Traveling Japan with Suica and Apple Pay

This is a bit of a departure from what I normally post about, but this seemed as good a place as any to post about it. We were just traveling in Japan and ran into some stress around the train system there. I wanted to post about it to spare some others some stress.

This guidance is explicitly for those of you with Apple devices. No doubt it will eventually work better with Android, but I found that if you have an Apple device it can be pretty straight forward.

Also, I am not an expert on Japan or its transit system. This guide is written from the perspective of understanding what worked for us.

Getting Started

If you are going to travel by train in Japan you will want the following set up on your iPhone:

1. The Suica IC card in your Apple Wallet
2. The Suica App
3. The Smart EX app

If you are sticking to the subway and light rail systems in Japan, you do not need the Suica App or the Smart EX app. The latter two are if you want to use the Shinkansen.

Adding Suica

First, a quick note that you’ll see there are multiple IC card options you can use for transit in Japan. There’s PASMO, there’s Suica, and a couple of others. Just use Suica. It absolutely works, and you get a cute little penguin character on your card.

You do not need a physical Suica card, you can set this up entirely from Apple Wallet. Just go to your wallet and hit the “+” in the upper right, select “Transit Card” and then you can find Suica in the list of cards. It’s that simple.

Once you have Suica set up on your phone you can add money to it from within your wallet. Also, if you use an Apple watch you can transfer the Suica card to your watch. Just remember that once you do, you’ll be using the wallet in your Apple Watch app, not the main wallet app.

Adding Money and Timing

One quick note about adding money to the Suica card. When you do this, it takes a moment to register with the system. Maybe 30 seconds? If you add money and then try to immediately go through a turnstyle, it may not work for a moment.

Getting Around with Suica

Once you have that set up, you are 100% good to go on all of the train lines that I encountered in Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto except for Shinkansen and the Narita Express. All you do is tap your apple device at the entrance and exit points, and the money will be deducted automatically. It’s extremely easy.

Google Maps

A related point: google maps transit directions in Japan are pretty good. The train system in Japan is a labyrinth of multiple connected train lines, sprawling underground malls, etc. It takes a little patience to navigate effectively, but google maps really helped.

The Narita Express

The first point that you’re likely to encounter that gets complicated is the Narita Express. This is the express train that runs about every 30 minutes from the aiport to Tokyo Station downtown. It’s about as fast as a cab and WAAAAAY cheaper to use.

The trick with the Narita Express is that there’s two parts of the payment for it. There’s the basic fare that you need to pay, but also each seat on the train is reserved. It’s a two step process to get on the train.

The good news is that the basic fare is paid for by your Suica card. You just tap and go and that’s super easy. The second part is the reserved seat, and that’s where things can get tricky.

Buying a Reserved Seat

There are two ways to buy a reserved seat:

1. Use the automated Kiosks
2. Go to the ticket counters and talk to a human

The first thing you will want to do though is go get some cash. You see, neither the kiosks nor the ticket counters deal particularly well with US credit cards. Why? No idea. Coming into the airport we tried to use the kiosk, ran into this problem, then went to the counter, and they were asking for cash as well. As a result I now know how much it costs to take a cab from that airport, and I assure you, you that you do not want to know.

Automated Kisosks

The automated kisosk are fairly straight forward to use, however, you will probable be jetlagged and have a line of people behind you. So “straight forward” is a relative concept. The kisosks do work in english though, just look for the english button.

Once you’re in english mode, what you will want to do is buy a reserved seat WITHOUT paying for the fare. Ya see, your apple wallet Suica card is going to handle that part of the operation. The only thing you are doing is reserving your seat on the train. You will select what departure you want, what seats, and then pay with cash. It will spit out slips of paper with your reserved seat information.

When you go to get on the train, you’ll come to the kiosk that let you through. Tap your apple device and go. You then go get on the train, and sit in the seat that you reserved. Nobody will even look at the paper ticket for your reserved seat, but you should hold onto it in case there’s confusion on the train.

Summary

To summarize:

1. Set up the mobile Suica before hand in your apple wallet
2. Get some cash
3. Buy the reserved seat, using cash, from a kiosk or a human
4. Use the suica card to get on the train
5. Ride the train

Riding the Shinkansen

If you get the chance, you should definitely take a trip on the Shinkansen. It’s a really great experience and it’s a great way to get around Japan with minimal hassle. Well almost minimal hassle, we still need to get you a seat on the train.

To be clear, you can operate the Shinkansen entirely with your Apple Wallet. You do not need a paper ticket and you can do everything through apps on your phone. We got clever, using the kiosks at the station, and that made things messy.

