00:00:01 John Daub: Good evening everybody. I'm now in Tsukishima Station. This is a station in Tokyo that's very convenient for this episode. In this episode, I'm going to show you how to buy Tokyo subway tickets, kind of explain to you the difference between Metro and Toei. So let's get out of here and go to a vending machine.

00:00:24 John Daub: So in my hand is a one-day pass for Toei. This is for October 9th, today's date. It costs 700 yen. You can see "one day pass." And I'm going to show you where I got this and how you can get it too.

00:00:46 John Daub: Alright, so let's now go to the vending machine. Recently, and I guess this might be because of the 2020 Olympics, there are so many different kinds of vending machines. Check it out. So we got this one. These are the touch ones, the more new ones. This one is for charging your IC card. This one also. And this one is just amazingly big and in English and so inviting.

00:01:15 John Daub: This is a vending machine for subway tickets. It's in 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8 different languages, including Thai. What? I didn't know that. So this is pretty cool. Some of the options on this big one: you can see buy tickets, value tickets which is one-day passes, multiple tickets and other things. You can recharge your IC card—I'm gonna explain what that is and also buy one and I'm gonna show you how to do that. It's pretty cool because they've kind of given it a Halloween theme—you know it's October—and there's a little train going by. Do you see that?

00:01:51 John Daub: Alright, so this is Toei. Toei (都営, city-operated) is one of the two subways. Toei means the city subway line; this is by the city of Tokyo. It's one of two; the other subway is called Metro. Toei only has four lines: the Asakusa Line, Mita Line, Shinjuku Line, and Oedo Line. Prices start at 100 or 180 yen and go up all the way to 370 yen, so it's about three dollars fifty cents for the most expensive ticket. The Oedo Line—you see this Oedo Line—this is just like the Yamanote Line for the subway, so it's kind of good to know.

00:02:33 John Daub: We are right here. I picked this because this is an interchange: Tsukishima, an interchange between Yurakucho Line and the Oedo Line, so we can change to both Toei and Metro here. Let's take a look at the machine. It's pretty self-explanatory. You can see here the prices up here are for the Toei Line, and then if you want to switch to Metro there's a ticket for Metro and tickets for all these other subways—this one is the Keio Line, these are trains, sorry, the Narita Sky Access.

00:03:15 John Daub: Wait a minute, let me go back in here. We can change this menu to English and other languages—really one two three four five six seven eight. Alright, we're gonna pick English. Boom. Now we can kind of see right here these are connecting tickets. So if you originate on the Toei Line and you're gonna change to one of the other lines—whether it's to Metro, Keisei, Keikyu, Hokusou, Keio, or the Narita Sky Access—you would pick one of these. I'm going to switch to the Tokyo Metro Line for example. Now this means that I have to know the price of the ticket. The most expensive tickets 390 yen and then you would pay that price. This would allow you to switch between the two lines. Alright, I'm gonna cancel. Everything is touchscreen now—it's pretty cool.

00:04:07 John Daub: Alright, let's go back into English. This is otoku tickets (得票, value tickets). Value tickets are pretty cool because for Toei—this is only for the Toei company—you can have one-day passes, which is cool. This is what this is right here. This is good for the Toei bus, so you can ride almost all of the buses in Tokyo, the Toei subway—the four lines that I showed you—the Arekawa Line (荒川線, trolley) that's up in the north, and then the Toden Arakawa Line (都電荒川線). So I'd never use that last one. This is pretty convenient. There's some English guidance on the back. You show this to the bus driver and you can get on just about any bus.

00:04:52 John Daub: If you want to get Toei and Metro together, this is also a good one. You can pick this 900 yen one. This 900 yen will give you a ticket that allows you to do both of them. And that's pretty cool, especially if you want to use all of the lines. This is, once again, a map of the entire Toei network, which goes just about everywhere.

00:05:16 John Daub: Now, you can get the one-day ticket either by putting your PASMO, your IC card, or cash in. I'm going to show you right now. This is fun. I'm going to show you what these PASMO cards look like. I keep them in my smartphone case. Alright, check it out right here. This here is Icoca. Icoca is the card for the Osaka area. And I like it because the little blue penguin is pretty cool. This is my wife's Suica card. And this is what most people use in the Tokyo area. And this is my favorite card. This is the Kitaca card. This is for Sapporo in the Hokkaido area. I like it because it's a flying squirrel.

