If you've ever stayed in the heart of Tokyo you know the JR Yamanote line well. What a feat for Japan to have it.
I always thought trains (light rail, high speed, what ever) were so much better than cars. Have more traffic? Just add more trains, no extra rails needed. Yamanote line rush hour showed me how effective that is AND how you might need more rail eventually. Rush hour had a train there every ~2 minutes and they were still packed.
Still better than sitting in stop and go car traffic. Can't wait to go back!
What's also amazing is how well everything is working. They're are on time and stop at the exact right spot: the doors do open precisely where they're meant to.
It is for every large scale modern or modernised line.
Copenhagen metro, Elizabeth line, all Paris metro lines (maybe without the 3bis, 10, 7 bis lines), Madrid metro, etc etc. Hell, all VAL-based metros like Lille, Rennes, Toulouse also have those characteristics because they're fully automated even if they're light metro for smaller cities.
>Rush hour had a train there every ~2 minutes and they were still packed.
Sometimes I wonder if society will figure out a way to stagger business hours and holidays... somehow... to decongest rush hour. Something like X areacode business hours have to +/- 1 hour every other month.
The biggest traffic determinant in my city’s (Brisbane, Australia) rush hour is school children by far
I think it’s the fact school buses are rare in Australia and the doubling (or often tripling due to low co-ed rates here) of the commutes for parents dropping them off
I have no children
School not on? My commute is 7-10 minutes in rush hour. School on? 25-35 minutes in rush hour
In saying this I know there are other confounding variables here (eg location or but parents aligning their holidays with their children’s), but I feel like there should be some direct consultation between our City Council and Schools as it directly impacts all residents of the city
A large number of tech workers go in only 3 days a week, which would help congestion if it wasn’t all the same 3 days for everyone.
I spent more money on a house next to schools so I wouldn’t need to be a part of the rush hour commute, except now we have a summer camp to go to in the next town over, well at least it’s summer and school traffic is gone.
People say “not all jobs” but a great deal of them certainly can be remote. I think we all remember 2020 when hourly workers still had to show up to their job, office workers didn’t and this was sufficient to clear all the roads and even affect local air quality.
One can only dream. Right now still too much competition/involution, and people need to put in face time to get ahead. Hopefully inevitable trend when demographics -> workforce decline and workers get more leverage. Maybe less people will alleviate congestion and more ppl will want to goto the office because commute more pleasant.
Leadership can either set up remote work for failure or for success through top-down policy.
You're also assuming some kind of perfect instantaneous feedback mechanism exists to measure productivity and adjust the remote/office work on the fly. It doesn't and never will.
People aren’t randomly assigning wfh and measuring output though its just whatever middle management think is right. If this stuff were informed by data the office would have died in 1995.
It's a fun experience just being in the absolutely packed rush hour Tokyo trains. Although I don't have to worry about claustrophobia since I'm 6'3 tall and I'm able to look out above the heads of everybody else.
Yeah, I travel to Japan frequently (in fact, my next trip is next week!) and I'm also tall. I love Japan, and I love Tokyo's public transportation. However, one of the things I don't like are the jammed-packed rush hour trains in Tokyo. It could be very uncomfortable. I try my best to plan my itineraries in such a way where I could avoid that commute as much as possible.
Complaints aside, I love Tokyo's train and subway network! I can get around easily, with most places being no more than a 20-minute walk away from the nearest train/subway station, and many of the lines that connect central Tokyo to its neighbors have express routes that skip many stations along the way. Some lines even have special cars with reserved seats that cost extra. I sometimes take them whenever they are available; they make for a very comfortable ride.
It's great to use as a tourist. Very easy to get where you want and top notch frequency. One thing I thought was interesting is that transit advocates in the California I was visiting from push for free transit and transit sucks balls here while Japan generally was fee-paid transit and their transit ruled. I frequently travel to Hong Kong and I moved to California from London and so I looked them up and they hadn't transformed to free either.
If I'm honest, I get the feeling that transit advocates in California are trying to kill transit.
