Every night in Tokyo, workers and partiers race for the last train to avoid an expensive taxi ride home or an overnight hotel stay. With that chronic problem in mind, Tokyo Gov. Naoki Inose suggested he might allow some bus routes to run 24 hours a day and possibly extend the hours of operation for subways.
That change seems a reasonable one that fits the present trends of Tokyo life, but may present burdens in terms of electricity usage and other issues.
Tokyo is as dynamic and exciting city as any in the world, except between the last train at 1 a.m. and the first train around 5 a.m. Tokyoites form the largest population of any city in the world, and perhaps depend more than any other city on the city's subways, trains and buses to live, work and play.