00:06:11 John Daub: They all have a special number, which I probably shouldn't show you. Whoops. But all of these cards look the same on the back. And basically, they can be used anywhere and everywhere. But it's weird because despite all of these different kinds, you can use them everywhere. It's just kind of a regional thing that they put into it.

00:06:38 John Daub: That's the Toei subway machines. This is just Toei. Now this up here is Metro. Metro has a lot more lines. Metro has a ton of lines. The Toei lines are here—you see in the thin ones. And the Metro ones are shown thick, so you can get a contrast between what it's like. I gotta move out in order to show you the entire Metro line. It is really complex. That's why I like Toei. It's really easy. But when you want to change, you gotta go to places like Tsukishima, where you can go to the Yurakucho Line or the Oedo Line. It is complicated. It took me about a year before I could figure it out. But these big machines really help.

00:07:24 John Daub: Now, if you want to buy your own PASMO card, and if you're coming to Japan, I highly recommend that you get a PASMO or a Suica card. Suica is sold by JR, Japan Rail. PASMO is sold by the subway companies. There's no difference. You can use them all in the same place. It just depends on your style. Personally, I like this Osaka card, so I got one in Osaka. This is the menu to purchase it. Before you buy your new Suica or PASMO card, it says "new" up here, you have to put in how much that you want to add in. Every card requires a 500 yen deposit, so you can get that back when you return the card. I always put 5,000 yen on my card.

00:08:15 John Daub: Now it's going to ask me for money. You can put up to 10,000 yen note, which is like $100. But I always put 5,000 yen because you're going to use it a lot. Now after you get this card, you're going to be able to use it anywhere. Some of the machines allow you to write your name on the card. I highly recommend that you write your name and add your phone number into the card because if you ever lose it, you're going to be able to get it back. I've lost my cards and had the police actually contact me and say that they found my card and I was able to get it back, which is awesome. That's why you can kind of type your name. And when you get your new card, it will have the name, which is kind of neat. A lot of people, tourists, don't return the card. They kind of keep it because it's a nice little keepsake. And I kind of encourage that because that means you're probably going to be coming back to Japan if you have one.

00:09:16 John Daub: Now this is the interchange for the Yurakucho Line. So a lot of people who are going to be changing from the Oedo to Yurakucho Line will come to this station and do that. And over here, you have Metro cards. Alright? Now the Metro machines are a lot different. Well, maybe I'm exaggerating a little bit. There's the blue ones, which just do basic function. Oh look, just because I was near it, the sensor turned on the screen. Watch. Look at that. Very cool. And then this one, you can use credit cards, which is pretty cool. Not a lot of the machines use credit cards. I want to say right now that Japan is a cash-based society. It's historically always been that way. So it's always good to have cash. Very rarely you're going to find credit card-taking machines. So do not rely on your credit card to buy tickets. Have enough cash.

00:10:20 John Daub: Alright, this is kind of an older Metro machine. Here's the ticket. We say ticket is kippu (切符). This is charge, so you can charge your IC card. This return. And this is, you can get a ticket for many, many times. These down here, you can get 10 tickets for 170 yen. You'll get like a book of tickets. And some people like to have the books of tickets. And then there's weekend tickets. But you don't have to struggle with Japanese anymore. You can just push international languages and pick one of eight languages, which is so cool.

00:11:03 John Daub: Value tickets are the day passes. Alright. So what I like about Metro. I'm going to show you over here. Hey guys. So this is a one-day special pass for Toei only. This costs 500 yen. And you can use those four subways unlimited. It's very cool. And it's super cheap. It's like $4.50. They only have these on the weekends and during the holiday seasons. And right now it's during autumn. That was special. I got this one last week, like early on the 22nd.

00:11:47 John Daub: This one is the run-of-the-mill Tokyo Metro 24-hour pass. Do you see this? I like Metro's passes better because they're 24 hours. So that means if you buy it on the 24th, if I bought one today on the 9th of October, I can use it till the 10th of October just for 24 hours. So the Metro one is different. Toei does not have these 24-hour passes. Toei's pass is just one day. That means it expires at midnight or whenever the last train is depending on your area. So be careful on that. Metro 24 hours. Toei one day. Toei is sometimes a little bit cheaper sometimes.