Another big difference between transit in Tokyo versus transit in California: in Tokyo many of the lines are owned and operated by private companies. JR East used to be part of Japan National Railways, but the Japanese government privatized JNR in 1987, and it was split into several regional companies. There are other private companies that operate commuter rail lines, such as Tokyu (which played a major role in the development of Shibuya as well as suburban areas in Yokohama such as Tama Plaza), Odakyu, Keio, and Keikyu. The subway lines tend to be publicly-owned, however, such as the Tokyo Metro subway system, the Toei subway system, and the Yokohama Municipal Subway. Many of these subway lines seamlessly flow into privately-owned and operated lines from the companies previously mentioned; for example, the Tokyu Den-en-Toshi line, which connects the suburban areas of Machida and Yokohama to Shibuya, becomes the Tokyo Metro Hanzomon Line once it reaches Shibuya.
Many of the private train companies have other businesses. For example, Tokyu Group (https://tokyugroup.jp/en) operates many companies, such as department stores (including the famous Shibuya 109), hotels, grocery stores, and even a hospital. Tokyu used to own a fantastic chain of stores called Tokyu Hands, which is hard to classify but sells a variety of goods, but Tokyu sold it a few years ago.
It's important to note that private companies in Japan didn't always function as fully independent entities from the government (obviously there is going to be rent-seeking as almost always happens), there is a pretty complicated history of post ww2 industrial + government growth that had some form of public good (or social contract whichever you prefer) baked into it.
It's interesting that you mention it was privatized in 1987, which corresponds to the economic bubble that was happening from 1986 to 1991, which burst leaving a so called "lost generation" of people growing up in basically stagnation. And from what I understand the Japanese economy is still not the rocket ship it once was..
JNR failed mostly because it was struggling from high construction debts of Shinkansen and urban rail projects. One important part of the privatization was that the government took on this debt load to unshackle the newly private companies.
Also this hasn’t happened evenly. Of the seven private JRs, one (Kyushu) is treading water and three are losing money (Hokkaido, Shikoku and Freight)
> One important part of the privatization was that the government took on this debt load to unshackle the newly private companies.
Which certainly in some accounting systems be seen as a bailout or form of government support for these newly privatized companies, which the government probably wouldn't do if they didn't see these rail lines as a form of public good (or at least necessity).
I think another user mentioned a little down in this thread that there is a network of mutually supportive companies that are built out along the tracks, shops, hotels, restaurants, all of which benefit from the rail lines supplying customers, and in turn benefit the rail line by providing reasons to use their services outside of a strict A -> B commute.
I wonder if location/population has anything to do with both Kyushu and Hokkaido finding themselves in financial trouble.
Idk, it seems like fairly straightforward from a smooth-brained layman's non-politician perspective (mine), hey people we have a choice: we get clean on time trains where you can grab a cheap cheesesteak on you way back from work, or we get mobile homeless shelters that drop you off next to the needle exchange van in Berkeley
The other important bits to have functioning rail is that
* Japanese highways are heavily tolled and parking in choice areas is expensive. In the US parking is mandated at such high levels that it is given away for free; in Japan parking is entirely market provided and you cannot buy a car without proof of a reserved space which you must purchase
* Japanese commuting is heavily subsidized to the tune of 100,000JPY a month pretax, so consumers have more spending power specifically on transportation. This is at least one of the theorized causes of Japanese economic centralization since you can’t realize the full value of the benefit outside the megacities.
As an example. For me to get to the nearest large city, it's a 4 hour drive, 7000 yen in highway tolls and around 3000 yen in gas. Or a 2 hour Shinkansen ride for 9000 yen. If you're a solo businessman the choice is a no-brainer. If you're traveling with the family, then you're still gonna drive.
> Japanese highways are heavily tolled and parking in choice areas is expensive. In the US parking is mandated at such high levels that it is given away for free; in Japan parking is entirely market provided and you cannot buy a car without proof of a reserved space which you must purchase
this is because of the efficacy of public transport working for most of the populous, getting a car isn't the worst thing in the world, but you need to be able to pay for it, show insurance, whatever. Also don't be a foreigner who can't speak Japanese. Basic rules.
the US had public frequent transit systems at the turn of the century. the problem was they couldn't compete with brand new free Interstates. It's hard to compete with free.
