What to know
Japan’s currency is the Japanese yen (JPY), quoted without decimal places, so everyday prices run into the hundreds and thousands. Japan is still a relatively cash-based society: card and prepaid IC-card payments are widely accepted in cities, but smaller restaurants, shrines and rural businesses often take cash only.
Japan’s currency was designed with fractions and later stripped of them. The New Currency Act of 1871 adopted a decimal system of yen, sen and rin, setting 1 yen at 100 sen and 1,000 rin. The same act placed the country on a gold standard of 1.5 grams of gold to the yen. Those smaller units survived until 1953. The Bank of Japan records that all currency below 1 yen was voided that year, banknotes included. The fractions were not left out of the design; they were withdrawn from it, and Japanese money has been counted in whole yen ever since.
What survived is a short list. The Bank of Japan lists ten denominations in circulation: notes of 1,000, 2,000, 5,000 and 10,000 yen, and coins of 1, 5, 10, 50, 100 and 500 yen. A new note series entered circulation on 3 July 2024, the first redesign in twenty years, replacing a series first issued in November 2004. It carries Shibusawa Eiichi on the 10,000, Tsuda Umeko on the 5,000 and Kitasato Shibasaburo on the 1,000. The reverses show Tokyo Station, wisteria and Hokusai’s Great Wave off Kanagawa. The security feature is a three-dimensional hologram that rotates the portrait as the note is tilted. Each denomination also carries a tactile mark, so it can be identified by touch.
Getting that cash is not automatic for an Australian, because a card issued overseas is not accepted by every machine. The Japan National Tourism Organization points visitors to two networks. It lists Japan Post Bank machines, which sit in post offices and also in stations and supermarkets. It also lists the Seven Bank machines inside Seven Eleven stores, which take cards issued abroad and give screens, receipts and voice guidance in twelve languages. The organisation notes as well that withdrawal charges vary with the hour and the day, that not every machine runs around the clock, and that machines in central areas can run out of cash.
From 1 November 2026, a visitor pays consumption tax at the till and claims it back on leaving Japan. The National Tax Agency calls this the refund method. A registered tax-free shop sells at a price that includes the tax. The refund follows once customs confirms at departure that the goods are being taken out of the country. That confirmation has to happen within 90 days of the purchase date. The threshold for a tax-free purchase is 5,000 yen. The same reform removes the category split between general goods and consumables. It also drops the 500,000 yen ceiling on consumables and the special-packaging rule that went with it.
Heading off with a card? Read how to choose a travel money card - including why you should always pay in the local currency, not Australian dollars.
Working out what the trip costs? Put your daily spend and trip length through the travel budget calculator, or convert a single amount with the currency converter.