Suica cards work practically everywhere. You can poke a button to use english, usually clearly labeled. You need cash everywhere in Japan so not sure why that surprised you. My experience with Tokyo metro was pretty good. I've never seen a metro as well-organized despite 15 private rail companies splitting the system. The only problem is the operating hours, the last train rush is insane some nights.
The English button does work great... But doesn't tell you a DAMN THING about which line to transfer to get to some location just how much it costs. And when you need to transfer green to blue, good luck, because you better know that this one blue arrow pointing left means you need to go upstairs, cross the street, go into an entirely different station and then go down two flights of stairs with basically no more directions in English.
I was surprised that the machines only took cash, but it was annoying as hell that we were 10yen short and the nearest ATM was 2 blocks away under the street then back up again.
The rush for the 11-11:30pm trains are nuts. I've never seen so many black suits filled by unsmiling faces than the last train out near Tsukiji.