This issue was compounded by the death of streetcar lines across America, being replaced with buses. In Tokyo some of these streetcar lines evolved into subway and train lines. For example, the stretch of the modern Tokyu Den-en-Toshi Line that goes from Shibuya to Futakotamagawa (where Rakuten’s global headquarters are located) replaced the old Tokyu Tamagawa Line, which was a streetcar line.
In an alternate universe, Los Angeles’ once-extensive streetcar system, which I believe was operated by private companies (though I could be wrong), could’ve been upgraded to become an extensive train and subway system. I believe the company that built the streetcar connecting Los Angeles with Pasadena also developed real estate along the route to encourage the use of the streetcar. This is exactly Tokyu’s business model; Tokyu played a major role in the development of “garden suburbs” influenced by the garden city movement of the early 1900s: first with the Den-en-Chofu neighborhood of Tokyo in the 1920s (which is served by the Tokyu Toyoko Line), and then with the development of Tama Den-en-Toshi (Tama Garden Cities) in once-rural parts of Kawasaki and Yokohama beginning in the 1960s. Of course, a crucial difference between the original garden city concept versus Tokyu’s implementation of it is that Tokyu’s garden suburbs are generally not job centers; while there are plenty of service jobs there, the majority of good-paying professional jobs are located in the city center (such as near Shibuya Station, which conveniently is heavily influenced by Tokyu), hence contributing to Tokyo’s legendary train congestion.
One major difference is that the streetcar companies in the US sold the land whereas Japanese companies held on to the choicest parcels to self-develop.
This meant that 50 years later when everything was at end of life, the streetcar companies could not repeat the trick.
In NA effectively the streetcars were a scheme to sell real estate, with the streetcar being the sweetener to convince people to buy into the neighbourhood.
Once sales were over the streetcar was then a pointless drag on profits. No surprise unscrupulous business persons cut back on maintenance and abandoned the "unprofitable" streetcars.
The issue with the la streetcar network was that it was designed specifically to sell Henry Huntington’s land tracts. Once he sold that off he didn’t much care if the remaining transit network could actually stand on its own two legs. Some lines were frequent like downtown lines but these days there are a lot of interlining busses going downtown where you really could have multiple busses a minute coming in on a street. Other lines were a lot worse than today like the line that connected santa monica to LA, which eventually only ran once a day in contrast to todays expo line running every 8 minutes or so.
Well for context, outside of an EZ pass, it costed me about 7$ each way to get from Oakland(hills) to Foster City roughly each way, and I had to drive my own car. And for reference, we call them freeways ;) legacy i know.
That's a significantly higher parking rate than I've ever seen charged in the US. And generally in Japan street parking is not permitted in busy areas.
Not a comment, but a request for clarification: I'm losing the thread of the conversation here: is the choice between free transit and non-free transit?
(I think that guess is wrong, which is why I'm asking... "free vs non-free" is a useless dichotomy when there are plenty of ways to charge people fares, some more profit-extracting than other, and when I live in a town with a paid system where homeless people surf in the buses all day because it's the only way to get to the few places to use the bathroom...)
Is that why the name changed to simply Hands. Makes sense but I hadn't realized the company was sold. I haven't noticed it affect the stores in any way yet.
Yes, once Tokyu sold Tokyu Hands the store dropped the Tokyu name. I also haven’t noticed any changes in terms of product selection or customer service, with the caveat that I’m a tourist who goes to Japan 2-3 times per year, not a resident, so there may be changes I’m unaware of.
Most commuter train lines in Japan are part of integrated conglomerates of complementary businesses. JR East, which runs the Yamanote Line, also operates shopping malls, hotels, gyms, and other retail facilities at and near their stations. Many suburban lines, such as Tokyu and Hankyu, also have large real estate businesses along the train lines. The rail lines make the businesses more accessible, and the businesses boost rail usage. That symbiotic profitability has developed over many decades and would be very difficult to create from scratch.
If you look at the actual profit numbers, these companies are better described as real estate companies that also run train lines (which bring people to the real estate properties, making those properties much more valuable).
