Japan is well known for its expensive transportation fee. If you are from a country where requires you to pay a lot for using public transportation you will not be surprised by Japanese system as well. On the other hand, you will get shocked if you came from a country where you can use transportation with low fee. In some countries, you can transfer from one to another, for instance, from subway to bus, without paying extra charge. However, there is no such concept of free transfer in Japan so that you will have to pay every single time you use subway or bus.
GET a SMART CARD
Bus, train, or subway… Whichever you want to use, getting transportation smart card will make your travel much easier. You can buy this smart card from a machine at subway stations and charge some amount of money into the card. Then it’s done. You don’t have to buy paper tickets every single time. There will be a deposit(JPY 500) But it will be returned to you. There are certain places where you can get refund.
The Pasmo and Suica are the most famous smart cards. These two cards are sold by different companies but the way of using this is exactly same. After charging enough money on the card, just tap it on the board. There is a board and a picture of card is drawn on this so there will be no difficult to use it. If you really don’t know where to tap it, just stay behind for a second and see people using it.
BUS
I guess many of you plan to use bus to get to travel destination such as hotels from airport. In addition to this, some of you may have experiences of using night bus for moving from Tokyo to Osaka or Fukuoka. It sometimes takes more than 12 hours and your back and neck will ache a bit but every moment will remain as nice memories in the future. Yeah, all of these are still bus.. but it’s a special case in terms of the fact that it’s airport limousine bus and highway bus.
There are not many foreign tourists who use local buses for traveling. There are two main reasons why bus is not very popular for tourists. First, subway system is well organized in Japan. We will look for it later and I bet you will get surprised by its complexity. Second, it’s hard to use “pass” when using buses. Subway or trains sometimes offer pass system to foreign tourists and we can save our budget if we use it wisely.
HOW TO USE BUS?
It is usually said that passengers need to enter the bus from the backdoor. However, personally I thought it really depends. I have not used buses in Japan many times since I always use subway. Whenever I took a bus, sometimes people got in from the front and sometimes from the backside. The best idea is that you just watch people a step behind and see how they do. Just lining up and follow what people do will be good for escaping from embarrassing situations.
After you get in the bus somehow, you will find a machine where you can get paper tickets and you need to get one. If you have a smart card, don’t take this paper and just tap your card. Some buses allow you to charge your card at that point if there is not enough balance left. An electronic display near the driver will show you the next stop. You will pull the lines in some of your countries or tell to the driver directly like “I’m getting off here!” In japan, please just push a yellow button on the wall.
KEEP ETIQUETTE
It will be same in your country that keeping etiquette while using public transportation system is very important. There are few basic manners you should know in advance. For example, using cell phones loudly is strongly prohibited in Japan. I’m not saying it is illegal or somebody will say something to you, however, Japanese people naturally acquire it gives “noise” to other people. This word is called as “meiwaku” and it has more meaning than just make physical noise. It includes the meaning of bothering, causing trouble, and making people be in inconvenient situation. Pushing the seat with feet, chatting with friends with loud voice, listening to music loudly, and eating something smelly can all be a type of meiwaku.
rent a wifi router in japan
It is necessary to get online all the time to search for transportation information. Regardless of its highly-advanced technologies, it is not easy to find free wireless(WiFi) hotspots in Japan. So, what we recommend for tourists who want to stay connected 24/7 and have exciting journey, is to use wifi rental services, which is also known as pocket wifi.
wifi rental japan is proud of being able to provide competitive price to you. It only costs JPY600(USD4~5) per one day. You can enjoy unlimited data wherever in Japan at any time with reasonable price.
*Advance mode only
*If you use more than 10GB within 3 days, speed limit will be applied to avoid congestion.
wifi rental japan wishes that all tourists have more comfortable and meaningful travel in Japan.
If you have any inquiries, please feel free to ask us.
