dimpas - could you spare me 150 yen for the subway, please?

yes, today at some point I felt sorry I don't know how to say this in Japanese.
The evolutional fork here has happened way back, as long as ATMs and mobile phones are concerned. There is no GSM network in Japan, so even your latest superduper triband phone won't work.
Even more interestingly, most japanese ATMs will spit out your perfectly fine Cirrus/Maestro/Plus debit card. And your Visa card too (if you have a PIN for it, that is)
No bank will do a cash advance on your credit card, either. And by far not every bank will care about converting your foreign cash into yens...
So I arrived at the terminal station of my train journey from Narita airport, and had to change to a subway line for another few stops. After a night flight, on which I slept, as usual, at most two hours. And without a single yen in my pockets. But of course, ATMs are on every corner, why bother, with two different debit and two different credit cards in your wallet....

Wrong. Finding an ATM wasn't a big deal, but it didn't display and familiar logos, nor liked any of my cards. Finding a bank was also not too hard. Waited there for 15 minutes and was told to go to another branch, few hundred meters away.
Wanted to phone a collegue for an advice, but, of course mobile phone fork has happened way too long ago, too.
Waited there for 30 minutes, filled a duplicate A4-format form to convert my 70 euros worth of sing dollar cash into yens. Finally was able to buy a 150 yen (that's, like 1 euro) subway ticket. Well, lost 1.5 hours in total and missed few first talks...
Already on campus, was told by a japanse collegue that Post Office ATMs are foreign-card friendly. Indeed...

And the package of the conference participant I got on arrival included a card for all the public transport, preloaded with the amount I'd hardly be able to spend for the duration of my stay here...