Tokyo, by Train, with Children

Tokyo with kids is not a walking city in the way a harbor is. It is a sequence of gates. We bought Welcome Suica cards before we left the airport and treated the rest of the week as tap in, tap out. Each person who pays a fare needs a card. Children under six ride with a paying adult. Our eight-year-old had a child card, set up with a station attendant who was more patient than the English on the machine.

The Yamanote line is the loop we could understand without a lecture. Green JR trains, mostly above ground, a circle of the neighborhoods we already knew by name: Tokyo, Shibuya, Shinjuku, Ueno. Google Maps told us the platform and whether we wanted the inner or outer loop. We still boarded the long way once. It cost twenty minutes and earned a story the kids retell. Station numbers — a letter for the line, then a number — saved us when the kanji did not. We looked for the color of the line first and the name second.

Tokyo Station is the transfer we now budget half an hour for, even when the map says five minutes. Elevators exist, and they are not always beside the escalator you can see. A stroller, a suitcase we should have forwarded, and a bathroom stop turned one change of trains into a small expedition. After that we showed staff a screenshot of the route instead of trying to pronounce the platform.

Rush hour is not a test of character. Around 7:30 to 9:30 in the morning, and again after five, we waited for the next train if the car looked full. Strollers can stay open. We stood at the end of the car, near the multi-purpose space. Breakfast was onigiri and milk from a convenience store, eaten on a platform bench. The trains are clean, timed, and ordinary to everyone else on them. That ordinary part is the part worth planning a family trip around.