Tokyo is the nerve centre of railways in Japan, highspeed Shinkansen services arrives at Tokyo Station (東京駅 Tōkyō-eki) which is located in the Chiyoda ward. For all trains on the northen route, you can get of at Ueno, while trains on the western route calls at Shinagawa. Most non-Shinkansen services usually stops at Shibuya and Shinjuku stations as well. Ueno and Ikebukuro stations connect you to the northern suburbs and neighboring prefectures.
On the western route there are departures every 10-15 minutes from Kyoto and Osaka with two types of shinkansen trains, Nozomi is the fastest cutting the journey time down to 2:20 hours while the slightly slower Hikari trains adds an extra twenty minutes.
The northen route connects with Aomori, Fukushima and Sendai, the fastest services are with the Hayabusa and Hayate trains.
Altough Japan is dominated by fast shinkansen trains there are still a few sleeper trains left. Sunrise Izumo (サンライズ出雲) runs daily to Tokyo from Izumo while Sunrise Seto (サンライズ瀬戸) connects with Takamatsu, the largest city on the Shikoku island. Also, the luxurious Cassiopeia (カシオペア) overnight train offers an direct route from the northen city of Sapporo three times a week. Fares starts at ¥27,000 with a journey time of 16½ hours. For those on a smaller budget, the Hokutosei (北斗星) leavs daily and has a more reasonable price of just over ¥9,000. Notice that the both trains from Sapporo arrives in Ueno.
The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about Tokyo
Where To Stay & Best Hotels in Tokyo - updated Apr 2024
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Tokyo Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.
