00:00:01 John Daub: Hello everybody, welcome to Tokyo Station. In this episode I want to update you on the situation with the Suica card, which are these IC cards that you use to tap to get in everywhere. I've been doing a lot of digging. This is all information from JR, from the windows when you go here to talk to people. You can't even find this on the website or the press releases. So I thought this was a great opportunity to try it because I've been getting even more and more questions about this. Tokyo Station right now is buzzing. It's lunchtime. There's a lot of people out and about.

00:00:31 John Daub: Now the only place that you can get the Suica card is right here at Tokyo Station on the Kitaguchi side, the north entrance or north exit of the Marunouchi side of Tokyo Station. That's the only place that you can get a Suica card. So they are available. But there's an asterisk. There's a big, big asterisk. And that asterisk is Japanese people can't get them. And only foreign tourists can get these cards. Actually, this is information for the Japanese as well.

00:01:12 John Daub: So JR's official position is that they want Japanese to start to use their iPhones and Android phones to use the app in order to access the Suica cards. That would be the ideal situation. JR East staff has told me that they want to get the Suica card. They've told me that the chip shortage is still in effect. They've also told me that you cannot get the Suica cards from the vending machines. I actually tried to do that. I went into the Suica machines just about 15 minutes ago. You can't get new Suica cards.

00:01:47 John Daub: It looks like you can. What you can do is you can write your name on a Suica card. You can get your funds, return a Suica card. But you can't get a new Suica card out of the machines. So you just can't do it. More information. The TOICA card. A lot of you remember this one. I promoted this about four months ago.

00:02:09 John Daub: That is no longer being given out at Tokyo Station. You can't get the TOICA card from January 19th. It has been suspended, the sales of it, unless you're buying a commuter pass, which you're not if you're a tourist. You can't get this card either. I've got it, so it's sort of like a collector's item. But you can still get them at Nagoya Station or in the Aichi Prefecture region of Japan.

00:02:35 John Daub: Now, Japanese can use the app and get the Suica card. And this goes for PASMO as well. The information is between Suica and PASMO are both effective. Now, if you want to get the Suica card, you have two options. You can come to this window and you can go where you get the JR passes validated. It looks like this here. This is inside the north entrance or exit of Marunouchi. And there's a JR East Travel Service window booth.

00:03:07 John Daub: And here's the operating hours. And you can get the Suica cards here. You just have to ask for it. You wait in the line and there's a person who helps other people with their questions before they go to the window to make sure you're set up so you don't waste the window person's time. She will ask you which Suica card do you want, a Welcome Suica or a normal Suica. You can only pay with cash. You can't use your credit cards to buy the Suica. Just keep that in mind. You need 2,000 yen. You can't use 10,000 yen notes? 5,000 yen notes, 500 yen coins. You get the picture. Only cash.

00:03:39 John Daub: Now, they are selling these according to the window at Shinagawa Station, at Shibuya Station, but you can't get them from the vending machines. Only at the windows and only for places for tourists. Can Japanese people buy them? All right. Come on over here. Look, I asked the guy straight up. And I think that this is really important information. I said, so you're only giving these out to foreign tourists. And he said, yes, we're only giving them to foreign tourists, so I can't get one. I cannot.

00:04:07 John Daub: But I said, okay, so what is your proof of, do you want to see someone's passport? Do you need to see their visa stamp in order to get it to prove that they're a foreign tourist? He goes, no, no ID is actually needed to get a PASMO or a Suica card. You could just get it. So I'm like, wait, all right, so you're trusting that foreign travelers coming here to Japan are on the honor system? Good luck with that. But yeah, I think for the most part, 90% of the people are going to be well, a tourist is a tourist, but 90% of the people are going to be in the honor system. But if you're a foreign resident living in Japan, you could probably get away with it anyways because you have a foreign passport. But the trust system is in effect here, folks. So you don't actually need to show a passport stamp.

00:04:53 John Daub: But I think it was important for me to ask that question, what sort of proof do you need? Because you could leave your passport at the hotel. I didn't ask for it thinking I would get this answer. I asked for it because I wanted to make sure if you needed your passport to get the card, you'd be able to bring it and then get your Suica card without having to go back. And there you go. That's the Japanese way, right? It's incredible here, very much so.

