Japan has roughly half the population of the U.S. packed into an area about the size of California. Unless you live in the country side or have a lot of money to spend on the luxury of a car, you will quickly get familiar with Japan’s various public transportation systems. The average suburban Japanese commutes well over an hour to work. Real estate prices near the center of the city are too high for the average family to afford, making Japan’s superb transpiration system not only convenient but necessary. Japan’s economic boom along with the network of bullet trains (shinkansen, 新干线) has even created a type of “salaryman” (office worker) called transhinfunin (单身赴任). A transhinfunin travels, sometimes up to halfway across the country, on bullet trains to Tokyo, Osaka, or some other big city for the weekdays and returns home to be with the family on the weekends.
The most common forms of public transportation in Japan are trains, subways, and buses. Most trains and subways start running at about 5:00 am and go until 1:00 am. Looking at a map of a train system, especially of Tokyo, can be overwhelming. If you do not reed or write Japanese, the first thing you should do is have someone write the name of your station and line on a piece of paper that you can carry with you at all times until you recognize the characters yourself. Have someone who knows the system take you to all the destinations you may need to go, such as work or school. Learn both the characters and the phonetic pronunciation for any destination station, stations where you may need to make transfers, and the lines you need to use. The names of major stations will probably be written in English, but it is a good idea to memorize the characters anyway.
Here is the detailed information of the Japan transportation:
Ticket of Japan Trains and Subways
Japan Buses
Japan Taxis
Japan Bullet Trains (Shinkansen)
Tips of Japan Transportation