Originally Posted by
wideman
The primary unpredictable variables are when the flight actually arrives and line lengths at immigration. If you find that you're cutting it close for the NEx, you should just buy a NEx ticket from the machine or NEx counter and forgo the Suica combo. The latter does save $20-30, but getting the combo also requires lots of extra time.
So 2-3 minutes is lots of time? That's my average. They have a separate line at the JR East office at terminal 1 just for this and were very efficient. It might well take longer for a newbie to figure out how to use the ticket machine.
But we're getting off topic, so I'll suggest this discussion belongs in the Japan forum and stop now.