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Local busesLocal buses can be somewhat harder to use than trains because the names of the stops may be written only in Japanese. With some buses, you get on at the front, pay a fixed fare, and get off at the rear. With others, you get on at the rear, take a ticket from the machine, and pay the appropriate amount for your journey when you get off at the front. If you do not have the exact money, you can usually change 1000 yen notes in the machine next to the driver. Buses and trams usually have a range of passes and “multiple-trip tickets”, as with trains. You can now use Pasmo/Suica cards on most buses in the Tokyo area. Inter-city (kosoku) busesTrains in Japan are fast and convenient, but they can be expensive. Highway buses, known as kosoku buses, are a much cheaper alternative. Usually, a bus ticket is less than half the price of a train ticket, depending on how many seats there are on the bus and your time of travel. The buses have reclining seats and are usually equipped with a toilet. Most of the long-distance routes have an overnight service, so you can save on one night’s stay at a hotel by catching a bus. If you’re travelling during the day, you might want to consider choosing a bus with two floors so you can enjoy the view from the second floor. Recently some bus companies have started premium services with seats that recline to an almost-flat position and individual flat-panel TVs. Only four of these seats take up the entire first floor of the bus, so it is quite roomy. These business-class type seats are more expensive than standard seats, but not as expensive as you might expect: for example, they are advertized at around 20,000 yen for an overnight Tokyo–Osaka return ticket.
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