I presume that I wouldn't be able to exchange TC at HND late at night on a Sunday night, right? My flight doesn't land until about 10:30pm on Sunday.

In addition to the ATM fees imposed, can someone tell me what the approximate percent that I'll pay over the Forex rate will be at an ATM?

There will be no per-transaction or percentage forex charges made by a Japanese ATM: whatever the transaction costs over that day's interbank exchange rate is entirely based on what your issuing bank charges for foreign ATM withdrawals.

If you're coming from somewhere where you can get a UnionPay prepaid or debit card, do so. This allows you to use ATMs at Mitsui Sumitomo, Mitsubishi-UFJ, and Aeon as well as the post office and 7-Eleven, bringing "a minority" to "about half".

The exception being the UnionPay cards I mentioned. I tried using my Chinese ATM card in a Yu-cho machine and was surprised when it popped up a notice saying that they would tack on an additional 110 yen per transaction. 7-Eleven wanted the same, Mitsui-Sumitomo and Mitsubishi-UFJ were slightly better at 75 yen per withdrawal, and only Aeon machines were free of charge for me.

I have found that using an ATM at the post office is the best way for me. I have always gotten a decent rate (within about 2% of the market rate) and post offices are everywhere. No foreign transaction fee credit cards are alright, but Japan is a cash nation, and I find it much better to have a pocket full of yen then plastic. It is a bummer to miss out on miles, but cash is much easier, especially rurally.

That said, if you are dealing in large amounts of money, more research is necessary. It looks like folks here think that TCs work well. I have used them in Japan with ease. Plastic is much more inconspicuous to bring in country though.

If you are going from dollars to yen, my condolences. The yens a beast right now.

Its brutal! I have been monitoring the Yen for the last month and it has gone from about CDN $100 = 7800 JPY, to CDN $100 = 7400 JPY - IN A MONTH! And that was despit the Japanese government intervened by selling off Yen to try and lower the value due to the concerns of Japanese exporters....

When I arrived, the Hilton in Osaka was offering roughly 75 Yen for $1 USD (TC) and slightly less for cash. When I left 8 days later, the Hilton in Tokyo was offering 72 Yen for $1 USD (TC) and 70 Yen for $1 USD (cash).

I went to 7-11 ATMs twice. Chase Premier checking accounts allow you 4 non-Chase ATMs per statement period without paying the Chase fees. From what I can see on my statement, it looks like there was a $3.90 fee (exchange rate adjustment) charged for every 10,000 yen.
11/16/11: 30,000 Yen = $401.61
11/23/11: 10,000 Yen = $134.02

My CC charged 2.5% foreign transaction fees on all my purchases even though they claimed there was no charge when I called before my trip. If you are used to living in the US, please be warned that many places in Japan do not accept CC. You will need to carry JPY.

If you are moving more than a few thousand dollars at once, you can save some money by using a wire transfer. Compare the 2 yen spread on T/C rates at NRT
http://www.narita-airport.or.jp/exchange/index.html

with the 1 yen spread on wire transfers for ordinary customers at Shinsei:
http://sre.shinseibank.com/InterestRateB/FXRate.aspx

If you keep a balance of 20 million yen (Platinum status), you get a fee-free wire out every month at an amazing spread of 50 sen. Otherwise the fee is 4,000 yen -- most other Japanese banks charge 6,000, while the rich-....... account packages at HSBC and Citi offer nominally fee-free transfers but rip you off with the exchange rate.

So my technique is to build up cash in a Shinsei account and wire it over to E-Trade when it's at a good critical mass and when the exchange rates seem good.

How about the Lloyds bank service, if we're talking Japan -> another country? I've never used it but I've heard people speak well of it:

https://www.golloyds.com/index/en

Hmmm....reading the small print it looks like there are a bunch of mysterious additional charges above and beyond the Y2,000, including the "only-in-Japan" so-called lifting fee of 0.1% when you DON'T have them do the exchange and another $20 by an intermediary bank when you want USD.

