Regardless if you are a veteran visitor to Tokyo headed from your favourite Tokyo hotel to a restaurant of your choice, or a first-time traveller just arriving at the airport and looking to book one of the many Tokyo hotel rooms available throughout the city, there are a variety of transportation routes available depending upon where you need to go and how quickly you need to get there. The most popular form of transportation are the various trains and metro lines that crawl throughout the city and suburbs, but the problem with the trains and metro is that they can be extremely confusing for first time visitors, not to mention the waiting times during rush-hour traffic can be somewhat daunting if you are needing to get from one place to another reasonably quickly. In these cases you can rely on the tried and true method of taxis. And considering the fact that trains shut down late at night, sometimes taxis are the only way to go from one point to another. Unfortunately, they are also one of the most expensive means of transportation throughout Tokyo, so a ride from a late-night bar to your Tokyo hotel could end up costing you significantly more than what a train or metro may have cost. Fares generally start at 710 yen and go up from there, with a 20% surcharge tacked on from 10 p.m. until 5 a.m. every day, regardless of whether you are heading from Tokyo hotels to clubs or vice versa. A good example to use is the typical daytime trip from Tokyo station to Shinjuku station, which costs around 3,000 yen, while a trip from Tokyo station to Haneda Airport will cost around 6,200-6,500 yen. Keep in mind that your actual fare may vary in relation to the estimated depending on time of day or night as well as traffic conditions or road construction.

One of the most important rules of thumb to keep in mind when you are travelling from your Tokyo hotel to various destinations in the city is taxi drivers generally do not speak English, and outside of the well-known locations and main Tokyo hotels will not know where you are talking about if you use English. Thankfully, GPS is beginning to become the norm for taxis in Tokyo, so if in doubt simply provide a map with the location you are looking for plainly marked, and point it out to the taxi driver. Hotels will always provide a map, and you can pick up business cards with addresses printed on them to hand to the taxi driver if necessary. However, many streets in Japan are unmarked, and if your taxi driver happens to be one of the few without GPS they may not be able to do anymore than actually drop you off in the general vicinity of where you are headed. Tips are not expected, although if you feel that your driver did a particularly good job getting from point A to point B you can always be a nice foreigner and leave one.