Wise and Revolut give you mid-market rates and 0% FX fees. Roughly ¥6,000 saved on a $1,500 trip. Order before you fly and you'll skip the counter queues entirely.
Also: get online the moment you land
Japan eSIMs from ~$10/week. Install before departure, connect 1 minute after landing.
Get an Airalo eSIM ↗Visualise the yen you'll get — and the yen you'll lose
Enter the yen amount you want to walk away with and see how much each route — airport counter, downtown exchange shop, and Wise + convenience-store ATM — quietly takes off the top. The difference is a few hundred dollars per trip, and thousands of yen per year for frequent visitors.
Convenient, but typical rates are 3-5% worse than city counters.
Specialist counters like WCS Shinjuku-West. Rates are mid-market −1-2%.
Mid-market rate + ¥220 per ATM pull. First ¥30k/month is free on Wise.
Wise + convenience-store ATM saves you ¥6,900 ($43) versus the airport counter — roughly 5-10 lunches.
0% foreign-transaction fee, mid-market rate, and ATM withdrawals free up to ¥30,000 per month. Order it 2-3 weeks before your trip and withdraw from any 7-Eleven ATM on arrival — that's the standard playbook.
Get a Wise card ↗Loss rates use observed medians: airport 5%, decent city shop 1.5%, Wise + ATM 0.4%. Daily FX moves can shift these by ±0.5%. Last updated: May 2026.