I got myself a Suica card yesterday. Currently the Suica cards are used as passes for JR railways in Tokyo. The Suica card system will eventually be installed in many stores in the stations to pay for various goods/services. Docomo iMode phones will support this system by the end of the year "Docomo Suica". Instead of having an IC card, the technology will be inside the keitais. The technology behind Suica is by Sony and is called Felica. Hong Kong's rail/subway/taxi systems also use the Felica technology.
Here are the multiple ways of paying for the JR fares:
- Buy a ticket from a machine. Usually you would look at the rail map above the machines to see where you want to go to check the price.
- Get a Teiki, which is a prepaid fixed destination pass (i.e. Teiki between Ogikubo and Yotsuya, you can get on and off anywhere between these points as many times as you want). (1st photo of the light green pass)
- IO Cards are prepaid passes, but unlike Teiki the destinations aren't fixed. The fares are the same as buying tickets except the advantage is you don't have to buy tickets everytime you want to go somewhere. (2nd photo)
- Suica cards! This is an IC card that can function as both a Teiki and IO. When you travel between your usual set route it knows not to subtract any amount, but when you need to go somewhere else it'll automatically subtract from the IO prepaid amount. (3rd photo)
(click to see larger photos)
  
Here's a video taken today of how fast the Suica card is:
- Suica (Windows Media 240x180 stream from Playstream)
Some links to Suica info:
1:17:15 AM 
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