Originally Posted by AJLondon
3. In Tokyo, it seems that the main shopping area is GINZA and/or SHINJUKU. Individually are these compact areas where one could walk between the major stores/malls and to/from hotels?
Basically any major train junction (Shinjuku, Shibuya, Ikebukuro, Ginza...) will have its associated shopping area, clustered within easy walking distance of the station. Tokyo is very much built around trains, subways and pedestrians, you will basically never (except late at night) need to take a cab.
4. Which hotel would be the most suitable from the shopping and walking to shops perspective. Ideally, I would prefer a major chain 4-5* hotel, (and my first choices would be Starwood or the Intercontinental group, but pretty flexible in this regard.) I would like to pay not much more than $200 per night. How easy is it to 'hotel hop' within Tokyo, i.e. roughly how much would a downtown cab ride between hotels etc cost.
Again, you don't want to take cabs, you want to ride the subway. There's a major hotel cluster in West Shinjuku, within easy walking distance of the shopping meccas of East Shinjuku.
One slightly offbeat option would be to stay in Odaiba, the Japanese equivalent of London's Docklands (reclaimed land turned into futuristic city), except it's a lot more happening at night and has some pretty good shopping too.
There are some very good hotels in the area (the Nikko Odaiba comes to mind), and "mainland" Tokyo (Shinbashi/Ginza) is only 15-20 minutes away by two train lines.
5. How safe is Tokyo generally, for a single, first-time, non Japanese speaking traveller ? And how friendly is it.
The language barrier is a bit of a bother, but Tokyo is extremely safe and exceedingly polite. Not quite the same thing as "friendly", but I doubt you'll have any problems.