So like I said above, install the Suica App and the Smart EX app on your phone, and you can get set up on the Shinkansen, no problem.

The Process

There are basically four steps that you need to follow to get Shinkansen tickets:

1. Set up the Smart EX app with your information and a credit card (US credit cards work here)
2. Register your Suica IC cards with the app
3. Schedule your ride on the train
4. Assign the Suica cards for the ride

The way this all works is that you will use the app to book your travel, and then you link your train rides to the Suica card. Then when you go to use the kiosk, behind the scenes, their system will know you bought a train ticket, and you’ll be good to go.

Setting up Smart EX

Setting up Smart EX is fairly straight forward. You need to provide your personal information and then set up a credit card that will be used for purchases. I won’t go into the exact mechanics of this as they may change.

Now, the next step is that you need to add your Suica cards to the app. To do this, you need to know your Suica Card’s ID, and that’s something you get from the Suica App. So go ahead and fire up that app, and yes, it is in Japanese.

Fortunately the only thing you need is that Card Id, so click on the “i” in a circle to get the card information.

Once you click the “i” you’ll see your Suica ID which you can copy and paste over to Smart EX.

Adding a Suica Card

If you go into the Smart EX app, you’ll see a profile icon in the upper right. Click on it, and you will see “My IC Card List”. Go into this and you can add an IC card. You’ll just enter the Suica ID from above, and then label the card to help you identify it.

The cool thing is that you can add multiple Suica Cards in this way. In my case I was buying tickets for myself and wife, and I was able to link her card as well, no problem.

Ticket Classes on Shinkansen

Now you’ve got Smart EX running and you have all of your Suica cards added. At that point, you can go ahead and schedule your train ride. There’s a couple of things that are useful to know about the Shinkansen as you buy tickets.

There are two classes of fares that I’ve seen “Ordinary” and “Green” which you might translate to “Coach” and “Business class”. You get a bit more room in Green cars.

Also, if you are traveling with large suitcases, you need to reserve this and you can filter searches in Smart Ex for this. There are train cars with storage inside the car, or ones with a storage area. For the “in-car” storage, you will reserve seats that are at the back of the car and place your large luggage behind your seat. That’s what we ended up doing.

Side Note: Hotel Transfer of Luggage

You can arrange luggage transfer between hotels in Japan. In our case it was like $30–40 for two suitcases. If you are checking out multiple cities in Japan, just do that and make your life easier. Hauling large luggage through busy train systems is sometimes necessary but not fun.

Ready to Book!

At this point, you should be ready to schedule a train. It’s very straight forward, you just select your time, route, and seats. At that point you’ll check out and pay for the train ride using the credit card that you’ve registered.

The last step though is that after you book the trip, you need to link the Suica cards to your train travel. If you look at the train reservation you’ll see the way to do this, and you assign each seat to each Suica card you have.

Time to Travel

You’re ready to go! You’ve booked your reservation and you have your Suica cards linked. All you do is go to the turnstiles at the train station and tap into just like you would for the subway. The one difference here is that after doing that, the turnstile will print out your seat reservation information. This just informational, you do not need to use this paper, but it’s good to have in case there’s confusion about what seat you have on the train.

When you get off the train, you’ll tap out in exactly the same manner as with the subway, using your apple device at the turnstile.

Transfer from Shinkansen to Airport Express

For the record, if you’re going from Shinkansen to the Airport Express, everything just works on the Suica card except for needing a seat reservation. You book the seat reservation just as I outlined above but entry and exity from both train systems is handled by the Suica card on your apple device.

DO NOT USE THE TICKET KIOSKS FOR SHINKANSEN

One last point of emphasis. You might get to thinking that you don’t want to use the app and that it will be easier to just use a kiosk at the station. No it will not. Stop that nonsense.

We tried that and the problem is that you cannot really do this with the mobile Suica card. There are signs around the kiosks telling you this, but you won’t see them until it’s too late. I assure you that they are very obvious after you’ve made this mistake.

The problem, you see, is that you can get a seat reservation this way, but not the basic fare. The end result is you’lk have to go the desk and have a human fix it for you by printing you a paper ticket.

Concluding Thoughts

Overall using Japan’s transit system is pretty straight forward. We created some stress for ourselves along the way, and I hope this post helps you avoid some of that. I will say though that the ticket counters were universally helpful when we did get confused. They are used to dealing with tourists and can quickly solve your problems.

Also, I can only speak to my personal experience. There’s other ways to do this, and if you have an Android device, honestly I have no idea how it works. What I did above worked fine with a couple of iPhones and an Apple watch and was easily the least hassle option.