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Hi Friends, I know that @Tony Galiani was waiting for this report ... So that, let's begin this (very) long serie of posts, depicting my travel to the Rising Sun Country. As it's somewhere my 10th or 11th travel ... I'm familiar with Japan. As I've announced it a couple of weeks ago ... ... I was in Japan for a mix of leisure and work, landing on september 10th, 2023 at Tokyo Narita airport, rsp 17:35 JST (time is important ...). Landing doesn't mean disembarquing (at 17:45 JST). As usual NRT is really convenient and fast and despite I've got a checked luggage to collect, I'm around 18:10 in front of the Skyliner desk, queuing, absolutely not stressed. Guess what ? you're in Japan ... people are efficient ! (to be fair, I was flying First Class with Emirates, and you're given a 'Fast lane' card. Anyway, even without 'fast lane' it's really fast at NRT) Why not the N'EX ? First of all the N'EX is slower and less comfortable (to me) but .... look at the waiting line full of tourist exchanging their JR Pass voucher It's 18:13 when I've got my Skyliner ticket ... and the train leaves at 18:16 meaning in less that 3 minutes. Welcome in Japan, no stress two minutes after you're on the platform, boarding the Skyliner (reason why I didn't made an orgy of photos ...) (this shot below is from a former travel in 2016, just to show you how it looks like ... at that time there were no fences and sliding doors) It's really a comfortable place to travel (to answer a question below, yes N'EX has free Wifi as Shinkansen and other JR limited Express). Anyway, I do not need it as I've purchased an 'unlimited' Data Card for 29 euros in France ... very easy to use, and cheap too) and if you need to plug your laptop of cellphone charger, everything is there (sorry for the poor quality) Commuting in Nippori (instead of Ueno... it was raining) a looooong corridor to the JY Yamanote line direction Shimbashi, my favorite place to stay in Tokyo

Here's a very good zenmen tenbou video of JR Central's Central Liner by YT uploader aomonoya. The rolling stock is JRC 313 series, although it's the 8000 subseries which has a different livery and interior. There are 6 3-car sets of these, all based at Jinryo Depot, between Kasugai and Jinryo on the Chuo Line. This is set B206 as you can see in the lower corner of the windshield. Presumably aomonoya decided to document this because JRC will replace the Central Liner services with regular rapid services with the March 16 2013 timetable revision. I haven't seen anything about the fate of this 8000 subseries rolling stock, obviously it's very new so it won't be scrapped but whether it will be modified to match the other variants, it will be interesting to see. There are liner services with each of the JR companies except Shikoku, and also with several private railways, although they have other names. The surcharge structure used for these liner trains seems to be very similar to non-limited express (kyuko) services which are now almost all gone. This is also a good look at the Chuo West Line, which are fairly rare on YT as compared to the eastern portion, particularly Tokyo to Takao/Otsuki. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/313_series#313-8000_series http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Liner 8000 subseries interior images: http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/mlnagara373/40934565.html, http://www.uraken.net/rail/alltrain/uratetsu313.html