About the Author
Cassia
Seven-plus years in Japan. I work in Tokyo and live in southern Saitama, which means I spend a lot of my life on commuter trains. My working language is Japanese.
I plan and report the content on Get Around Japan. The basic rule is that if I can go check something myself, I go check it. Which button on the ticket machine, whether a 28-inch suitcase actually fits in the large coin locker, how many minutes the transfer really takes, what time that counter closes — I try to press the buttons, walk the route, and time it myself. Same with photos: where I can shoot them myself, I do.
Japanese is my working language, so when a rule isn’t clear I can just ask the station staff or the shop staff, and I can read the notices and fine print that only exist in Japanese. A lot of genuinely useful information never gets translated. That’s probably where I’m most useful to you.
I try to be specific about when I checked. Fares and opening hours change, so rather than pretend information stays true forever, I’ll tell you it was confirmed in August 2026. I also write down what doesn’t work — which ticket machine won’t switch to English, which card won’t get you through which gate. Knowing what doesn’t work usually saves more time than knowing what does.
I arrived here as a foreigner myself — my first language is Chinese — so most of what I flag as worth watching out for, I got wrong at least once first.
Places I’ve been: Hokkaido and Sendai in the north, all seven prefectures of the greater Tokyo area, then west through Shizuoka, Nagoya and Kanazawa, on to Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe, and as far south as Fukuoka. That said, my work and life are both in the Tokyo area now, so the places I can keep going back to and re-checking are Tokyo and Saitama. For other regions, if I haven’t been recently, I’ll say the information comes from official sources.
——
Get Around Japan is run by CDJapan Rental, which provides pocket Wi-Fi and eSIM for travel in Japan. That doesn’t change what I recommend — if something works better for you, I’ll say so even when it has nothing to do with our products.
If you find something out of date — a fare change, a shop that’s closed, a rule that’s been revised — please let me know at 【contact】.
