I live in western Tokyo. I've spent decades of my life in Japan, mostly in Tokyo. I've never owned a car nor felt the need to do so. In all that time, without exception, no matter where I was, if I needed a taxi, I only needed to stand somwehre and wait. Most of the time, it was just a matter of a couple of minutes at most before one came along.
Today, I took my 22-year old cat to the vet and was able to call for one which arrived after only five minutes, and it cost much more than I remember cabs costing. But after the appointment, I tried to call the same company and was told I would have to wait between 30 minutes and one hour. This was at about 4:40 in the afternoon. So I decided to use my usual approach and hail one. After 10 minutes of not seeing a single cab except one that was already in use, the next thing was to walk to the nearest bus stop and head over to my local train station. This entire time, my poor kitty is in the cramped carried that I have to carry along.
Once at the station, I went to the taxi stop and saw three people in front of me all waiting for a cab. The person who was first in line had already been waiting for 20 minutes. Now it's just past 5:00 and there was nothing to do except start the 20-minute walk home. I felt so sorry for what my poor cat (100 years old in human years).
Now at 71 years old, it appears I'm going to have to take steps to get a driver's license and then a car. Today was totally unacceptable and actually possibly risky if and when there is a genuine emergency. I'm sure I'll be saying goodbye to at least one million yen for this. I wonder where all the cabs went?
My response to the first several answers here:
Thank you for your replies. The information is useful. I didn't know about the shortage of drivers, or at least about how bad it has become. Nor did I know about taxi appls which is something I will explore going forward. Still, the car thing now sort of seems unavoidable too.
by Lord-Alfred