Trains in Japan!

This page is about six years late.

Well okay, six years ago the internet was this cute little thing sitting in someone's closet, so maybe it's not the web page that's late, but the information. I needed this information then, and have never found any other sources for it in the meantime, so I guess it's up to me to assemble it.

Six years ago I arrived in Japan straight from Detroit (cultural note: the "motor city"), and found myself face to face with that soul-shattering spectre so alien and incomprehensible to Detroiters that we shrink from it, hide away in our cars and instead go play with our nice safe guns.

Public Transportation!!

The hideous beast rumbled toward me on the sinister twin iron struts stretching around the next bend, barely missing the cement platform six inches from its side where we all stood. It screeched to a halt and a dozen or more doors opened simultaneously, freeing the masses of people that had been trapped inside, along with a wave of the beast's viciously air-conditioned breath. But it sat humming evilly, as it knew that the replacements for the escapees were even now shouldering their way inside, toward the few vacated seats. Heedless of the danger, I strode boldly in, and took my place beside the others who had failed to sit, grabbing the uncomfortable ring-on-a-strap dangling in my face, and glanced about nervously. Where would it take me? How will I get used to living here in a land clearly not designed for cars? Most importantly, will I survive this air-conditioning, or will I be discovered at the end of the line, still frozen to my strap?

Japan has about a zillion trains. (It also has about half a zillion cars, but those are relatively new compared to the trains, and spend most of their time idling on expressways [at about US$3 per gallon of gas no less], so never mind them.) If I'd grown up here, presumably I'd have this stuff down before I'd even started to go to baby cram school, but as a 26-year old displaced Detroiter, there was little that I found immediately comprehensible, much less comfortable.

When I first arrived, I was in shock from any number of sources (I suddenly no longer lived in the Western Hemisphere, much less North America, I suddenly couldn't hold up my end of any conversation above the 2nd-grade level, I looked different from everyone else in the local universe, and I was getting married, for a few), but the one that seemed a simple technical problem was the one that took me a while to get used to.

I first realized that something was up soon after I'd arrived, when my father-in-law escorted me to go enroll in Japanese-language class in downtown Osaka. I'd taken a taxi from the airport when I'd first arrived in the country, and this was my first real ride on the trains, so I knew I should probably be trying to figure out how to commute on my own. We got on the train going South near our house, took it one stop, got off, and got on another one going East. Okay, 90 degree difference, I can understand this. We then take the new train East one stop, get out, walk to the other side of the same platform, then wait for this other train, which arrives, also going East. I could read enough Japanese (ie compare symbols) to see that both trains were going to the same destination: Osaka. Between my broken Japanese, and my father-in-law's broken English, I determined that we apparently don't like _that_ train, we like _this_ train. Going in the same direction. Ookay. I followed along blindly, hoping for the best, and we eventually got to Osaka. Presumably, the other train did too.

I obviously was missing some piece of the puzzle.

I soon realized that if I wanted to go anywhere, I'd have to face this important question: How do you work these @%)(@#*@ trains? Over the course of commuting to school the next few months, bit by bit I figured it out on my own, but I was coninually mystified by the lack of basic information on How Trains Work. At least _I_ couldn't find any. Is it that obvious? Is it just a Detroit thing? Presumably other people have encountered variations of this same shock, and may not have had the time that I did to ponder these things. Living in Japan is exotic (read: unsettling) enough without being utterly dependent on a transportation system you simply don't understand. So here I am. I'll explain about trains in Japan. With luck this'll help somebody to get a handle on things, and avoid some postal incident occuring in an Eikaiwa (English conversation) class somewhere...

A lot of the terminology that you hear relating to trains in movies and TV actually has meaning! I mean, obviously, but I'd just never had any reason to examine it before. Many times I'd be wondering about some announcement in Japanese, only to have the English announcement (some trains have 'em, some don't) explain it away with a single word that, now connected to my growing bank of experience, suddenly made sense. So I'll start with a few terms.

Local

This is a train that stops at every station. The implication here is that apparently not all trains stop at all statons.

Express

This is a train that skips the piddly little stations, and just stops at the interesting places. "Interesting" in this case means any place that's likely to have lots of people. Business centers, places where train lines approach each other or cross (double the convenience, double the population!) and the like.

