alt Hacker NewsBuying tickets is a pain. You have to buy two tickets, and physically stack them together at the same time and feed into the machine at the gate.
Some trains and buses in remote areas only take cash. Some only take EXACT fare and the driver does not have change and will refuse you. I asked my hotel for exact fare by exchanging my foreign 10$ USD bill. The staff informed me it was illegal for them to exchange money. Lo and behold I looked it up and it is indeed illegal as you need a foreign exchange license.
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Most of the machines will literally just print you both tickets if you select the right option.
Your complaint about the money exchange is wild to me, I don’t think I’ve seen anyone try to do that in my 15+ years being in and out of Japan. Why would you expect to hand over a non local currency to them and have that work…?
Why would a hotel/store/whatever accept foreign currency even if it was legal? It would be a massive pain in the ass for bookkeeping, etc.
Did that hotel accept USD for some reason? Otherwise yes it would be pretty far-fetched for them to exchange money for you, that's not strange.
Exchange is illegal, but not making change. Perhaps because of the language barrier they thought you might want to pay with USD.
There is a change machine in nearly every bus/train with conductorless operation, you take a boarding ticket when you get on and you pay when you get off. They're used to tourists screwing up and just ask where you boarded.
The stacking two tickets thing is pretty much a relic of the past now. Your first ticket (local fare) is your Suica/Pasmo card, and your second ticket (express surcharge) can be loaded into the same Suica/Pasmo straight from the smartEX app where you bought your ticket, meaning all you need to do is tap the card once.
It's admittedly a PITA to set up the first time around, but once you've done it, it's silky smooth.