Every group that goes ashore in Japan discovers the same thing by lunchtime: this country still runs on cash, and one of you has become the bank.
It’s not that cards don’t work — malls and restaurants take them fine. It’s that the good stuff leans yen. At this port alone: the water bus to Miho no Matsubara sells the return leg on board, cash only; the stalls at Kashi-no-Ichi market prefer notes; the strawberry stands under Kunozan are coins-and-notes affairs. So somebody fronts the ¥4,000 water-bus fares for the group, somebody else gets the taxi, a third picks up lunch — and by sailaway nobody can remember who owes whom what, in a currency none of you thinks in.
The maths of one Shimizu day, for four people
A realistic independent day for two couples travelling together:
| Shared cost | Paid by | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Water bus out, 4 tickets | Person A | ¥4,000 |
| Tuna lunch for four | Person B | ¥6,800 |
| Water bus back, 4 tickets (cash only!) | Person A | ¥4,000 |
| Taxi to Nihondaira, one car | Person C | ¥3,500 |
| Souvenir tea, shared box | Person D | ¥2,160 |
Five payments, four payers, ~¥20,000 — and if one couple is American and the other Australian, you’re settling across three currencies at whatever exchange rate someone half-remembers. Multiply by a ten-port itinerary and this is genuinely the most common source of group friction we hear about, ahead of anything involving the mountain.
It gets sharper with tours: private vans and sedans here are priced per vehicle, which is why four people splitting one fare beat two ship-tour tickets — but only if the split actually happens cleanly afterwards.
The three ways groups actually handle it
1. The paper method. One person keeps a note on their phone, everyone settles at the end of the cruise. Works for couples; degrades fast beyond three people, and the exchange-rate argument at settlement is a cliché for a reason.
2. The big splitter apps. Splitwise and friends do the job if your group already uses one. The friction for a cruise group: everyone has to install the app and create accounts — a hard sell over dinner on deck with expensive ship Wi-Fi — and yen-to-multiple-home-currencies handling varies.
3. The share-a-link method. This is the one we ended up building ourselves, because groups on our own recommendations kept hitting the problem. SplitJapan is a free web tool: no app, no accounts — one person opens it, shares a link or QR code, and the group is in. You record a payment in yen in about fifteen seconds; each traveller sees their share in their own currency, at a rate that’s locked when recorded so there’s no settlement-day argument; and at the end it computes the minimum set of transfers to square everyone up, instead of a web of IOUs. Nothing uploads to a server — the data lives in the link and your browsers, which suits a day where half the group is offline ashore. It even tracks tax-free purchases separately, which matters if your group is doing duty-free shopping between ports.
Full disclosure, because this site runs on it: SplitJapan is built by the same person who writes Port of Fuji. It’s free, and it stays free — we made it for our own group days ashore, and recommend it for the same reason we recommend the water bus: it’s what we actually use. If you’d rather use Splitwise or a notebook, everything above about recording-in-yen and settling-once still applies.
The routine that works, whatever tool you pick
- Before you walk down the gangway: agree that shared costs get recorded at the moment of payment — not reconstructed at dinner.
- Record in yen, always. Convert at settlement, not per purchase.
- One settlement per port day or per cruise, not per meal. Fewer transfers, fewer rounding arguments.
- And carry the cash to split in the first place: the money, Wi-Fi & eSIM rundown covers where to draw yen near the pier (the Seven Bank ATM at Dream Plaza takes international cards).
Group money is the least romantic part of a port day, which is exactly why it should take fifteen seconds and zero negotiation. Sort the system before Shimizu, and every port after it gets easier.
SplitJapan is our own free tool — see the disclosure above. Everything else on this page is the same measured-on-foot information as the rest of the site.
