NRT or Narita Express Wifi
 

Hello I am meeting my friend in downtown Tokyo and depending on when my plane gets and immigration going to meet him downtown anyway. I wanted to text him telling him which train I am getting on so he knows when to pick me up. My question is there good wifi connection in the Narita Express transportation area or the train station itself to communicate with my friend picking me up in downtown Tokyo?

Both terminals of NRT have free wi-fi, though I'm not sure about N'EX (the abbreviation for Narita Express, just in case you only see signs for "N'EX").

Free wi-fi in the terminal requires registration and is ok but not very fast. It should be fine for sending text.
http://www.narita-airport.jp/en/guid...ire.html#lan02

Wi-fi on Narita Express is not free.

The free wifi in the vicinity of the Terminal 2 JR ticket office and Starbucks has worked fine for Skype, Facebook, etc, for me. Nothing on NEX without paying, though sending a text message from a US phone while in Japan shouldn't cost more than 50 cents in my experience.

Thanks for the info. Also, I was planning on paying by CC at the JR ticket office and my friend said I may need a PIN number for my credit card. Is this true? My CC is definitely not a bank/debit card.

PINs are used for ID in lieu of a signature. Credit Cards use these widely outside the US. You can set it up with your bank or card issuer easily.

I've never needed one when using a US credit card in Japan. And I don't think magnetic swipe cards are even capable of being used with a PIN, but I live to be proven wrong.

Having the terminal to use the PIN for is a shop by shop thing. Not at all ubiquitous, not by a long shot. I was used it far more in Europe last year actually.

The cards with stripes are very capable of having the chips. Mine all have both. I kind of suspect the next step towards modernization for America though is not the chip and PIN thing, but rather getting out of the prehistoric habit of using checks. :)

But can cards without chips have a PIN? And can stores process such a transaction?
IME, on the occasions when my Chip+PIN authentication doesn't work, the store swipes and I sign. I've never done a swipe+PIN authentication at a store. (ATMs are another matter).

I have a chip on my card. So that does that mean I don't need a PIN at all?

It means you need a PIN to make a Chip+PIN transaction.

If you don't get a PIN from your card issuer, some stores will just swipe your card. It's conceivable that a store might refuse to do that, though.

I just spent 9 days in Japan (Kyushu and Tokyo). I used my Marriott Rewards Visa (chip & signature) extensively without a PIN and without issue.

You mean the store used the chip - rather than the magnetic strip - but asked for a signature? I've never come across that. Or do you mean that the stores swiped the strip and let you sign? That I've seen many times. I've also come across one or two places that refuse to do it.

Citibank JP has chipless CCs but issue a pin. The only place that I have used it in Japan is for buying train tickets from machines. Oh yeah, I was in a remote place in NZ where I needed to buy gasoline. Even though the station was manned they required a pin cc transaction to purchase fuel. So my JP CC came to the rescue. Also used it to buy a train ticket from an automated ticket machine in Denmark. These countries (definitely DK) are primarily chip+pin but clearly mag stripe + pin works fine too.

US CCs also have pins but it is usually meant for using the card for a cash transaction where they hit you with fees. And you usually have to request the pin. In Japan Citi issues two pins automatically. The other is for online account access, I think.

I believe they used it in the same terminal that would be used to enter a PIN. I don't remember seeing it swiped. I also used it in the JR West (in Osaka) and JR East (in Tokyo) Kiosks to re-load my Suica card without issue.