Visitor Navigating The Tokyo Subway System, with a little help from Strangers

[gmat]

From GameBids.com; In Tokyo - Lost In the Subway; But Not Lost in Translation

 

 

http://www.gamesbids.com/eng/bidblog/1216136535.html

 

It's often easy to spot people like this and I often will stop and help them. Sometimes it was helpful and sometimes not. My mistakes, though. 

The strangest was a father who steadfastly declined my advice and made his kids wait for a through train to Fussa (Yokota AB) because he didn't want to walk across Tachikawa Station with his kids. (They might get lost.) 

 

Grant

[Jcarlton]

From GameBids.com; In Tokyo - Lost In the Subway; But Not Lost in Translation

 

 

http://www.gamesbids.com/eng/bidblog/1216136535.html

 

It's often easy to spot people like this and I often will stop and help them. Sometimes it was helpful and sometimes not. My mistakes, though. 

The strangest was a father who steadfastly declined my advice and made his kids wait for a through train to Fussa (Yokota AB) because he didn't want to walk across Tachikawa Station with his kids. (They might get lost.) 

 

Grant

 

I don't think I would have been as completely lost as he seemed to be even on my first trip to Tokyo. On the other hand I grew up traveling to NYC and managing it's transport sytems as a playground, so using transit maps is like breathing as well as having knowing where I was and where I neede to be. Frankly I feel very uncomfortable when I can't navigate around by myself and the idea of being trapped like that scares the hell out of me, so I tent to take precautions like carrying maps and finding out where i was going to be and how to get around from there. Of course Tokyo has "English" buttons on the fare kiosks and lots of people willing to help, so as this man discovered, it's very hard to get youreself truly lost.

[Ochanomizu]

It is always the map that scares the tourist.  Even some Japanese tourist.

[bikkuri bahn]

As Jcarlton said, being familar with public transport in general helps alot. Back in the states, I rarely get confused when riding a system for the first time, unlike many first timers. Similarly in foreign countries, even when I can't read the language, I pretty much can figure out the system- there is a familiarity factor w/ railway operations that eases any confusion. Perhaps the only time that confuses is when I emerge from underground, as you lose any sense of direction while being below the surface.

[E6系]

Timetables and fares are based on number, not language.  English numbers are universal, almost.

[Sacto1985]

In my opinion, one way to "get oriented" with Tokyo's maze of subways and commuter rail is simple: be familiar with the Tokyo Metro Ginza and Marunouchi subway lines and the JR East Yamanote Line. If you're familiar with these lines, you can traverse most of the important areas of the city.

[lurkingknight]

I recently had a trip to japan, I was very worried about being able to navigate and the paper maps were very intimidating, it was my first trip outside north america, and I speak very little japanese (understand a reasonable amount, can't speak it... read even less) but after only a day I was able to figure things out very quickly. I found the subway system in osaka to be so good that if I were to get lost on the street, I would just need to walk a few more intersections and I would be at a subway station... or namba... either one was ok.  :laughing6:  seemed that every corner we turned in osaka, we'd be at namba, and all covered shopping arcades seemed to lead to namba as well.

 

By the time we got to tokyo, being able to navigate the rail systems was easy and almost second nature, and finding our way around was not hard at all. With so much english and romanized japanese, you have to be very inattentive to miss a stop or not know where you're going.

 

The best way is to get the fare card like suica or in osaka we had unlimited day travel passes those got expensive if you didn't take enough rides per day, but it was nice to be able to jump on anywhere and not worry about calculating your fare or figuring out how to use the fare machine.

 

In tokyo we were able to rely on our JR passes for the yamanote line as well as the chuo line when we went to the ghibli museum in mitaka. We picked up suica cards as well to fill the void in case we needed to use a metro line, which we did, to get to ginza quickly and to go to the sky tree. Reloading the suica was easy, just insert money and card into the machine, no fare calculating at all at the fare machine, which in my opinion is pretty confusing.

 

The hardest navigation issue I had was actually on the street. Japanese addressing is vastly different than north american addressing, and on top of that, I'm not used to having to look up at the 3rd or 4th floor to find a business. Having a compass would have helped us a lot but we usually weren't lost for too long before we figured out which way to go.

[Ochanomizu]

Hello Mr lurkingknight,

 

Street navigation in Japan is sometimes difficult for Japanese also.  Believe me, I have stood in front of a building in Akihabara looking for the Liberty hobby shop, not knowing that it is inside.  Even asking the pedestrian familiar with the area has not helped.  I have also travelled in a taxi to an obscure location and the driver had to stop and ask for directions at the local mini-mart.

 

But for the foreigner visiting Japan, I always recommend a 1 or 3 week JR RailPass and suggest they plan their holiday around that.

[lurkingknight]

the JR pass is great, it's like you're a rockstar or super important official.. just wave it at the ticket booth worker and walk right through, it made me feel special. 

 

Though if you're just in 1 or 2 cities for the a week or 2, it may be hard to get your value out of the JR pass. We had a 2 week pass and took 5 shinkansen rides with it in addition to using it in tokyo for all the JR trains and we just managed to get our money's worth out of it. Sometimes it's cheaper to buy your shinkansen tickets without the JR pass, but the convenience factor of having it is worth it because you save time. I think we paid around 500$ for it and we went from osaka to hiroshima to kyoto to tokyo and did a quick morning trip to yokohama and back. The nice thing is that with the JR pass you can use shinkansen like a subway... Going from ueno where whe were staying to yokohama would have been closer to an hour if we took the regular train, instead with the shinkansen it was 15 minutes. I used hyperdia after the trip to work out the total cost of our shinkansen rides and I think we were at around 490$, and we used the JR trains in tokyo enough to put us over 500$ easily.

Edited May 31, 2013 by lurkingknight

[Sacto1985]

Which does remind me: showing the Japan Rail Pass to get on trains at larger stations is one thing, but what about using it in rural areas where wanman single or dual-car trains dominate? Do you have to show it to the train operator before getting off the train?

[bronzeonion]

I used it on the Banetsu West Line when I went to Aizu Wakamatsu, they are not one man trains but the conductor walks through between stops and infact it seems on lines where the conductor walks through the train, you have to make yourself known to buy a ticket instead of the conductor checking everyones tickets

[JR 500系]

Hi!

 

With reference to my previous post of my Japan trip last year here: http://www.jnsforum.com/community/topic/6100-my-first-japan-trip-march-2012/

 

I bought a 7-day JR Pass, combined with a 2-day Tokyo Subway pass + Keisei Skyliner pass to get me back to Narita Ariport via Keisei Skyliner, for a total spent of 10 days in Japan.

 

The 7-day JR Pass was VERY easily covered during the first leg of our journey from Narita to Tokyo via NEX E259, then Tokyo to Shin-Aomori via Hayate E2, then Shin-Aomori to Hakodate via E783 series Super Hakucho, then Hakodate to Sapporo via Kiha-185 Super Hokuto AND BACK to Tokyo. According to Hyperia, it would have cost me a total of 29,400, which is already OVER the price of the normal 7-day JR Pass at 28,300. The rest of the days were ABSOLUTELY free! I took shinkansens to Kyoto, Osaka, and even Nagoya, and some express trains like the Hida-Wide view to Takayama and Yokohama...

 

It was definately worth it, and i'll be looking to get that 14 day pass for 2015 when i go to Japan again! With the knowledge gained here, i'll definately be able to expend even further the pass!