exchange through the Japanese ATMs themselves. I have a chase visa credit card with no international fee, so I'd like to use it whenever I can, but I know a lot of Japan is still cash only.
So I just wanted to know if anyone has any advice or difficulties that I can avoid or how much are the international fees when withdrawing from your PNC card to ease a bit of the anxiety from doing this for the first time. Maybe even if I can do it old school and there's any currency exchange booths that have a good rate and I can just exchange my cash there?
Thank you!
by needthat4th