00:05:15 John Daub: All right, I got more information for you. So I went in and I talked to the lady and said, can I take pictures of these? Because it's not on any website in English. And she said, sure. Very good. Very friendly. I love the ladies over at the JR East Travel Service side. There's a JR East window. Go there. I mean, you can't get a Suica card there. But if you need to get Shinkansen tickets or anything like that, go into the JR Rail Cafe on the Yaesu side and go talk to the ladies there. They're so much friendlier than this side. First of all, they know me. And second of all, they're just like, hey, come on down, sit down and talk. And they're definitely not as busy as the people here. Just want to point that out. I love the people over there.

00:06:01 John Daub: All right, so this pass here is the 1,500 yen. They waive the 500 yen deposit. So you don't need to pay. So basically, you have to give a deposit if you get a regular Suica card. Now, PASMO has this card, which is cute. It's got Hello Kitty. So it's kind of like a collector's item. It's got a Sanrio print on it. You can get these at the JR, sorry, the Metro, not JR stations, but the subway stations. You can get these PASMO ones. It's only valid for 28 days. And it's very similar to the Welcome Suica, which is what tourists can get at the airports. And you can get it at Tokyo Station as well. You can get a Welcome Suica. You don't have to get a full-on Suica here, right? So I thought this was interesting. I didn't know about this. So PASMO is offering this for visitors as well.

00:06:49 John Daub: She also showed me this here. This is information that they have that kind of displays it. So the validity period of the Suica and whatnot. All this information. I was like, well, wait, is this on a website anywhere? She goes, I don't think so. But on the right side, there's a yellow post-it note there of all the places where you can get the Suica card. So Shinagawa also has it. They also have a couple other places. Officially, this is the only way to get a Suica card. Officially. You might have some people that say, no, John. I actually literally went and I talked to JR staff about this, folks. So this is the information that you need to know.

00:07:36 John Daub: You might be able to find a Suica card up in Tohoku. I don't know. From a vending machine. But they're not selling them to Japanese. They're asking Japanese residents to go and get the app and use our smartphone right now. Because the chip shortage is still going on. There's no news. They haven't. JR East doesn't know anything about Kitaca. But I asked them, is there any news anywhere? And they said, no. They don't know about the other IC cards. We haven't heard about IcoCA. We haven't heard about the other regional cards. Kitaca. That's the one I like. MANACA. TOICA. PiTaPa. There's a SUGOCA. And then there's the Hayakaken down in Fukuoka for the subway there. All these other regional cards are okay. It's just PASMO and Suica that has the issue.

00:08:25 John Daub: All right. I think this is important information if you're visiting Japan. If you thought this was useful, definitely subscribe to the channel. You know, you can give me a super thanks if you want. You can always help that out. YouTube, I was talking with YouTube about this thing called Super Thanks. Because I started getting it. I was like, what is this all about? This is something that they released, I guess, last year. And I want to say thank you to everybody that was doing it. I was a little bit shocked when I saw it. I didn't quite understand until just recently.

00:09:02 John Daub: So, Michael Sassano is here. Thank you for keeping us updated on the Suica. I still have mine from 2019. You're good to go, Michael. You're good to go. It's still valid for 10 years without use. And if you use it again, I think you can keep using it infinitely. Already subscribers for four years. Thank you, Satrio. I'm looking forward to you running in your kilt when you come to Japan real soon. That's going to be quite the sight. That's going to be a lot of fun.

00:09:28 John Daub: YouTube is changing a lot of stuff. This app that I'm using also changed the interface. So I'm noticing there's a lot of improvements. Now, these live streams, talking a little bit off topic, might go to 4K pretty soon. I heard that the AV1 codec, H.265 is the one that lets me do 1080p. But the AV1 codec will allow me to do 4K with the same bandwidth. So we're going to be able to get higher resolution, maybe better quality live streams coming up in the next year or so, I think when the next Apple computer releases and the iPhone starts to get AV1 chips in there and like everything has H.265 chips now. But when that new chip comes in, then we're going to be able to get 4K live streams. It's just a case of the technology catching up. And that's interesting.

