How to Buy Metro and Train Tickets in Tokyo

How to Buy Tickets

Paper Tickets Are Not Necessary

Buying paper tickets is strongly discouraged nowadays. On one hand, it’s not very straightforward, as we’ll see, to purchase a new ticket each time you want to take the subway, and it also wastes precious time. Fortunately, for many years now, there have been more convenient alternatives that almost everyone uses in Tokyo, namely:

• Using a prepaid SUICA or PASMO card. If you have a prepaid card, there’s no need to buy a ticket. Just keep the card loaded with enough money and go directly to the turnstiles. Once you reach your destination, you’ll pass the card again at the exit turnstiles, and the amount corresponding to the distance traveled will be deducted. Click here for more information on how to obtain and use SUICA, PASMO, and similar prepaid cards. We always recommend getting a prepaid card as soon as you arrive at the airport because it will be very useful in Tokyo and throughout the rest of the country. Prepaid cards work throughout Japan for any type of public transportation, with very few exceptions.
• Using one of the available daily passes, which allow unlimited use of Tokyo’s public transport for 24, 48, or 72 hours, depending on the pass purchased. However, it’s not always economical to buy this type of pass, which is also not valid on every line in the city because Tokyo has many different companies managing public transport. It’s advisable to take a look at our guide to Tokyo subway daily passes.

How to Buy a Paper Ticket

It’s good to know how paper tickets work for any unforeseen circumstances. For instance, you might realize you’ve lost your prepaid card while exploring Tokyo. Paper tickets can be purchased from vending machines, where the initial screen always offers English and sometimes Chinese and Korean languages. To purchase the correct ticket, you need to select the fare you want to buy, not the destination station. To buy the correct ticket, you need to know the fare for the distance you intend to travel. Here’s how to find out the correct fare:

• Above the vending machines, there is usually a large map of the entire subway or railway network of that transport company. Under each station, you’ll find a number indicating the cost to reach that station from your current station. These maps are not always available in English and are often written only in Japanese characters, which can be difficult for a foreigner to decipher.
• If you have internet access, you can check (even in advance at your hotel if needed) the fare for the route using one of the many online services like Hyperdia or Google Maps.
• If you have no idea of the fare to pay, you can purchase a ticket at the minimum available fare, and then, once you reach your destination, use a fare-adjustment machine to pay any additional cost. These machines are located next to the exit turnstiles at any station. They are used when you have a wrong ticket (with a lower fare than needed to leave the station) or when you don’t have enough money on your prepaid card. With this machine, you can recharge your card with new funds or pay the difference between the fare required and the fare of the paper ticket you have.

How Much the Tokyo Subway Costs

As we have extensively explained, Tokyo subway fares, and more generally all public transportation in Japan, including metro, trams, trains, and buses, vary depending on the distance traveled. For brevity, here are the fares for the three main operators: Tokyo Metro, Toei Metro, and JR. The distances are the actual kilometers traveled by the train, not the straight-line distance.

Guided tours, activities and other things to do

If you are planning a trip to Japan and you want to do something more than just visiting famous places and monuments, we suggest you to use Rakuten Travel Experiences.

How to use Rakuten Travel Experiences

Rakuten Travel is a very useful website to enrich your travel experience, especially if you are going solo or it's your first time in Japan.
Because of the language barrier (and more), in Japan it is very difficult to interact with the locals and to get off the tourist track.
Thanks to Rakuten Travel you can find a lot of interesting and sometimes unique guided tours and activities all over Japan (and not only in Japan), that you would otherwise never be able to enjoy.
But there's more: on Rakuten Travel you can also buy tickets for several famous attractions, events, transportation and other useful services for tourists. Last but not least, you can reserve a table in hundreds of restaurants.

Some examples

• You can buy tickets in advance to visit some very popular attractions and skip the queue at the ticket office, such as the Tokyo Tower, the Tokyo Sky Tree, Tokyo Disneyland or Universal Studios Osaka
• You can book unique and funny tours and activities, like driving around Tokyo or Osaka on a go-kart dressed as Super Mario, or dueling with real Sumo Wrestlers
• You can learn about traditional Japan, for example by joining a tea ceremony in Kyoto or by attending a crash course on Japanese Calligraphy
• You can reserve your table in a lot of cafes and restaurants, for example one of the legendary 3-star Michelin restaurants in Japan, or crazy cafes like a unique Owl Cafe in Tokyo or one of the many and nowadays worldwide famous maid cafes
• ...

Take a look at Rakuten Travel Experiences

You may also be interested in