Meaning only the more expensive places, most everywhere we tried said they only took Japanese credit cards, I had one platinum and an ordinary Chase visa as well, they just were not accepting credit cards other than Japan's own. Had no problem at all using any of them at the airport though. Zero success at DisneySea. Maybe I wasn't spending enough. It felt really odd going 10 days and never using a credit card.
But our ATM cards worked fine at the 7-11s, no issues at all getting yen, just the challenge of deciding how much to pull out. Lots of little withdrawals can really add up the fees. $1.65 roughly to withdraw 100,000 yen or even 50,000 yen was a great deal. I would select the option to charge my account in yen since it didn't charge me foreign transaction fees. Maybe someone else knows if that was the best way but worked out in our case. No issues using a 10,000 yen note, they were accepted everywhere- its about $75. I miss being there already. Incredible country. Had no problem trading in the leftover yen at the airport and they trimmed almost nothing off, it was a bank I believe, in terminal 1, Not TravelEx.