00:12:48 John Daub: If you have any questions about this, leave a comment below and I will get to you. If you kind of like this type of guide episodes, click the like button because that encourages me to do more like this. Now the Metro up here is an extensive network. Ginza, Marunouchi, Hibiya, Tozai, Chiyoda, Yurakucho, Hanzomon, Namboku, Fukutoshin. Fukutoshin is the newest line. So we got nine lines on Tokyo Metro. So Metro, if you're on a Metro line, it actually is pretty cool to get one of the one-day passes. And you're going to be able to get back to your hotel by Metro. If you're on the Toei line with your hotel, just get a Toei one-day pass because then you got the bus network. It's kind of a trade-off. And if you're going to be using both and you know it, then get the Toei and the Metro pass.

00:13:54 John Daub: You want to go into the value tickets. Otoku ticket. Now let's go into English just so I can show you that again. Value tickets. Tokyo Metro and Toei subway. This is a combination ticket. Now, one more ticket that I never ever buy because you've got to be insane to buy this one. This is the Tokyo combination ticket. This includes all of the JR lines, but not Shinkansen. This is only central Tokyo, like the Yamanote Line and stuff. You can get everywhere with just Metro. You can get everywhere with just Toei. You put them together—this includes everything. You never really need to do this, but if you do get this, it's going to cost you like $15.

00:14:35 John Daub: You can purchase the ticket. Wow. What is this? Please check the amount of your purchase. One yen, five yen. What? I guess you can get this on the 10th that activates. Oh, so you can buy the ticket on the day that you want to use it. You don't have to buy a ticket right now. You know what? I'm never—I don't know who would do that. When you get a ticket, you want to get the ticket for right now, use right now. I highly recommend this 24-hour ticket. This is the best deal of them all. If you're ever going to ride the bus, just get the Toei ticket. And if you're going to do both of them, this pays for itself. After the first ride, it's 300 yen more and you got access to everything.

00:15:23 John Daub: Now this is a little bit of a shortcut. Sometimes I'm in a rush and I have three friends with me. When that happens, you can go here and manually push in. Otona (大人) means adult. You can put in three adults and the ticket when you buy the ticket. Check it out. I need a 100 yen ticket and I'm going to push three adults and it automatically says 300 yen. It's kind of a shortcut. It's pretty cool. I like to do that just if you have one adult and two kids and you push that, the price changes. Two adults and a child—it gives you the correct price. Just the child—it's half price. But when you go through with a child's ticket, you're going to get a discount. It's a child's ticket. It'll go peepong. It'll give a little light on it to indicate to the staff that a child just went through. So don't try to do this to save money. You will get busted. But I mean, it's 100 yen. It's not worth it.

00:16:28 John Daub: Pretty cool, huh? I love to play with these vending machines here in Tokyo. The ticket vending machines are very useful. Oh, here's one with the credit cards. And by the way, thank you guys so much for the super chat. Thanks for buying me a drink. This is from Sally. I appreciate that very much. And Big Big Five writes in, do you think Japan will change from being cash only to card? No. In a way, yes. But to be honest with you, I don't think that Japan's going to entirely go cashless. It's just about the paper. If you've ever gotten some cookies, you notice that they like to wrap everything in paper. It's a paper culture. That means it's a cash culture.

00:17:17 John Daub: When I first came to Japan 20 years ago, I met an old guy. He was in the middle of summer. And in his gym bag sleeve, he had about the equivalent of 10,000 US dollars rolled up. And he was just walking around. Not in a wallet. And I asked him if this was normal. And he said yeah. And then I talked to other people and the old timers would actually carry a lot of cash on them. And you never really got robberies. So it was something cultural. That's one of the reasons why Japan is so safe. You're not going to get mugged.