00:10:24 John Daub: So that's all the information that I have about the Suica cards. I really do appreciate you guys are on top of this. I've had a bazillion messages on this topic. Update on the Suica cards. Yeah, we're still yeah. And the AV1 means that I would probably be able to stream anywhere. That's like you get a 1080p signal and it'll take about two megabits per second speed so that all of a sudden makes 1080p live streaming just about anywhere that's kind of cool for 4K live streams. You don't really need that out and about.

00:10:55 John Daub: But looking back at Tokyo Station now, the construction around here has been unreal. And we're going to see on this side a lot of building the skyline, which you're seeing right now is going to be different in about two years, so, you know, get ready for that. The Yaesu side is also crazy right now. But there you go. That's the information on the Suica card, the TOICA and the PASMO cards.

00:11:24 John Daub: Oh, there's one other thing. One other thing. I was told by them that if you're using a foreign credit card, there's a lot of people who just can't do it and they're just saying like foreigners, foreign visitors to Japan, you just can't use the app. If you can get more power to you, you have a special bank. But a lot of the banks, I don't know why, even though it's a Visa card or a MasterCard or whatever, there's a lot there. They're aware that there are a lot of problems with using the app, which is why they're selling the Suica cards at these places for foreign tourists, because they know that tourists want these cards and they want to get them to you.

00:12:13 John Daub: So Japanese just take note. You can if you can use the app, use the app. Don't come here to get the card honor system. Seriously, it works if everybody, you know, is honorable. I left there with no card. I told them I live here. I don't need it. I've got a hundred of them. Not like I got like 10 of them, maybe the regional ones, you know, because they're cute. You know, got a little flying squirrel, the Sapporo one. But there you go.

00:12:40 John Daub: If you have any questions, leave them down in the comments below. I hope this is useful for you. If you are in Tokyo right there, keep the. Where is it? Right over there. There right there. So right there, this area that's where you can go in there and you can get your Kitaca your PASMO card inside of here. Come on now inside of this building on the north entrance and exit of the Marunouchi side. And they will help you out. They've got it. They even have like cardboard things that they hold up to you so you can understand them in English. I thought they really went the distance. Marunouchi north entrance. There you go.

00:13:33 John Daub: You know, you're just going to be solved anytime soon for them. It's not a priority. So, yeah, I'm probably not going to do another update on the Suica PASMO cards. So there you go. If you're a tourist, want one. But that's about it. I think also maybe if you buy the Suica card, you can transfer it to the app. That's something I didn't ask about as well as there's trouble with the Android devices as well. If you have a foreign Android device, you can't use the touch feature. Only iPhone seems to have a global standard for this. So there's a lot of little issues going on with these IC cards on the back end.

00:14:12 John Daub: Eventually, guys, though. A personality of brick wall writes in here. I booked my air tickets. I'll be in Tokyo on the 17th to the 24th of July. I still have my Suica card from '20. You're set. It still has 500 yen. I wonder you should be able to get interest on that. That would be pretty cool. Ten years of interest. You have an extra 200 yen. That'd be something you could transfer it. Right in Hawaii. See, thank you.

00:14:38 John Daub: All right. The future of this. I'm going to end you with this really quickly because I got to get back. You're probably just going to be using your credit card. Already credit cards have a touch system where you can just touch and there's going to be no more reason to have a Suica. So this week, probably in the next two or three years. And already I think the credit card system has started where Japanese are using their credit cards as IC cards now. So if you go to any machine, you can just tap your credit card and you can buy a drink now. So that is that's going to be what happens. I think by 2025, this will be the system.

00:15:17 John Daub: All right. Good. We are. Are we going to do anything more to add to this? Go to our Discord server. If you have information that might be different or might help other visitors. We have a lot of people traveling that are exchanging information in our. Have for Patreon supporters, a American phone number. You can call to leave me a voice message about a question that you may have about Japan. So I'll give you that to all of our Patreon supporters. You're going to have access to that phone number probably tomorrow. It's exciting. All right. Have a good day. Bye bye.