[anrakushi]

on the card issue, japanese tend to deal in cash so atms that support foreign cards can be hard to find. i got myself a japanse bank account the week i arrived so i never had problems. one friend of mine had a citibank card, from america, and his card got eaten at what is usually the most compatible atm the post service one. he had to travel about 30mins to go to an actual citibank atm in Japan, he was lucky. my bank HSBC only has a brank in Tokyo and i was near Kyoto.

you may be lucky and have no problems getting money out of your account with your card but i wouldn't rely on it. you will have no problem carrying around reasonably large somes of money in japan. you'll see many japanese carrying around £500 and upwards of much much more. you won't need to worry about it getting stolen etc. i remember i was carrying around 300000¥ at one stage and i didn't feel worried at all, now do that in australia and people would think i'm crazy. my friend bought a car in japan recently and handed over 2000000¥ in cash haha..