00:18:04 John Daub: But the one thing that might change everything is these IC cards. This is the Kitaca, the Hokkaido one for those joining us. The IC cards are kind of changing the way we see money in Japan. These are all electronic. But you just charge this. But in order to charge this, you gotta charge it with cash. So that's a trade-off. Or you can go to one of these machines. These are the rare ones. You do not see these pink ones in many places. And they may not even exist. So do not count on these ever because they're very hard to find. Credit cards shown on the right can only be used when purchasing a commuter pass. Even though it says credit cards, there are some restrictions. Just have the cash on you. It takes ¥1,000, ¥2,000, ¥5,000 and ¥10,000 notes.

00:19:04 John Daub: In fact, I'm going to buy one for you. I'm just going to buy a ticket. This is a live demonstration of how to buy a ticket, just for fun. Alright, here we go guys. Kippu means ticket. I just want a 170 yen ticket. This is for the Toei. You can see that there, so 170. Here's 170. If you want an official receipt for business to get the money back, you're gonna push that button and it'll give you a receipt. There's a ticket from Tsukishima, where I am, on the Metro, and it's 170 yen. For 170 yen, you're gonna be able to go to any of these destinations that say 170 yen. So I cannot go to Azabujuban. I'll have to pay an extra 30 yen.

00:20:40 John Daub: Is this useful? So I'm gonna go back now to the Toei Line. This is the Yurakucho Line you can see here. This is the Yurakucho Line, and this is the Ginza Line. This is why I came here, because you got the best of both worlds. So now I'm gonna take you back to the Oedo Line.

00:21:12 John Daub: This is a new phenomenon. They have put ATM machines inside of the station. And the great thing about it is this one is the 7-Eleven machine. It will take foreign cards. So if you need cash, you can come to this ATM, and it will take international cards. It's in English as well. Overseas cards. It's 24 hours. You can select your language, put in your card. You can get up to $1,000 out of this machine. 7-Eleven is by far the best for getting cash on international cards. If you want to get tickets, you're gonna need to get some cash out. Once again, if you do get an IC card, do it at the airport. And then when you do, I recommend you put at least 5,000 yen on it. And if you want to get your money back, you can do that when you leave at the airport. There's a booth where you can get the unused portion back on it.

00:22:25 John Daub: So there you go. There's an IC card that you can use if you have a coupon or something. And you can also scan IC cards here. It's a pretty cool system. You can also use credit cards and if you do, you can put in your password number. So you guys got it? Metro—this is Metro. And this is Toei. These are the symbols for the two subway companies. Metro has nine lines. Toei has four. Metro has a 24-hour pass that's good for 24 hours, like from the time you buy it till tomorrow. Toei has a one-day pass that's good just until midnight. But you can ride on all of the buses. Those are the two. That's a summary. Welcome to the Tokyo subway system. It's confusing. But if you keep using it, it's not that bad.

00:23:33 John Daub: Do you have any questions? I'm not giving you my PIN number. Alright. I'm going to show you one last thing. I'm going to take you down now because I got to go home. So I'm going to take you downstairs and show you one last thing. And it's not in the restroom. Oh, greetings from Norway. Here in America, people complain if the signs are in multiple languages and not just in English. The thing with Japanese is that it's not really in Roman letters. So that doesn't help unless you're from China—you can't really understand these symbols. This is also recent where they put E for Oedo Line and they put letters to correspond to the line. S is for Shinjuku. G is for Ginza. M is for Marunouchi. So you can kind of understand by looking at just the letter. And then they'll put the number. The number corresponds to the station like Shin-egota. Shin-egota is number E34. It makes it easier if you can't say Shin-egota. Or Nerima, for example—if you can't say Nerima, you can just say E35 and that'll help you. Or Toshimaen—Toshimaen is E36. And this is on the Oedo Line. Nakano Broadway is not too far away from there. And Shinjuku's got a lot of interchanges there.

