Let me add a vote to changing hotels to a cheap business hotel in Tokyo. I’ve used the Olympic Inn Hotel (in Azabu-juban) and Sunroute Hotel (near Ueno) for short stays, and if you don’t mind the really tiny rooms, you can stay for less than $100 a night without much trouble. If you’re coming from a North American or European time zone, keep in mind that you’re going to be quite jetlagged (your day-night cycle has just been reversed), which will make long train trips at the end of a day of sightseeing somewhat miserable. Some things to keep in mind: 1) Japanese hotels are almost always priced per person, not per room. 2) [Following up on #1] It’s unusual to find business hotels with more than one [small] bed to a room, although Sunroute was better in this regard in my experience. 3) Amenities are somewhat sparse in business hotels compared to “Western” style, although I was impressed with the recent innovations at the Olympic Inn Hotel when I stayed there last January. Don’t expect laundry (likely not a problem for a five day stay), Concierges or the like. 4) Another advantage to picking a hotel in Tokyo will likely be that you can find things to do nearby without taking the train, in case you find yourself overwhelmed with jetlag.
I’d encourage you to try and meet up with some of the Tokyo Dopers, too. Sadly, scr4 doesn’t live there any more, and KinkiNipponTourist hasn’t popped into any of my Friday-nights-of-debauchary threads yet. But, Sublight and Tokyo Player are great guys with interesting insight into what living in Japan is like.
I think you’re just not grasping how big Tokyo is. It’s the largest metropolitan area in the world, with a population of roughly 35 million. It’s not unusual for people to have a daily commute of 3 hours (round trip). 3.5 million people per day go through Shinjuku station alone - that’s 12 times more than the number of people who go through Atlanta International Airport.
Which isn’t to say the city is completely clogged and gridlocked. There are numerous options for transportation, with a lot of redundancies (i.e. many different ways to get from point A to point B).
JR runs the Yamanote line, which connects the major urban centers that make up downtown Tokyo - Shinjuku, Shibuya, Ikebukuro, etc. JR also runs the Chuo line which runs straight across this area, and continue to both directions. In addition, most inter-city trains are run by JR, as well as regional lines in other cities.
Tokyo Metro has 9 subway lines, many of which are very new. They crisscross the whole downtown area and beyond. In addition, there are many private rail companies: Keio, Tokyu, Odakyu, Seibu, Tobu, Keisei, etc. Some of their lines are subways, others are surface or elevated tracks. Then you’ve got your city buses, run by several different companies.
So the upshot is, for many major destinations, there are multiple options for public transport. Narita Airport is of course a major destination; it’s serviced by two rail companies, Keisei and JR. Keisei’s airport express train is called Skyliner. JR’s airport express train is called Narita Express. There’s also the Airport Limousine highway bus. Any of these will get you from the airport to downtown, though not to the exact same spot. They all take about the same amount of time, though of course the bus can is prone to traffic delays.
Overwhelming information can only be defeated by slow processing. Take your time and read up; there’s a lot of free English information about how to get around Japan and Tokyo. I probably should have posted this sooner, but I didn’t think about it. There’s a lot of good information about getting around on that site.
Change hotels if at all possible. There are various discount business hotels located at city centers around Tokyo. I recommend Toyoko Inn. As low as $75 a night and the staff usually speaks English. Toyoko Inn - Hotel Reservation
Email me for any of your transport info needs here in the city. I travel throughout Kanto extensively almost every week. maninjpn (gmail acct)
Okay. I have only read about half of this thread but I wanted to chime in with a couple of thoughts.
I must agree that it would really, really, really be better for you to stay somewhere in Tokyo proper rather than Narita. Someone suggested staying in Shinjuku. That’s a great place to be because it’s very lively with a lot going on. Further, it has a huge rail/metro station that will easily get you to wherever you want to go (also not that far from Harajuku and Shibuya).
A good, inexpensive “businessman’s hotel” is the Toyoko Inn Shinjuku in Kabuki-cho. Kabuki-cho is sort of the red light district of Tokyo, or more properly, of Shinjuku. But it’s not a bad area at all and pretty interesting. Last time I stayed over there it was about $80 a night (quite cheap for Tokyo) but keep in mind the rooms are very small. Toyoko Inn has many hotels all over Tokyo (and Japan) so you can choose from many different locations.
About the trains/subways… I don’t see much reason for you to take the JR (Japan Railways) at all. It’s true that for some trips within Tokyo it is easier and quicker to take the JR than Tokyo Metro, but if you are only going to be in the Tokyo area and only for a week or so it might be simplest to stick to the subway (which BTW is not always the Tokyo Metro–sometimes you have to take a separate “private” subway line which costs about the same but requires separate tickets).
And from what I’ve read in this thread, the JR pass at +$200 is out of the question. You don’t need that at all unless you are moving around the entire country.
One last thing-- many of the underground metro stations are HUGE. You may find yourself having to walk a kilometer or more to transfer lines. It’s not a big deal unless you have mobility problems.
If you look at Los Angeles, there’s a couple of freeways drawn in yellow, but without that or the label “Los Angeles” you wouldn’t be able to tell there was a city there. It’s just the green and brown of nature. Now if you look at Japan, where Tokyo is, there’s this great grey blob. That’s all concrete, buildings, and people. The average height of Tokyo is probably about 8 stories. It’s 8 stories tall in every direction for about 1/4th the width of the state of California.
