How to ride a bus in Tokyo
Tokyo's buses are easy once you know four things. None of them are written in English on the bus.
Paying
Inside the 23 wards, board at the front door and pay as you get on. The fare is flat, so it does not matter how far you go: on a Toei bus it is 210 yen for adults, 110 in cash or 105 with an IC card for children. Tap your Suica or PASMO on the reader, or drop the coins in. Then get off through the middle or rear door, with nothing left to pay.
The farebox takes coins and 1,000 yen notes only. It will change a 1,000 yen note for you, but nothing larger.
Outside the 23 wards it is the other way round. In the Tama area you board at the rear door, take a small numbered ticket (or tap your IC card), and pay when you get off — the fare depends on how far you rode. Same city, opposite rules. If the door that opens is the back one, you are in distance-fare territory.
The route number is a symbol, not a word
The sign above the windscreen says things like 都01 or 東42-1. It is not in English and it does not need to be. Do not try to read it — treat it as a shape. Find the same shape on the bus stop sign and get on. That is most of the trick, and it is why this site never translates route names either.
Stop names are spelled out, not translated
Bus stop names are romanised rather than translated, so 二中前 is Nichu Mae and not "Second Junior High School", and 木場公園 is Kiba Koen and not "Kiba Park". That is deliberate: what you read matches what you hear.
Do not count on an English announcement inside the bus. Some routes have one and many do not. Learn the romaji of your stop before you board, and watch the display above the door — the next stop appears there in both scripts.
Getting off
Press one of the buttons on the poles and walls when your stop is announced. Someone else has usually pressed it already. If nobody does, the bus goes straight past.
The day pass
The Toei one-day pass is 500 yen for adults and 250 for children, valid on Toei buses inside the 23 wards. At 210 yen a ride it pays for itself on the third one, and after that, stopping somewhere costs you nothing but the minutes.
Why bother
Because the trains run underground and radially. Reaching the neighbourhood beside you often means riding into the centre, changing, and riding back out, looking at a tunnel wall the whole way. On a bus you see the street you are travelling along. For a lot of people that is most of what they came for.
When to take the train instead
If you are late, take the train. If it is raining hard, take the train. If you are crossing more than about eight kilometres, take the train. Buses win on short and medium trips, and on days with some slack in them.