During 18+ years of working at a Japanese company in Tokyo, my train fare to and from work was paid with a pass from the company. This was true for all our employees, and other companies offered the same perk to their employees.
The pass was free and good for travel at any time along that route.
That’s called a 定期券 and you can buy that yourself if you want to save some yen on your commute, though it’s only really worth it if you’re going between the stations most weekdays consistently.
The funding mechanisms are different. LA metro gets a lot of funding from sales tax initiatives. Iirc the farebox only covers like 5% of the operating budget and the median rider is making less than like $25k which is why they were considering making it free.
Not OP, but somebody still has to pay for the transit. And a "free" service is politically much more vulnerable than one that is partly being paid for by the users because it involves taxes and redistribution. It adds pressure for each (annual) budget discussion.
That "politically vulnerable" point is good. Almost all public transit ends up heavily subsidized, so the argument for free is that it's not a huge difference, and it reduces the costs involved in collecting fees / enforcement etc. But yeah, it's easier for political winds to blow against it.
It is generally not a huge difference in small systems like you find in college towns.
It is a pretty substantial portion of most major transit agency budgets; BART for example has a farebox recovery of about a third. If you were to totally make it free you would need to basically increase the other sources of funding by 50%.
the argument has always been, is it better to spend that 5% on making it free, or is it better to spend that on making services more useful so that people actually switch to it?
The cost is not really the reason LA Metro ridership is so low and farebox recovery is so low.
I'd add that it wouldn't be so outlandish to assume that any superficially and widely agreeable movement might just be astroturfing, considering how cheap and easy it is to persuade people in general, but also specifically by making them think everyone else feels the same, and how often the arguments just parrot whatever the various internet personalities happen to be saying about it without any additional insight.
Japanese trains are de facto free for many users as employers are de facto required to pay their employees' train commute costs. So I don't know what bizarre mental leap you're making here, or why you're focusing on cost in the first place.
> I frequently travel to Hong Kong and I moved to California from London and so I looked them up and they hadn't transformed to free either.
actually 2 trains every ~2 minutes
on the east side of the yamanote loop, it runs in parallel with keihin tohoku line every station from tabata to sinagawa.
The platforms are arranged side by side, so if you miss one train, the next train is probably right behind you.
it's fun to see trains racing right next to each other.
Other than that there are also rapid lines running in parallel that takes you straight to major stations by skipping some smaller ones.
JR Yamanote line is a circular or loop line in the middle of Tokyo not unlike Circle line for London Tube.
Naturally circular line will be the most popular since other lines are moving radially from city center thus travelling between two nearby places can take longer by changing trains if they're not on the same the line.
Case in point, Bordeaux city in southwest of France currently has no circular tram line (yet) hence most of the public transport users are relying on the buses to go to the nearby places that are close but on different tram lines.
> I always thought trains (light rail, high speed, what ever) were so much better than cars. Have more traffic? Just add more trains, no extra rails needed. Yamanote line rush hour showed me how effective that is AND how you might need more rail eventually. Rush hour had a train there every ~2 minutes and they were still packed.
I mean they are much better, but this is only true to a point. You can't get better than 60-90s frequency per direction on a classic fully automated dual track line. Afterwards you need to add more tracks, or increase the length of the trains.
> You can't get better than 60-90s frequency per direction on a classic fully automated dual track line.
Note that this is 40-60 trains per hour, and each Yamanote train holds 1724 people, giving a capacity of 69,000-100,000 passengers per hour per direction
A highway lane operating at peak capacity can carry fewer than 2000 vehicles per hour. If each vehicle held typical passenger loading of 2 passengers (average occupancy is actually lower in most cities), the yamanote line would need 17-25 highway lanes in each direction to replace one track in each direction (plus way more space for entering and exiting the highway than a subway station requires).
So while your fundamental point (train tracks have limits) is true, by that point a comparison with automobile infrastructure is truly absurd!
Oh of course, it's not even in the same league with extremely wasteful highways.
My point was just that tracks have limits too and at some point you need to add more of them / add more train cars / add new lines.
