Even More Trivia: Trains of Japan

From my travels on the various Tokyo metropolitan train services I noted a number of interesting things.

Lots of Trains

The metropolitan Tokyo service is extensive

First of all, there are lots of them. The railways in Tokyo appear to be serviced by many different companies including the off shoots of the JNR (Japanese National Railway) which was privatised in 1987. In many cases there will be multiple train operators servicing the same route or line which leads to competition for customers. e.g. Narita airport is serviced by two high speed services into central Tokyo.

I was also surprised to discover that Tokyo is one of seven cities in Japan which has its own underground services. The others being Fukuoka, Kobe, Kyoto, Nagoya, Osaka, Sapporo, Sendai and Yokohama.

It then follows that a lot of people use this large service. Japan is only second to India for the number of passengers who use rail services each year at 7.3 billion passengers per year (from a population of 127 million gives an average 54 journeys per person per year)

Really Punctual

There is a popular conception Japanese railways are among the most punctual in the world. I found this to be the case whilst I was there. Metro services were really regular every few minutes.

This video shows some of the supporting services and training that goes into being a train driver.

The high speed services are also equally on time. The average delay on the Tokaido Shinkansen in 2012 was only 0.6 minutes. Impressive for a service that departs every few minutes from each station. For example 323 high speed Shinkansen services depart Tokyo each day. See this video for detail on how a Shinkansen is cleaned in 7 minutes.

Tokaido Shinkansen (東海道新幹線) connects Japan's three largest metropolitan areas (Tokyo/Yokohama, Nagoya and Osaka/Kyoto)

Clean and Polite

The metro trains I traveled on were certainly very clean and spacious. Even looking through historical trains at the train museum I noted that spacious and comfortable were common themes even on the oldest carriages.

They also have a fair amount of public information signs advising people how to behave on the train as you might expect for a busy train.

See here for more Japanese humour

Train Drivers

The train drivers and conductors I noted seemed to talk to themselves and do a lot of pointing (even the driver on the model railway did it too).

This is part of their training on avoiding making mistakes whilst they are operating the vehicle. When performing actions in the train, each is accompanied by describing the action and pointing. This technique has been in use in Japanese railways for over a hundred years and has been found to reduce accidents by 85% according to the Railway Technical Research Institute.

Modern

We got ourselves some pre-paied contactless payment cards called Pasmo which we used whilst we were there. Just like Oyster in London, however I later found that there is also a completely compatible and competing scheme called Suica which you can also use. These payment systems extend further than just rail travel to include shopping in some shops, vending machines and at the airport as well.

Some handrails also had braile on them as well.

Another detail I noted was the bird sounds on the platforms. The platforms in Tokyo that I stood on all played a recorded sound of a bird tweeting. This was placed at both entrances to the platform, and I concluded was a blind hearing aid.

Conclusion

Overall I think Japan is quite pleased with its rail network, and it was certainly a good experience to use it. My son was particularly impressed to find a Japan railway toy in his happy meal.