Travel : Tokyo JR Lines and Metro System

Lifestyles, Travel — By trench on July 13, 2009 at 6:22 pm | 172 Visitors

Last summer was my first experience on any metro system. Two good friends of mine had been stationed in Alexandria Virginia at the time, and had highly encouraged my wife and I to experience the daily grind of riding the Washington D.C. metro. Although there were several bumps along the way, the convenience and reliability of the metro was a huge plus, and at the end of the day I thought it outweighed most of the negatives I had conceived about taking public transportation.

Our D.C. tour had supposedly been our last experience on a train system for the next few seasons, however that quickly changed when I booked a ten day summer trip to Tokyo, Japan. I had discovered that traveling by taxi would be extremely expensive, and renting a car while learning to drive on the opposite side of the road wasn’t an viable option either. That left the trains again. In Japan, the JR trains and metro systems are the primary mode of transportation across the entire country, and in order to travel great distances quickly and efficiently, I would eventually need to learn how to use them. It was hard enough to navigate in D.C. with English written everywhere, so you can only imagine what I thought about when I learned that I had to travel for ten full days using a system set up in a foreign language.

Fortunately, being one of the largest and busiest metro systems in the world today, Japan’s systems are also one of the most punctual and simplest to navigate. I recall the metro in D.C. as being quite similar, but Tokyo was far better equipped at providing information to tourists and other visitors within the area. As long you can remember your station name, number, exit, and line color, it is really quite easy to navigate using the subway maps and other information littered across the walls. For added convenience, most of the downtown hotels in Tokyo provide hand held maps (in English) of the subway and train lines, so we used those regularly to plot our routes the night before we took them.

The employees at the stations were also quite helpful. They assisted in the loading and unloading of passengers, answered any questions we had (with their limited use of English), and kept the grounds extremely clean. In most cases a simple “Sumimasen” or excuse me in Japanese caught their attention and they would stop to speak to us or lead us to someone who could. I was very pleased with just how polite everyone was, and I definitely rank Japan as one of world’s best in when it comes to services.

Ticket prices are pretty fair while taking the metro and JR lines, but I would highly recommend purchasing a PASMO or Suica rechargeable card if your planning any type of extended stay in the Tokyo area. These cards can be purchased at the entrance of any metro station and there is an English button at the right end of the screen to help guide you through the process. At each entrance and exit, you simply place your card on top of the reader (the reader is located on the right and lit up with the color blue) and it debits the fare without having to purchase tickets each time you hop on another train. Each card requires a ¥500 deposit, but is 100% refundable when you return your card at the end of your trip. My wife and I started by adding ¥5000 each to the card and at the end of our trip, our total travel expenditures were ¥7000 (two ¥1000 recharges), per person. Not bad for ten days when you consider how many places (I’ll be writing about this later) we visited during our stay.

On a final note, unless you want to experience the Tokyo rush hour, I suggest you avoid the metro and JR lines during the hours of 7:30 – 9:30am and again around 5:30 – 7:00pm. Tokyo Station and Shinjuku Station are probably the busiest in the entire Tokyo area at this time. I hit rush hour one evening going from Shinjuku to the Hibiya Line and it was extremely busy and hot. Not something I’d like to experience again!

OT: You know what I found quite curious about riding all those days on the Metro and JR Lines? The sleeping and cellphones! haha.. Man, there would be people sleeping for five stops then they would just snap out of it and walk off like they knew where they were going. It was pretty cool to see. It also seems that everyone is connected in Tokyo. I’ve never seen so many people with cellphones in hand at once. I wasn’t trying to be nosey, but they are all either texting, watching their navigation systems, or playing some funky game while waiting. Everyone also seems to have those “trendy” sparkles covering their phones and dangles.

Helpful Links:
Transportation in Tokyo by Japan-Guide.com
How to Metro by MustLoveJapan.com
The Tokyo Metro Official Site at tokyometro.jp
Pasmo Card Official Site at pasmo.co.jp

Tags: japan, Lifestyles, Tokyo, Travel