This can be seen in Paris where RER A was built in part to decongest line 1, which then resulted in both being heavily congested (RER A is one the most heavily used commuter rail line in Europe and the whole world). This led to the creation of line 14 to decongest the A and 1 inside of Paris, but it got congested too, so now there's also the RER E to decongest the 1, 14, A and B by taking over some trips between destinations that would have required doing a change 14+A or B+A.
Wow, I knew the difference was big, but not that big.
This made me think, how does this all compare to bikes? I found one study [1] which finds ~6500 bikes per hour for a 2m wide cycling path. That's actually much closer to a highway lane than I expected.
Bicycles aren't remotely as efficient as trains, which should be obvious really. Trains can carry a ton of people (literally, more like many, many tons! :-) ), at fairly high speed (talking about city trains/subways here, not bullet trains). At crowded times, people can be packed in quite densely, almost shoulder-to-shoulder. And this can all be done quite safely, with injuries and deaths astronomically uncommon if the train is operated and maintained properly.
Cycling has far less density, and far greater danger. It's easy to fall off a bike, or run into someone (pedestrian or cyclist), and it's even worse if there's cars around. Bikes are also quite slow compared to trains.
The advantages bikes have are:
1. flexibility: you can go most places by bicycle if the city doesn't hinder this too much by being too car-oriented. Trains only take you between far-apart stations, but a bike can take you the door of your destination. In places with good public transit and good bicycle support, it's very common for people to ride a bike to or from the train/subway station, and use the bicycle for the "last mile" instead of walking which is much slower.
2. small size: compared to cars, bikes take little space and so they don't need huge, wide roads, or even worse, giant parking lots. Here in Tokyo, lots of places have bicycle parking lots or garages, and it's staggering how many bicycles can fit into a space that only a handful of cars would be able to park in. And in places with no designated parking, it's common for people to just park their bike on the edge of the sidewalk, in a side alley, etc., things you can't do with a car.
So back to your 6500 bikes/hour figure: the problem with this kind of comparison is that it neglects parking. If everyone is driving in a car on a highway, they need a place to park, and putting parking for cars everywhere means everything must be spaced out much, much farther, which means everyone needs a car to get around. If no one has a car and everyone has a bicycle, then you don't need any car parking and bicycle parking takes very little space, so everything is now much closer together and you don't have to go nearly as far in the first place.
Of course, this doesn't even get into quality-of-life things like lack of pollution and noise, being able to actually see people's faces as you're out and about, etc.
Even a $1000 bike would pay itself off within a year versus train fares and it is possible to buy a reasonable used commuter bicycle for hundreds less than that. Cycling is def the most affordable form of transportation out there (aside from walking of course).
Montreal's new REM is running pretty short trains at 30 trains per hour and still has capacity for over 40,000 people per hour. 60 trains per hour with longer trains can do even more. Only a handful of places on earth have the density to require any more capacity than a fully automated double track metro can deliver, and those places all have the tax base to easily support quad tracking or actually better is building multiple parallel lines nearby with strong connectivity.
Nearly all metros with capacity issues have old, slow sections that limit the entire network (NYC looking at you) or have paused on expanding the network for generations (NYC looking at you again, 2nd ave subway notwithstanding).
> Nearly all metros with capacity issues have old, slow sections that limit the entire network (NYC looking at you) or have paused on expanding the network for generations (NYC looking at you again, 2nd ave subway notwithstanding).
You're posting this on an article about a line that runs at 158% occupancy during peak times, in a city that certainly hasn't shirked on modernisation or expansion. If you expand far enough then even metros hit their limits.
(Admittedly that city, or rather metropolitan area, is also the most populous in the world).
Not to mention Yamanote line also shares the same route with many other train lines that serve as extra capacity and express service along segments of the route (Shonan Shinjuku Line, Saikyo Line, Keihin Tohoku Line, etc), as well as multiple other alternate lines that more or less duplicate segments of Yamanote Line (Shibuya-Ikebukuro is also served by Fukutoshin Line with local and express service on a parallel route, for instance). And yet basically all of these lines exceed max capacity daily.
