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Comment by taeric | Hacker News Reader

Huge shout out that if you are going to be in Japan, you need one of these cards. I had thought I could just buy a two day pass in Tokyo. Which, you can, but you are almost certainly going to be limited to what routes and lines you can use, then. Which is brutal when you can't tell google maps which card you have.

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The Tokyo Metro Ticket (24h/48h/72h) is very convenient, though. I just looked at the prices and the longest one went from ¥1500 to ¥2000 since November 2025 but I think it's still very valuable, especially if you've never been to Tokyo and want to travel between a lot of places.

JR is better if you go to the countryside of Tokyo but for the city itself Metro is much more convenient, IMO. Perhaps it depends on the station you commute to, though.

When I travel to Tokyo, I usually do at the very least 4 Metro trips per day, and let's say the minimum fare is ¥178,it would come down to ¥712 daily.

Yeah, what bit me was the place we were staying was off a JR line. Oops.

https://japantravel.navitime.com/en/

Allows you to specify up front what passes you have, worked brilliantly on our honeymoon, especially when figuring out which Shinkansen reservations we needed to make.

As a rule, unless you have a very specific itinerary that involves a ton of travel within a single train company's network, passes in Japan are not worth it. This applies to both local subway passes and the sadly nerfed Japan Rail Pass for bullet trains. Even the Seishun 18 (unlimited travel for ¥2000/day, but local JR trains only) ain't what it used to be since they switched to requiring continuous days.

And there are several calculators online where you can punch in your itinerary and it will tell you the best pass to buy, if any.

On my last trip it only made sense to buy a pass for a single ~4 day segment that included two long Shinkansen rides plus an expensive sight-seeing bus.

What happened to buying a single ticket at the station, when you need one? That's what I did when I was in Tokyo, but it was a long time ago

They're still available, but the card is more convenient(phones even more so). Tickets are also now priced slightly higher than card rides.

You can do that, but the card is far more convenient and journeys are cheaper too.

yeah they still have the ticket stations next to the one to refill/buy IC cards. and thanks to the 20/21 Olympics in english now too(not 2 levels of menus deep like many of them used to be) so pretty easy to do

If you're doing any transfers it could get reasonably complicated. SUICA makes those easy, unless you need a recharge to top it up.

tbh if you only stay in Tokyo then the combined Tokyo subway pass (Tokyo Metro and Toei Subway) is the best all around deal, you don't need anything else. ¥2000 for 72 hours

Hard disagree. It doesn't cover JR lines, and with subway fares starting from ¥160 a pop, that's a lot of riding.

If you do 5 Metro journeys per day—which is very reasonable if you're a tourist—at the bare minimum of ¥160 per trip, you would save money by buying the Tokyo Metro Ticket for 72h.

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