(Note: This transcript has been edited for readability.)

"The Japanese tend to be a cash-based society, so it will often be the case that you will go to a restaurant that you would expect to take credit and they will not. So it really depends on what you do with your lifestyle, so if you're the type of person who goes to a restaurant and drops a couple hundred dollars, you should carry a couple hundred dollars, because you might get into a situation where the restaurant that you went to does not take credit. I had a friend who was shopping for jewelry in Japan, and he bought a piece of jewelry that was almost a thousand dollars, and they did not take credit, and he had to pull a thousand dollars in yen and pay the man in yen as a wallet full of money.<br><br>"So I would recommend based on your lifestyle that you pull out the cash you would need for that day, just in case you run into a situation where they do not take credit. Now in Tokyo, it has become more the norm to take credit cards, and especially they have transit cards called PASMO or Suica. They look like a credit card; you use them for the bus and the train. But you can put extra money on them, and now often the convenience stores or places in the airport will take those cards also, so you can scan them just like you would Apple Pay, and you can pay for things using your transit card. So you can also put cash on that if that's something that you want to do for flexibility."