So mass transit isn't exempt from induced demand, but for the width of track it produces much more capacity than equivalent roads. I wonder if Tokyo decided to build a few more lines/expand the capacity of the existing ones (e.g. by building extra tunnels or elevated lines on existing rights of way), if there is a point where the train capacity really could exceed the peak demand the city could produce; but more interestingly, I wonder how many trips don't happen in car-dependent cities (or ones with decrepit transit like NYC) because of how inefficient their infrastructure is at moving people.
A noticeable effect to me of all this transit is that the car traffic on the roads usually is pretty minimal.
>A noticeable effect to me of all this transit is that the car traffic on the roads usually is pretty minimal.
I don't think that's a direct effect. Within most of Tokyo, using a car just isn't a viable option for many trips for most people. Lots of people don't own a car to begin with (a parking space at your home is usually very expensive, in addition to the costs of the car itself). And if you try to use it to go somewhere, where are you going to park it? Some big stores and malls of course have parking garages, but most other places don't, or there's paid parking that's expensive. And if you're going to work on a typical day, there's probably no place to park there: companies don't provide parking for employees, they give you a pass for the transit system to get to work.
I think, overall, the reason car traffic is pretty minimal in Tokyo is because using a car just isn't very convenient most of the time, so people don't.
> I wonder if Tokyo decided to build a few more lines/expand the capacity of the existing ones (e.g. by building extra tunnels or elevated lines on existing rights of way), if there is a point where the train capacity really could exceed the peak demand the city could produce
I doubt it - more capacity just means more population growth and more demand. Central London has reached a point where they're worried about the pedestrian capacity on some central bridges. But in what's already the most populous and second most economically productive metro area in the world, of course there are very real benefits to growing further.
> more interestingly, I wonder how many trips don't happen in car-dependent cities (or ones with decrepit transit like NYC) because of how inefficient their infrastructure is at moving people.
NYC does pretty well, but yeah of course available transport affects what people can do. I saw an interesting conception of this as the "effective size" of a city, e.g. how many people and jobs there are within a 30- or 60-minute commute radius.
> A noticeable effect to me of all this transit is that the car traffic on the roads usually is pretty minimal.
Not my experience. Tokyo gets as gridlocked as anywhere else during rush hour, and they're constantly building new roads as well (including e.g. a fourth expressway ringroad).
Under JR's definitions 150% capacity means people have enough space to read a newspaper. It's 200%+ that is the image of Japanese people being pushed onto the train by the white gloved staff.
neither agreeing nor disagreeing - there's actually a design passenger count for train cars like any vehicles, rarely mentioned, and percent capacity is relative to that number.
The Yamanote is mostly quadruple-track, although the commuter line uses only two of those. Trains run every two minutes at peak hour, and each train has 11 carriages, giving the system ridiculous capacity.
the commuter line only uses two of those but this is a bit misleading because there are other parallel rail lines over much of its length running right alongside.
there used to be not as many, but the Yamanote was so overcrowded that they constructed additional pairs of tracks to reduce the amount of people who needed to change trains onto the Yamanote.
and yes they did. aside from the keihin touhoku line that's already running in parallel with yamanote line, JR East added a new track called ueno-tokyo line about 10 years ago. And the trains on the new lines are mostly 15-cars (with 2 double decker cars!). Note that for passengers travelling north-south they can also take the west route (going through shinjuku instead of tokyo), and there're also 3 parallel lines on the west. JR runs on narrow gauge which takes less space, and is cheaper to construct. Maybe this is one reason to make these expansion project fesible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ueno%E2%80%93Tokyo_Line
> I always thought trains (light rail, high speed, what ever) were so much better than cars.
Do you honestly think that standing in a crowd with other people's smell all over you is better than being in your personal space, with music and AC turned to your taste, alone, sitting in a comfortable place that you adjusted for yourself?
You must be the kind of person who thinks bland rice and unseasoned chicken breasts are better than all other foods, just because of how price-efficient they are.
