Transportation in Japan
Transportation in Japan
Subway stations tend to be quite easy to spot, because of the blue sign they always have hanging off of their enterences
The main way of transportation in Japan
is by subway or by train.
Subway/Trains
Inside of the train/subway terminals, there will be little machines plugged into the wall that are used for the purchasing of tickets or cards.
The one in the picture is an old one for the trains, more commonly in newer terminals will have touch screens
How tickets are fed into the machine
After purchasing a ticket or a card,
you have to pass through an electric turnstile.
on the other side of the turnstile, tends to be all of the subway trains or all of the JR trains (not both) and depending on which turnstile you entered from, the closer or farther away you will be from the train you want to ride.
If you are going to transfer between train lines ,in most cases
you do not exit from the turnstiles and instead
follow the signs and find the rail from the underground.
There are some occasions when a train terminal will be
under construction and you will have to exit
through the turnstile and find a different entrance.
During my study abroad journey,
I had to do that once at Shibuya station.
Buying passes
In the subway terminals, there will be pink ticket machines. you can use those machines to make a PASMO card. In train terminals, there will be green ticket machines, which can be used to get a SUICA card.
In the pink ticket machines, you can also purchase commuter passes. KCP gave me a Commuter pass from 7/18th until the 8/17th which cost them 7000 yen ($70) that allowed you to get on and off 4 specific stopes on the way from the school to the dorm, as many times as we wished.
The difference between the cards is that one is pink and the other is green.
Commuter passes are fed into the machine like tickets are, unless you upload it into a train card.
Most rail lines will have a map that shows its stops and how long it is estimated in between, and the root express trains take.
which stations share lines with other trains
Express Train Root
station name
Lines symbole
Lines name
There will also be an electric signboard in most stations, which tell you which train is coming next and how long it should take for it to arrive. It tends to rotate between an English version and a Japanese version.
Local means that its a train that stops at every stop on a line.
Express means it skips unpopular stops.
The map above tells you which those are.