Limited Express

This sounds like it should have a limited amout of expressness (i.e. should be slower), but it's apparently supposed to mean that it stops at a limited number of stops in comparison to a regular Express (i.e. it's faster). Consequently a Limited Express only stops at the really important stops. As an example, the current Hankyu Limited Expresses stop only three times between Osaka and Kobe, and only twice between Osaka and Kyoto.

Station

This is a place where a train stops. Technically speaking you shouldn't use this for the endpoints of a train line (see Terminal), but it gets used for that anyway.

Terminal

This is a place where the train stops, and has nowhere else to go (i.e. it's got to return back the way it came). Some passengers leave when the Shinkansen stops at Shin-Osaka station (because there are more stops coming), but everybody has to leave when it stops at Tokyo Terminal.

Platform

The platform that you step on when you leave a train, so you don't fall a meter or two onto the gravel. In Japanese, "Platform" became "Puratuhoumu," usually shortened to just the "...Form" part, or "Houmu." As it happens, that's the exact same way you say "Home" in Japanese, leading to much linguistic merriment when someone confuses the two...

Tracks

Metal bars on the ground that trains scoot along on. You didn't need a definition for that, did you?

The basic Facts:

Trains run on tracks. Duh. If trains leave the tracks, this is Bad. This makes the news. Duh.

In Japan, trains also run on time. If trains fail to run on time, a lot of businesspeople, their schedules screwed, get angry. This also upon occasion makes the news.

In my experience, if a train is going to be more than 60 seconds late, some station guy will go to the trouble to get on the speakers and apologise to you about it. Sometimes this happens with heavy rain, or if it snows in a place that normally doesn't get snow, like Osaka.

If trains are running more than, say, five or ten minutes late, there'll be continual annoucements, and possibly a handwritten sign hung up somewhere, with profuse apologies.

Any more than 10 minutes or so, and they start refunding fares. I'd say this shows an admirable commitment to efficiency... (This varies by company. My local Hankyu line is pretty good about that.)

One thing that never really occured to me before actually riding on trains habitually, is this: Remember your toy train? Not the HO-scale hobby ones that are more realistic than the real thing, but just your generic set-o'-tracks-and-a-train that any kid would get their hands on at some point in their childhood. Remember how you had just The Train? (You train-hobby people be quiet!) Just one train for your track?

It ain't like that!

And this was a shock to me, though it's fairly obvious if you think about it. Let's say you're talking about the piece of track between Kobe and Osaka (cleverly called the Kobe Line, which is my stomping grounds). These cities are relatively close; it takes maybe an hour to get from one to the other if you use a local. Okay, so a train takes an hour to travel the Kobe line. But wait! Thinking about it, I know that at any station on the Kobe line, you'll see a train either go by or stop at your station at least every 10 minutes! Hmm, how can this be, unless...

Gasp! Unless there are like a half-dozen trains all using this one stretch of track at the same time!! It's crowded in there! No wonder everybody's on time -- if you slow down, there's another train behind you about to ram into your butt! And if you go too fast, you're going to hit the guy in front of you!

Rule #1: Keep to your schedules, or die.

Then add the factor that Express trains go faster than Locals, and therefore have to pass them at some point (an entertaining maneuver in itself, for a vehicle that has no directional controls). And Limited Expresses go faster than Expresses, and have to pass them as well as the Locals. And there are the occasional "Commuting Limited Expresses" that are a little slower than normal Limited Expresses but faster than regular Expresses (and have to pass or be passed by everybody else.) And all these trains are running on the same track at the same time, according to a tight schedule...

Suddenly train-safety rules sound like a really good idea.

Trains in Japan run on a fare system in which you pay different amounts depending on the distance between the station you board the train and the station you eventually exit. Apparently some train lines, like the Boston subway, don't do this, and a 'fare' covers the whole line. Not here - always remember to grab your ticket when it gets spit out of the machine. Otherwise, as far as they know, you boarded a train at the other end of the country and have been riding ever since. They don't know how much you owe, so you may end up paying for a longer ride than you actually took. Or at least, even if they believe you (which they usually do,) you'll still end up paying for the same stretch a second time.