The simple fact is that even when my former company was transfering large amounts like USD$500k+, we never had a Japanese bank do the exchange, and we always did our best to eliminate the lifting fee (generally succeeding). It turns out that for these large amounts, you actually get 2-3 different banks to bid on doing the exchange. A few times we included Japanese banks in the bidding process and they were never competitive.

Another hmmm....right now Google says that 1 USD = JPY 76.97 but Lloyds is requiring JPY 78.64 to give you $1. That means that if the sell rates are similarly charged, there would be a 4% difference between buy and sell. That's not terrible but it certainly isn't fabulous either.

I spend a lot of time in Japan; well, about 80% of my time. I don't use much cash. It's not as cash based as people claim.

Capital One recently launched "high yield checking" and they don't charge any ATM fees and you get the interbank rate.

Also Capital One CCs give you the interbank rate.

Those are your best options.

I was looking at Citi Gold's pamphlet (requires 10 million yen). It says no exchange fees from USD to Yen and then you pay something like 30% of the fee from Yen to USD. With a normal account it's about a yen off the interbank rate for USD to Yen; depends a bit on the timing of the transaction.

Here I am talking about transfers between sub-accounts at Citi.

Read the fine print very carefully. I think those fees apply in addition to the rate spread which they post on their website.

I have also used capital one a lot in thepast year and have always gottenthe daily forex rate without additional fees, including in Japan. The exception being when the vendor or atm offers to charge in dollars, then they control the rate, which is never good.

In that case, Citi Gold gives you no benefit.

Ok, I see that the regular account also has "no fee" if you hold over 1 million yen.

Yesterday the spread was 1 yen, so you are paying 1/78th, which is quite high. I pay 0.1% in my European bank and can pay with CC and get cash at 0% using US Capital One accounts.

So Citi Gold is pretty worthless for us but we are going to reach it "naturally" soon. The only benefits that I see is that you don't have to pay 2 yen per USD to take out USD cash and the 160 yen domestic transfer fee. It's criminal that you have to pay 3% to take cash out of a USD denominated account. And they also allow "no fee" foreign electronic transfers. We don't have much use for that until we want to close the account!

The only real benefit of having a Japan Citi account is that you can do internal Japan transfers (essential for paying rent) and some places don't take foreign CCs for small purchases. And sometimes you need a PIN at a train ticket machine, which you don't normally have with a US card or they tell me it becomes a cash transfer if you use your PIN and you get nailed with fees and interest. Oh and also getting an ETC card for the car is quite important.

So ETC and being able to make domestic transfers are the only real critical benefits of Citi Japan account. Otherwise we would not need a Japanese bank account.

And if you have filtered 100,000 USD through their account into yen then they have made 100,000 yen off you so far. Not bad for 6 months of "work".

p.s. I also noticed that you get charged a fee at 7-11 if you use a Citibank ATM card there (one of the listed benefits since they have few branches). I actually think it was something bizarre relating to the fact that it was after 10 pm, but my Japanese reading ability is close to nil. If I use my US cards then there are no fees at 7-11.

Yes, I noticed that Travelex have done that at LHR, taking over all the ATMs. There was a lone HSBC machine over in T3 a few years ago. They offer UK bank account holders fee free withdrawals but nail tourists with hefty exchange fees.

Does shinsei allow you to save in USD and then wire it, or do you have to go go back to JPY before the wire and eat the exchange rate again ? (at least that was what I was told a few years ago)

I keep a Citibank account open with about 300,000 in FC it to avoid monthly charges. However I will let it go up to 1,000,000 for a month or two during their campaigns, plus it allows me to transfer out for 2500.

Keeping any more than that for a long period doesn't make a lot of sense, since their interest rates tend to be a full 1-2% below (overseas) market.

However for exchange rates they seem to be more than Shinsei, but as I mentioned I am not sure if you can save and transfer with them. Of course the 1 yen spread was quite a bit less when the rate was 120/1USD.

Mizuho
TTS 79.13
TTB 77.13
Citibank USD
TTS 78.90
TTB 76.90
XE.com USD
77.9045
Shinsei
TTS 77.40
TTB 78.40