00:25:44 John Daub: Now this is the secret information I'm gonna show you. Always in the subway you're gonna find one of these boards. This is a norikae board (乗り換え, transfer board). But the secret is—and this is when you start riding the subway like a local—this is Tsukishima. And this is the subway train. If you get into car number 3, you're gonna have stairs and the bathroom and wheelchair access. There's a little elevator that goes up. You wanna be on car number 3. If you get into car number 5, you'll have only elevator access but you'll get up to the restroom. And then if you get into car number 7, there's stairs and an escalator. So when I wanna come to Tsukishima, if I wanna get off in Tsukishima, I'll get onto car number 3 so I can take the steps really fast and get out of the station and I don't have to walk around the station very long. If you're going to Shimbashi station, you wanna be in car number 1 so you can come here and then you're gonna walk around to car number 1. You're gonna wanna go to car number 1. And then when you get to the station, it's gonna be very easy for you to get to JR. So look at this board and you can find out which car you should get into. The Oedo Line only has 8 cars. That makes it very easy. Also on the left side will tell you how many minutes it takes to get there. This is constant on every single subway line. The system is very well set up. You can also see the next train is listed up here. It also flashes in English. That's going to Hikarigaoka at 11:37. This one is going towards Tochomae at 11:43. That's that train right there. So the system is pretty easy to figure out. It took me though about a year before I was comfortable doing all the changes at every single stop. And you just got to use it every day. When you use it, it just kind of sticks.

00:28:02 John Daub: We're getting close to the last. So I'm just going to end this live stream and then say goodbye. I hope this has been a useful guide for everybody. Oh, and another thing with using these one-day passes, if you got to use the restroom and you can't find one, you can just go in. You can just go in to use the restroom with a pass and just freely go in and out of the stations just like that.

00:28:40 John Daub: If you ever get a ticket and you don't have enough money—you bought, let's say, a 170 yen ticket, but you went to the 200 yen zone—there's a fare adjustment. These are at every single station. You'll go up to here. It's got a sensor. The screen should go on. It only has English. It makes an annoying English announcement to embarrass you. All fares will be displayed in English. Put your ticket in here. Put it in here. I know it looks like it's made for a credit card, but put your little teeny ticket in there and it will tell you how much you owe on this screen. It'll say 50 yen. Then put your 50 yen in here and a new ticket will come out right here. And then with this new ticket, you can get out. Or you just get a one-day pass and you could do it like this. Boom. Make sense?

00:29:46 John Daub: Tokyo is just massive, and you're going to want to look at the subway map and kind of get your bearings. I used to live out there in a place called Shin-sakuragaoka and you can all see how far away it is now. But now I live down in Chuo-ku. It's pretty nice to be down here. That's the scope of Tokyo. It's good to know the subway maps a little bit before you come. And I hope this was useful. This is a non-JR live stream. So if you're gonna be using the Yamanote Line, you're gonna have to use the JR lines. In another live stream, I'm gonna show you what it's like to use the JR lines. It's not that much different really. I don't like JR because it's a little bit more complicated. JR is a little bit more complicated because the system, I don't know, it's just for me harder. You don't really have to know the time schedules. The last train is usually around midnight for everywhere. And JR it's around 1 a.m. And the trains start up again at 5, around 5:15 a.m. And yeah, for about those 5 hours it's closed and you just gotta take a taxi after that or you're kind of out of luck. Yeah, that's happened to me a couple of times.

00:31:09 John Daub: But there's not too much about the subway that you really need to know. Find out which car that you need to get into. Make sure you have the proper fare. If you don't, make sure you have cash so you can get out. And then use the fare adjustments to fix the fare. You'll get a new ticket that you can get out. It's better to have an IC card. If you get an IC card, you have to pay a 500 yen deposit. But when you get it, I recommend putting at least 5,000 yen on it because you don't want to keep charging it. You can use the IC card at the convenience stores to get drinks as well as taxi cabs. If you want to take a taxi, you can use your IC card to also pay for those. So it's very useful to have. If Japan moves away from a cash society, it might be more with IC cards, but people still carry a lot of cash on them. 5,000 yen is what I always put. You're tempted to put 1,000 yen—always put 5,000 yen because you're going to go through it really quickly.

00:32:06 John Daub: But the last thing I want to say is these one-day passes pay for themselves. If I ride this three times, it's paid for itself. So don't be afraid to go into the special value tickets and try a one-day pass, 24 hours. Metro 600 yen, Toei 700 yen. This includes the buses. And they're available on any vending machine. So there you have it. Hope this is useful. And if you have a comment, leave it down in the comments below. Click the like button if you like these kind of videos. I'm going to be going home because I'm getting close to my last train. So have a good day, good night. Take a look at the Metro vending machines. I'll see you guys in the next live stream. Bye. Thanks Samantha. See you later.