I dunno how, because everything I’ve seen explicitly forbids it. You’re not even allowed to travel between the non-contiguous Suica areas on a single ticket. JR East’s website says the following:
These signs are all over the Tokaido Main Line trains (photo by me):
You’ve been able to use them interchangeably since 2013, but you’re still not permitted to cross borders.
That’s got nothing to do with ワンマン operation and everything to do with IC card regions. If you’re in an IC card region, the train will have a card reader. For example, here’s an Eizan-line train in ワンマン operation:
Nagoya is Toica, in any case. It’s not entirely clear from your post how far you went, but the Toica region extents only as far as Shiojiri, from Shiojiri to Matsumoto is Suica, and past Matsumoto is the cold, dark Outside.
I was caught by the same issue when I went to Genbikei back in 2019 - I tapped on at Ichinoseki, which is within the Sendai Suica area, but it turns out the Ofunato line is outside. I remembered to get the unused Suica ticket cancelled the moment I got back to Ichinoseki, though. (I also made sure I confirmed that Hiraizumi - my destination for the following day - was actually within the Suica area. It is. In fact, it’s the last station on the line that’s still in the area.)
I also discovered when I went to Minobu last year that even though the trains are outside the Toica region, the buses are IC card-capable. But only some of them.
Hm, I must have fallen in a gap or something, or maybe the regions overlap to some extent in some places. that one ワンマン looked exactly like the photo but didn’t have an IC card reader. I’ve never used anything but a Suica even in places where different ones come out of the machine when you buy them. I almost bought an ICOCA card in Hiroshima just because it was a cute souvenir, but my Suica continued to work for everything. I haven’t been very far up into Tohoku though.
Aye, there’s the trick. Most people jump from region to region via Shinkansen - tourists typically aren’t trying to cross back and forth around Atami.
Aside from my Ichinoseki mishap in 2019, my trip last year was the first time I’ve actually had to pay close attention to the region borders, partly because it was my first trip completely sans JR Pass, and partly because I went to a bunch of fairly rural areas, so I put a fair amount of research into it.
I haven’t actually been to Japan yet (2,5 months to go!) but I did have a similar experience a while ago when I first started talking to Japanese natives in my home country. I also did a bit of reading and writing, and attended a class at uni, but I did more listening than speaking there, and not as much of either as I would have liked.
This changed that for me. I used their three free trial lessons to find a tutor that I liked, and have been studying with her weekly/bi-weekly depending on my schedule. Just being forced to hold a conversation with her improved my skills immensely, and after the first time I became a lot less nervous. Plus I also got to practice reading because we would often read Japanese news articles together, that we would then talk about (she always picked them out beforehand according to my level, and increased the difficulty as we went). Honestly, she is the best I am still not 100% happy with my study method, but @Vanilla 's advice sound like exactly what I need to do, so I will be implementing that from now on.
That is awesome to hear! I will definately start lessons on Italki. I decided to pause my grammar study for now and focus completely on listening and speaking practice.
I’m sure you will love Japan just as much as I did. Me and my gf already decided to go back next year so the after-holiday depression is less severe, we’re already making plans for the next trip
I am still not 100% happy with my study method, but