In the car you have to pay attention to the road, you have a lot of responsibility and put yourself and others at risk if you don't pay attention. You always have to return to the place you left your car and usually have to pay to park it. I really love public transport and outside peak hours i usually get a seat so I can read a book. If I have to drive, all that time is completely wasted because the attention paying precludes doing anything useful with my time.
I really don’t see the connection between preferring public transport and preferring to eat unseasoned food. The latter isn’t even much cheaper than seasoned food. Also chicken breast is very expensive, maybe you should have said veganism or something
The original station is here https://www.ejrcf.or.jp/shinbashi/index.html just a few blocks from Shimbashi station. They built a new building there thoug the original platform is part of the building and a few sections of original track are encased in glass
Great set of photos, but man do I wish they had been able to capture just the sheer flow of people during busy times through the stations. These pictures don't do it justice.
Being part of the hundreds of thousands of people walking through Shinjuku at any point in time is something else you are merely a fish in a stream.
I only recently discovered Densha De GO! and apparently the most recent game in the series is based around this very line. Very interesting to see these photos, I love the vibe, and it makes me appreciate all the detail that went into the game.
One of the scoring metrics in Densha De GO is how accurate the stopping location is. I watched a friend play the game, who was commonly stopping less than 5mm from the proper location.
I lived in Tokyo and literally didn’t know that the Yamanote line was so old, thanks HN! It runs so well, so much quieter than e.g. the BART. Insane that the loop was fully connected by the 1920s.
If you do a bike/walk along the Yamanote, you’ll see TONS of small restaurants and grottos tucked in the spaces between the train tracks and the ground, for miles and miles. They have a great, cozy vibe, and are highly trafficked, usually really fast service from a vending machine outside to maximize use of space. And sometimes astonishingly delicious.
It's a Ship of Theseus thing since JR continuously upgrade their stations / stock. I would argue that Tokyo Metro show it's age more. Despite the dirtiness of London's Tube, I think it shows a bit more character in this aspect.
Wholly unrelated but one thing that struck me about the photos here is that almost all the people in them are looking at phones. This was a little crazy to me in the times I have visited, when I would get on the train and there was this eerie silence as almost every person was looking at their phone. No real point to my anecdote, just an observation.
Also the stained glass(maybe just acrylic or something) at Mejiro Station in the last photo is absolutely beautiful
>one thing that struck me about the photos here is that almost all the people in them are looking at phones. This was a little crazy to me in the times I have visited, when I would get on the train and there was this eerie silence as almost every person was looking at their phone.
What do you expect them to do, stare at the wall? Phones are ubiquitous and people like to use them for reading books or manga or whatever while they're on their commute.
I kind of get the snark, but I'm also not sure of an alternative. Extreme population density of Tokyo likely owe a lot to acquired ignorance. No way our brains don't go total schezophrenic being highly social all day long inside the Yamanote loop.
There's no real alternative: you either stare at people's shoes, or the ceiling, or you stare at your phone. The trains are crowded so it's basically impossible (during those times of the day) to look anywhere else, and staring at people is rude. Looking out the window isn't practical either: the seats are facing inwards, and there's people on the other side blocking the opposite window.
You still have to look somewhere. Lots of people certainly do listen to music, judging by all the people wearing wireless earbuds I see, but if they're not staring at their phone, they're staring at their lap, or sleeping.
It's not quite this bad on uncrowded trains though. We're talking about the Yamanote line which is generally very crowded.
I'm sure there are alternatives since mass transit has been around since before phones. The belief that the only option is to stare at a screen is a little bit depressing actually. I am not saying I do not do similar things, what struck me was that most people did not seem to have any awareness of what was going on around them. I would observe people on the train and not once did anyone look up. I guess the world outside of the phone is a pretty boring place. /s
>I'm sure there are alternatives since mass transit has been around since before phones.
Japanese novels are sold in small, pocket sized volumes because this was the only way to properly read on the packed trains before the smartphone replaced them all. If you were on a train with a lot more students, you'd notice a lot of them studying with similarly small volumes.
>what struck me was that most people did not seem to have any awareness of what was going on around them.
Something about being in mind numbingly large crowds packed uncomfortably close (like, your face could potentially be in someone's armpit) makes you a bit numb to the crowds.
