[a_t48]

You can however buy a physical card (at a few of the major stations) then transfer it to your phone. Once it's there you still can't reload it directly, but you can use a recharge station (with cash) - just put your phone down where the card would go.

[lhl]

Sadly due to semiconductor shortage, physical Suica cards are very hard to come by atm: https://www.timeout.com/tokyo/news/sale-of-pasmo-and-suica-c...

FWIW I've been using Suica on a Japanese Garmin smart watch and refilling it with Google Pay on an international card without too many problems (and before that with Apple Pay with the same card on iPhone/Apple Watch), although there are probably some gotchas (Apple Pay at POS seems to be pretty hit and miss for in Tokyo and I've never figured out why).

[a_t48]

Oh wow, that sucks. Glad I was able to get one when I was there in March. Tourists can still use https://www.jreast.co.jp/multi/en/welcomesuica/welcomesuica.... though it seemed like a worse deal than a regular card when I was there.

[nicolas314]

Outside of Tokyo you can still easily get one of the other regional IC cards [1]. They can now all be used everywhere in Japan including the Tokyo subway, provided you don't start travel in one region and end it in another.

[1] https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2359_003.html

[lobochrome]

I have a EU Garmin - is there a way to get Suica?!

[lhl]

The Japanese IC systems all use FeliCa, which not all devices support. I believe Garmin only has it enabled (unsure if this is licensing or hardware) in their East Asian models (Hong Kong's Octopus cards also FeliCa).

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FeliCa

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIFARE