[rippercushions]

Mizuho, SMBC, Aeon, MUFJ ATMs all accept foreign cards these days. Inaka Ginko still probably won't though.

I've been to Japan tens of times for work, family and holiday reasons, and I've never found a use case where the JR pass would have paid off for me. Then again, I tend to fly in and stick with a single region; if you're doing the tourist trail thing where you're going (eg.) Tokyo-Kyoto-Himeji-Hiroshima-Tokyo in a straight line in one week, than sure, it makes sense.