My Tokyo hotel was in the Ueno area of the city. It was a walk of several minutes to beautiful Ueno Park, which is home to several prestigious museums, a zoological garden, Shinobazu Pond, the surface of which is completely covered in lotus plants, lovely tree-lined paths, and what seems to be obligatory in Japan’s public parks, at least one Buddhist pagoda and a small Shinto shrine.
To get to the park from my hotel, I walked through Ueno Station, a huge public transportation hub where more than a dozen subway and rail lines serving various parts of metro Tokyo come together allowing transfers. Tokyo has an extensive municipal metro/subway system that I assume is publicly owned; several lines serve Ueno. In addition to operating the inter-city Shinkansen (bullet trains) and other long distances trains, Japan Rail also operates urban commuter rail systems, and some of its Tokyo lines pass through Ueno. JR consists of a complicated mix of regional companies, some government entities, others privately owned. Don’t ask me to explain how this works, because I have no clue. Finally, several other commuter rail lines that serve Tokyo run into Ueno Station, and I assume these are privately owned.
The sheer size of Tokyo makes dealing with public transportation in the city daunting, and figuring out how to get from point A to point B can be more than a little confusing to a visitor. If you need convincing, search “Tokyo subway map” online and take a look what comes up. The good news: larger stations have information desks staffed with people who will point you in the right direction to get a train to your destination. Even better news: You can pay modest fares to get virtually anywhere in metro Tokyo on surface or underground trains. Trains run frequently (during the day and into the evening, I never waited more than 3 or 4 minutes, usually less), service is reliable (I experienced one brief delay, 2 or 3 minutes, during two weeks loaded with multiple trips on public rail in Japan), train cars are clean and well-maintained, and while crowded at times, the crowds compare favorably to crowds I have experienced on metro systems elsewhere in the world. If you are an American reading this and are not wondering why passenger rail service of all kinds in the United States is so pathetically bad, you should be.
I joined a couple of Japan travel groups on Facebook to help me plan my trip. Some of the more amusing threads featured questions about how to use public transportation in Tokyo and which of the various pass cards for tourists is best. These cards, of which there appear to be two primary competitors amidst a larger field, allow users access to trains in Tokyo (and in some cases, elsewhere in Japan) by swiping the card to get through turnstiles, avoiding having to buy individual tickets for each ride. You put a certain amount of money into the card, and can top up the card as needed. The two primary cards offer similar if not quite identical services and at least one, maybe both, can be used to buy goods and services other than rail travel, not unlike Hong Kong’s Octopus Card, if you happen to know it. There are various rules about returning the cards to recoup any unspent money that remains in the card. The amount of angst many people had about which of the two cards to buy, and which would cost more or less money produced comment threads that were downright hilarious in some cases. Here you had people who were spending considerable amounts of money for air travel and accommodations working themselves into an absolute lather about whether card A or card B would save them a bit of money during a 10 day stay in Japan. Pro tip: Think big picture, a few bucks more or less is not going to matter. Take a deep breath. Relax.
I quickly gave up on trying figure out either of the two top-up cards, and for roughly $10 purchased a 72 hour Tokyo Metro pass with unlimited rides on the municipal system. Tokyo subways took me everywhere I wanted to go in Tokyo, or perhaps more precisely, everywhere I had time to visit during a brief stay. In a couple of cases, I could have gotten off a bit closer to my destination if I had had a card that allowed me to take more than just Metro trains. I survived to tell the tale and there was zero angst attached to the decision to buy the Metro 72 hour pass. For the record, I also saved money going this route. The $10 card offers 72 hours of unlimited rides for that price; the top-up cards charge “retail” price for each ticket, you just don’t have to stop to buy a ticket each trip. So, there.
The area around the Ueno station is packed with restaurants, from ramen shops to fine dining, and there is plenty of shopping as well, if you are so inclined. All in all, unbeknownst to me when I booked the hotel using Agoda, the Ueno area was a great choice of location for my five day visit to Tokyo.
The image is taken from the shore of Shinobazu Pond; the lotus plants that cover the surface of the pond are barely visible in the bottom left foreground of the image. See below for a better look at the pond. The traditional building is a reconstruction of a 17th century Buddhist pagoda. It is mid-morning of my third day in Tokyo and the sunshine on the three high-rise buildings suggested to me that the showers and clouds were ready to give way to sunny autumn weather. It turned out that assessment was overly optimistic. But more on that later.
