Tokyo

The benchmark. From Haneda, the Tokyo Monorail reaches Hamamatsucho in as little as 13 minutes and Keikyu's fastest trains reach Shinagawa in 11, so a visitor can be on the Yamanote loop before most taxi lines have moved. Once in town, one rechargeable IC card covers JR, the metro and the private railways that fan out into the suburbs, and trains run so often that nobody bothers with a timetable. The day trips are the real reward: Kamakura's temples and beach, Nikko's shrines in the mountains and the Hakone hot-spring loop by train, cable car and boat are all classic outings by rail. The one catch is the last train, which stops well before the bars do.