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There was a brief period where it was difficult but that's gone now, you can set it up easily on Apple Wallet at least (apparently Google wallet is different?).

It used to be easy to get one from a 7-11, then it was hard for a bit, then it was easy again with digital wallets.

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Yes, that was during the period where there was a chip shortage for things like cars and other industrial products, this also affected production of Suica cards at the time. During that period you couldn't buy unregistered Suica cards, but you could still buy registered cards (registered to your name). This was simply used as a mechanism to limit the number of cards because of the shortage, and you could also buy those "visitor" Suica cards (those I don't like, for various reasons).

Anyway, that problem is long gone.

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