When You Can't Use Your IC Card

If you live in a not-so-big city or a rural area in Japan, or travel to one, it's likely you won't be able to use your Suica or other IC cards in every station.

There should be notices about this at other stations on the same line - to remind you to buy a ticket and not use an IC card when you enter the gate. The problem is, these will usually be in Japanese and you might not even notice them.

I recently went only a few stations away, but to a new neighborhood for me - and that station doesn't have an IC card reader. On the JR Kyudai Honsen, traveling between Kurume Station and Oita Station in northern Kyushu is really fun at first because it feels old fashioned and rural. The local trains are red or yellow 'one man' diesel engine trains and the express is the green "Yufu no Mori."

Inside the train there's a display that looks like what you'd see on a bus - showing different fares between stations. For some of the long stretch of small stations in between the bigger cities, there are no IC card readers. This means we need to buy single fare tickets.

I hopped on a train using my IC card as usual for an event in the more rural part of my city. It wasn't until I was on the train that I saw the notice that we need to buy tickets for the station I was going to. I wasn't too concerned as I'm sure I'm not the only 'city folk' to make this mistake. 

When I exited the station I apologized to the eki in (train station staff) telling him I had used my (Nimoca) IC card. He asked which station I came from to calculate the fare and asked me to pay that in cash.

He filled out a Seisan Shomeisho (精算証明書) or Payment Certificate for me to prove that I had paid and correct the data stored on the IC card the next time I was in a bigger station.

Luckily he didn't seem angry about it and explained what to do very calmly.

You can see the type of IC card, amount paid, stations used, and date on the certificate above. 

I don't take trains on a regular basis, but I stopped by the station I had departed from that day and found there was no staff there. Maybe because there is an IC card reader, there's little need for staff to be around. I found that the schedule was dramatically reduced this year and it's really inconvenient for me - either early mornings or in the afternoons while I'm working. Luckily, I went to another station - not a JR station but the local Nishitetsu line, and they were able to fix my IC card.

All you need to do is go to the tiny office near the gates where there is staff working and present your proof of payment slip with your IC card. It will only take a few seconds for the staff to adjust things so you can use your card again.

That being said... if you can catch on that you shouldn't use your IC card in the first place, it will make things go a lot smoother!