Now, if you're not a tourist passing by for 3 days, Suica has most of your gripes solved and is an incredibly useful general payment mean. I use the Felica version on my phone (so no card), charge it with 3 taps in the app from my credit card, could have it auto charge if I really wanted to and is my payment choice wherever QR codes or QuickPay won't cut it.

BTW you can now use your credit card to ride JR trains.

It's not that hard unless you fly into somewhere other than Narita/Haneda where Welcome Suica cards are readily available. They're not available to Japanese residents, their only purpose is to function for tourists, so they're made to be easy for tourists.

> And you can charge it only by 500 or 1000 yen at the time (depending on the machine), and of course tickets always have not round prices like 110 yen.

Whatever I have leftover I spend at Starbucks at the airport on my way out. They'll happily split your purchase up so you can drain your Suica card balance and pay the remainder on credit.

It's almost like you didn't read the article.