In all my trips to Tokyo, one of the things I absolutely can’t travel without is my Suica card. If you have been to Tokyo, you might have seen the green cards with an adorable penguin around the train stations. Suica is simple payment card that you can use instead credit cards or as your train pass. I first noticed them on my trip in 2009 when NFC was starting to become popular in Asian markets. People started to pay with cards and phones instead of a ticket for each trip on the train and payment touch points showed up in stores.

If you want to buy a card to use, you can find the kiosks to buy and load up your card at the major train stations. If you are flying into Tokyo, stop by the JR service centers at Narita or Haneda airports at the start of your trip.

The machines to add to Suica cards are cash only so you will need to have some on hand. I loaded 5000 yen on my card and used it exclusively to get on and off the trains on my last trip. You can use Suica cards to pay at quite a few stores if you want to skip your credit card and save cash.

The JR East company offers Suica but the cards can cross over into a few other regions and payments can be made on those systems too.