JR East announced a new version of their rather perplexing Welcome Suica card for foreign visitors to Japan coming in early 2025: Welcome Suica Mobile for iPhone and Apple Watch. Inbound Android users will have to wait until Google Pixel gets its global NFC act together. How does the new […]
Mobile Transit
Hiroshima dumps proprietary PASPY transit card…for a different kind of proprietary transit card
Talk about back tracking. When Hiroshima Electric Railway Co.,Ltd. (Hiroden) announced in March 2022 that they were replacing the FeliCa based Hiroshima region proprietary PASPY transit card with QR Code ticketing starting in October 2024, there was a lot of online commotion. ‘FeliCa is dead’ media acolytes celebrated, sane writers […]
Help Desk
Mobile Transit and Payment Guides for Japan
Mobile SuicaAll aspects of using the Apple Pay Suica ecosystem Mobile TicketsLinked mobile ticket services to use with Apple Pay Suica Mobile Payments Note: A major limitation of the blog format is navigating and finding information scattered on backdated posts, I’m listing major guides here and will update this pinned […]
Mobile Payments
Reality Checking the Western Myth of Japanese Cash Addiction
Myths die hard, especially Western Japanese myths. Mostly because somebody doesn’t want them to. They are the proverbial rice bowl of hack foreign journalists who can’t be bothered doing research, or acknowledging changing times. Far too easy to spin the same old comforting myths for western readers. Comforting because it […]
Mobile Payments - Mobile Transit
Suica 2.0 Platform Closeup: Mobile Suica 2.0
March is always the month for new train schedules and services and 2024 is no different. JR East will be adding a significant Suica service expansion to 21 stations in the Yamagata region on March 16, the first big expansion since the May 2023 Suica 2.0 rollout in Iwate, Aomori […]