But that said, for five days you’re fine on the JR using nothing more than the Yamanote and Chuou lines. You can go to Shibuya, Harajuku, Shinjuku, Akihabara, Yurakucho (Ginza), and Ochanomizu (lots of book and hobby stores), and that will more than fill all your days. If you actually want to go to a particular place, you just look up how to get there and do what it says. You don’t have to understand all the trains and companies and so on. You just need to go to the train that was listed on the instructions.
Not that you explicitly said it, but not all of that big grey blob is Tokyo and much of it is no where near 8 stories average. There is plenty of open space and two story residential neighborhoods in that area - you can see it if you zoom in on google maps. But yeah, your point stands, the greater Tokyo area is huge.
The last time was here, 3300 yen a night (since I stayed for more than 2 days). The room was small but very clean. I’ll probably stay there again the next time I head to Tokyo.
IIRC, the only time I’ve had to pay a single fare for public transit is on the bus in my home city. Everything else–from BART in San Francisco to the Metro in D.C.–has varying fares depending on your origination and destination stations.
It’s just overwhelming at first, that’s all. You’re getting a crap-ton of information thrown at you, without actually getting to experience it at the same time. If I’d had to get myself to my dorm from Narita airport when I first arrived, I think my brain would have just shut down. Fortunately, a Japanese student was there to meet me, and my next train trip a day or two later was guided by another exchange student, who helped me purchase my rail pass and figure out the rest of the ticket situation.
What’s hilarious is that I’m now *less *confused by transit in Tokyo than in any U.S. city I’ve used trains or subways in.
Quoted for truth. I was living so far out I wasn’t even in Tokyo anymore–I was in Kawasaki. But there’s no real division between the cities–just slightly less crowded areas in the middle. My commute between home and campus was about an hour and ten minutes in each direction–if I was lucky. I had to walk to the train station, get on the Odakyuu line at Ikuta, hop the local or the semi-express to the next stop (Mukougaoka-yuuen), transfer to the express, take that all the way to the end of the line at Shinjuku, then transfer to the Chuuo-Sobu local line and take that to Ichigaya, at which point I had a little bit more walking to do to get to campus.
The NYC subway is $2.25 per ride, no matter where you go or how long you stay on, and there are free bus transfers. As long as you don’t exit the turnstyle, you’re still on the one fare.
Hey! It’s a small world. I used to live at Mukougaoka-yuen. I was a student at Senshu University which has a campus there. Took me a long time to remember that name when I first came to Japan.
To the OP:
Seriously, the train system isn’t that hard when you get used to it. Especially now–you’ve got the Jorudan and Hyperdia websites to figure out your route, so just write it down on a piece of paper before you head out. Buy a Suica or Pasmo card (I have Pasmo) and you can use pretty much every train and subway available in the Tokyo area, so you don’t have to worry about figuring out fares. As others have mentioned, a Suica/Pasmo card (basically the same thing, but 2 competing companies) is just a re-loadable card you can use to pay fares. You load it up with cash at the ticket buying machine and off you go. Not only that, but almost all of the fare machines are available in English so buying the pass won’t be any problem. You can also use them to buy stuff at convenience stores, vending machines, and to pay the fare on buses. You’ve got it so easy compared to just a few years ago, before the cards effectively merged and they came into really wide use.
Awesome! I was at 上智大学 (Jouchi Daigaku/Sophia University), thus the stupid commute. (This was back when the FCC had all its classes at the Ichigaya campus, while the main campus was in Yotsuya.) I lived at the 5-Ships women’s dorm (Kanagawa-ken, Kawasaki-shi, Tama-ku).
I actually tutored at an English language school that I want to say was in Mukougaoka-yuuen, too. (Panworld Academy, I think was the name? Not that far from the train station.)
It’s a bit complicated, isn’t it? I just love saying it, which is why I take every opportunity.
Heh, I went to ICU (国際基督教大学) out in Mitaka, but I toured Sophia before deciding which university to go to. (I decided against Sophia as the grounds weren’t as pretty, and they seemed to have the foreign and Japanese students segregated into different sections of the school.)
I also lived in Kawasaki, near the Kawasaki Station – but that was later, when I was working there. That’d be hell trying to go to Mitaka once a day from Kawasaki.
I ended up at Jouchi because they had an exchange program with my university–pretty essential, since I had tuition remission. So I just paid my normal tuition (i.e., nothing) to my home university and then just had to worry about all the other various expenses, both study and travel-related.
The FCC (Faculty of Comparative Culture–a faculty being what would usually be called a college at an American university) used to have all their classes at a satellite campus about a 10-20 minute walk from the main one. (They’ve sinced moved the FCC to the main campus.) Most of the foreign exchange students took classes exclusively at the FCC, because that’s where all the ones conducted in English were, as well as courses on the Japanese language (though those were conducted in Japanese as much as was appropriate for the level of the students). I knew at least one student who took all her classes at the main campus, because she was fluent in Korean (her native language) and Japanese, but spoke almost no English. (Hilarious when she and I would be hanging out with our mutual friend, who spoke Korean and English but no Japanese, because I spoke English and Japanese but no Korean.) However, lots of Japanese students also took these classes; I’d say most of my classes were about 50/50 Japanese/foreign? Except for my Japanese class, obviously.
How was Kawasaki? I’m afraid I neglected it almost completely and spent most of my free time in Tokyo. There was a guy who owned a shop in Harajuku, and we’d mostly hang out there before going to see bands play in tiny venues.
It’s a nice are on the East side of the station. There’s a fancy outdoor mall with a pool hall, a lot of restaurants, and a movie theater. All the people who live in the area are fairly young and hip.
Well, I was working until midnight every day and getting up at 8am.
Being a student in Japan is pretty great. Being an office drone, not so much. You’re better off back in the US (most likely).