>I would observe people on the train and not once did anyone look up.
1) You could end up staring at other people. Big no-no. Rude to stare, rude to stare aimlessly, rude to just observe people. Especially because the seats face each other, so staring out at the window without also staring at a fellow passenger is rude. Ever see someone just kind of "sleeping" on the train the minute they get on? Yeah, that's most likely just to close their eyes so they don't end up staring at someone.
2) You could end up staring at something unpleasant. When the trains become packed, you will most likely just be staring at the back of someone's head. Or chest. Or armpit. Or if you're sitting down, you will most likely be staring at someone's pelvic area because the convention is to stand FACING the chair in front of you if you're standing in the middle of the car (I still find this so strange but oh well so goes convention).
3) Plenty of people who find spots at the doors do spend time looking out at the city. Because they can safely do so without inadvertently staring at someone.
4) At some point the entire experience becomes mundane. To you, a tourist, you are experiencing a unique moment. To commuters, it's another Tuesday on the Yamanote line -- they can probably sleepwalk their commute if need be.
Edit: I want to add one more thing, but people ARE aware. I dropped a 100-yen coin once on the way out of the train without realizing, and immediately someone ran up to me with the coin. I think a good way of thinking about the whole thing is that people are aware, but in a way that seems like they're not. But if you're ever on the train again, watch closely -- people are keeping close eyes on who gets up, who gets on, and who is leaving and accordingly makes room.
>Or if you're sitting down, you will most likely be staring at someone's pelvic area because the convention is to stand FACING the chair in front of you if you're standing in the middle of the car (I still find this so strange but oh well so goes convention).
I don't know exactly why the convention is this way, but imagine if it was the reverse: you'd have someone's butt in your face, and if they fart...
>I'm sure there are alternatives since mass transit has been around since before phones.
Of course: before phones became common, everyone read books on the trains. Why exactly is this depressing? Now, instead of reading manga in a physical book, they're reading manga on their phone.
>what struck me was that most people did not seem to have any awareness of what was going on around them. I would observe people on the train and not once did anyone look up.
When you're packed in a crowded train where most people are standing and there's barely enough room for everyone, "observing people" just isn't something you do. Most people aren't tall enough to see anything anyway.
As someone who has to regularly commute one of these lines… doing “nothing” does become very dull after a while.
I think this thread is a little overblown. Some people will do nothing, read a book, listen to music, or nap. But the easiest thing to fall back to is your phone, especially for a monotonous daily commute.
I do at least try to be productive when using the phone, such as practicing my Japanese. But I think it’s totally normal to stare at the ground and listen to music etc.
I love doing nothing on the train to work. One of the few times a day I can sit and think my own organic thoughts for a decent chunk of time. There’s something to be said about how modern society sees people fill every free second with staring at content probably designed to influence you against your best interests in some way.
I was a little disappointed they didn’t include a picture of Tokyo Station in Chiyoda. The place is incredible – the original building is over 100 years old, the complex connects the Yamanote line with half a dozen other lines including Shinkansen that go across Japan, and the retail areas put many American airports to shame.
>the retail areas put many American airports to shame.
That's a very, very low bar. The retail areas in American airports are universally horrible, because they're all so ridiculously overpriced. I'm not sure whether it's some special airport tax or what, but the prices for anything inside an American airport are always horribly inflated compared to the exact same thing outside the airport. The only reason people eat anything there is because they're hungry and have no other choices.
By contrast, here in Japan, the shops and restaurants inside stations and airports are all competitively priced. Going to a restaurant in the train station is perfectly normal, and you're not going to get a better price just by leaving the station.
Yamanote is one of the best passenger train lines in the world, when you take into consideration the number of passengers, the quality of service, the cost, and the economic impact. Some of us think that is beautiful.
I always thought trains (light rail, high speed, what ever) were so much better than cars. Have more traffic? Just add more trains, no extra rails needed. Yamanote line rush hour showed me how effective that is AND how you might need more rail eventually. Rush hour had a train there every ~2 minutes and they were still packed.
Still better than sitting in stop and go car traffic. Can't wait to go back!