Changing USD to Yen -- Suggestions for best deal?

[jake9115]

Hey guys,

I'll be arriving in Japan in early July and intend to bring a bit of $$$ with me to change to Yen to pay for everything during my travel. In the past, I would just use a bank card, but then I found out they charge a pretty hefty international conversion fee (~sevearl %) and perhaps even other fees. I've also used the method of bringing traveler's checks (which cost a 1% fee) and then changed them at Narita airport at one of the bank kiosks into Yen, but I don't remember if I was gouged or not.

Does anyone have a standard way they do this to save money? I'm think the traveler's checks is the way to go, but don't know where to get the best exchange rate. I'm a penny pincher!

Thanks

[wagyl]

Traveller's Cheques: the bank kiosks at Narita will probably know what they are looking at, but that is not guaranteed. Once you get out of the airport there is a very high likelihood that the bank will not know what a traveller's cheque is. Seriously. I seem to remember there was a report here of someone talking about the bank spending a lot of time making sure that the two signatures on the cheques were suitably the same. On each single separate cheque.

If you do go the traveller's cheque route, and such things are available to you, you might think about getting the cheques denominated in Yen to save conversion shock here. The online sites of various banks both in Japan and in your home country should set out their current rates and you can get an idea how much they rake off my comparing their buy and sell rates, to help you make that decision.

Now, what I do when bringing money into Japan, is I have a credit card in my home country which I deposit cash into in advance and then withdraw from the machines, but this is a particular credit card where the provider itself bears any transaction fees and the exchange rate is the standard Mastercharge rate without any loading. Well I did until this year, when they started to charge a foreign withdrawal fee, although it is still probably less than most other options up until a certain amount of cash withdrawn. Not all credit cards are the same but you need to do research.