Ride a tram that shares the street with cars
Japan's trams, or streetcars, run down the middle of ordinary streets and stop at small platforms among shops and homes, so the ride shows you a city at street level. Buy a one-day pass, get off wherever something catches your eye, walk a little, and catch the next tram. Apart from the line in Tokyo, these are in cities you would visit on a longer trip, such as Hiroshima, Nagasaki or Hakodate.
The starting point of the Toden Arakawa Line, also called the Tokyo Sakura Tram, the last of the streetcar lines that once ran all over Tokyo. The tram runs from here to Waseda past old shopping streets and rows of low houses. The stop is a short walk from Minowa Station on the Hibiya subway line.
The tram stop of Hiroden, one of Japan's largest tram networks, on the second floor of the Hiroshima Station building. Without changing, you can ride to the Atomic Bomb Dome in about 15 minutes, or take the long line out to Miyajimaguchi, the port for the ferry to Miyajima island. On city lines you board at the back and pay at the front as you get off.
Nagasaki's small streetcars run through a hilly port city long shaped by trade with China and the Netherlands. From the station, the trams take you near Chinatown, the stone Spectacles Bridge and Glover Garden, a hillside of old Western houses, each a short walk from a stop. The fare is the same however far you ride.
Hakodate's trams run from the station through the port town, between slopes that lead down to the harbor. Ride a few stops to Jujigai for the old foreign quarter, where churches stand along the slopes, or the other way to Yunokawa Onsen at the end of the line, a hot spring area where some hotels let you use their baths for the day. Hakodate is in Hokkaido, so it fits a trip to the north.
The end of the line in Matsuyama, a station built in the style of an old Western-style depot, a few minutes' walk from Dogo Onsen Honkan, one of Japan's oldest public bathhouses. On the way the trams pass near Matsuyama Castle, so you can ride from the city center to the hot springs. From JR Matsuyama Station it takes about 25 minutes.
Toyama's trams stop right under the station's elevated tracks, where the lines running north and south meet, so you can ride straight through the city. A loop line circles the center in about half an hour, so you can get off at any stop that looks good and catch the next tram around. Toyama is about 2 hours from Tokyo by bullet train.