I'm planning a trip to Japan and will need a fairly large amount of Yen banknotes to pay things like hotel bills, since Japan is a cash-heavy economy.
I have some US dollars sitting in an American bank account and I'd like to use these to buy the Yen I need. However I'm in the UK, and (as far as I know) all currency exchanges here only exchange to/from GBP.
The only options I can think of are:
Move the money to my UK account (in GBP) and buy the Yen cash in the UK. Doing two currency conversions is likely to be expensive though.
Use my US debit card to withdraw Yen from an ATM on arrival in Japan. My US bank charges 3% for foreign ATM withdrawals so this might be expensive too.
Is there a cheaper option?