<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Kremmen:
To go back to the original topic, Japan is another country in which you'll see lots of VISA logos on ATMs that will not accept cards issued outside Japan.</font>
Just to clarify this a bit: Although it's true that many ATM's in Japan will accept only domestic cards, this is not true of merchants accepting cards for purchases. I've never seen or heard of a situation where a merchant displaying a Visa/MasterCard logo for purchases had a problem with foreign cards.
The bigger problem in Japan is finding merchants that accept credit cards at all. Although it's gotten a lot better in recent years, it's still nowhere near the level of creidt card acceptance that you have in the US, for example.
This, combined with the ATM situation pointed out above, and with the fact that generally speaking, merchant's won't take traveler's cheques (you must go to a bank and exchange them for cash), you have to have your cash situation planned out a bit better than at home if you're the type of person that is used to walking around with a credit card, ATM card, and $40 in cash.