>IMHO there's no reason to get a physical card, unless you want a souvenir

My friends and I were unable to load our Suica using the Wallet app. It kept throwing an error. We had to visit stations that had ATM or kiosks for loading Suica that were wireless (tap instead of insert) so we could load from the card stored in Wallet app. Our one friend that had an Android was able to load his card anywhere.

This was difficult enough in Tokyo where most card loading machines are insert not tap, let alone outside of Tokyo. Most major stations seemed to support this but smaller ones were totally hit or miss.