Trains

One of the really convenient aspects of living in Tokyo is the convenience of transportation. You can get pretty much anywhere in this city with a train. Just to give you an idea, check out the Tokyo train map. Keep in mind that this is only the JR Railway network.

The JR railway network is by far the largest in Japan, but there are more than just JR trains here. There are still plenty of private lines that run to more rural areas. If I were to include those though, you wouldn't be able to see anything. I know on this map, it looks pretty difficult to understand, but you start to get the hang of it after a few times of riding the lines. If you don't know where you're going, you can use Yahoo to select the fastest and cheapest route.

The great thing about the stations here is that the subway and normal trains are connected. You don't have to go to a different place to catch the next line. This means that the stations go really deep because you're able to catch sometimes 7 or 8 different lines in the same station. The stations themselves are similar in some ways to airports. They're large and spread out, but they're well marked. And unlike the airport, you can catch another train within a couple minutes, and it won't affect your ticket price at all.

With that said, there's a mindset that there's always room for one more person on the train. This leads to serious overcrowding, with the trains running at 200 to 300 percent capacity at rush hours. The station attendants that "assist" people into trains to make sure bags and other things don't get caught are real, especially at the larger stations.

You can also catch multiple different speeds to your destination. If your station is considered a hub, then you can take semi-express or express trains. This means that you can skip all of the stations that you don't want to stop at. This can shave several minutes off of your travel time. I normally take the kakutei (or every stop) trains though, because my home is not a hub. All in all, it's a pretty convenient system. I can get to work in 8 minutes. And unlike driving, I can just sleep until my destination. That's convenient.