Trains of Japan

I just got back from a 3-week backpacking trip through the major cities of Japan. I spent time in Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka. Japan had been at the top of my list for so long and I’m glad I finally got to go and experience it. It was one of my favorite trips I’ve ever done and I learned a lot when I was there. Coming back from the trip, I was left asking why the rest of society doesn’t function the way Japan does. In many ways, they’re miles ahead of the rest of the world (and a little backwards in some).

Being an isle empire cut off from the rest of the world for most of human history, Japan’s culture and way of life evolved independently without too much mingling with the rest of the world until the past millennium or so. It was a group of nomadic cultures and tribes that got fused into one nation by a military shogunate which then handed over the rule back to an imperial government, only to later turn into a democracy after World War II. It then developed new technologies at breakneck speeds and became a world leader in the electronics and automotive industries. It’s hailed as something of a futurist utopia in modern culture, and for the most part, I found that to be true.

As a designer traveling solo, I tend to spend a lot of time paying attention to everyday things that locals take for granted and may not appreciate the existence of. Tokyo’s public transit system in particular had me wowed the entire time. Every train station has markings across the entire length of its platforms indicating exactly which train car would stop at what spot on the platform. People queued up in orderly lines at the markings and waited. The trains have special cars (reserved seating, priority seating, women only), so these markings serve as a preliminary indicator to ensure that people don’t get on the wrong car. As a secondary benefit, this system also allows you to sync up with a friend who’s already riding the train you’re waiting for. The friend texts you what car of the train they’re in, you wait in the station where that car will stop (down to the specific door), get on, and meet up. I did this once and was floored by how impossible this would be to pull off in Boston’s MBTA subway.

There’s other little touches inside the trains too, like variable heights for the dangling handholds ensuring that people of all heights will be able to reach them, unique arrival and departure bird chirping audio chimes for every single train station (seriously), and special audio cues for doors opening/closing. Without speaking a word of Japanese, you can condition your brain to recognize and react to these sounds as you ride the same lines over and over again. Even the transit card that you use for getting into and out of train stations can be used at convenience stores, fast food restaurants, and local supermarkets to buy and sell goods. It basically doubles as a credit card. It works in buses as well and works across all of the major Japanese cities.

And then there’s the train stations. Oh man, the train stations. I got lost for an entire hour in Shinjuku Station the first time I was there. I was supposed to make a simple transfer from one subway line to another, but I ended up going on a wild adventure seven levels underneath the Tokyo streets trying to find my transfer. I don’t blame the station, it actually had really good signage. It was my own preconceived assumptions about how train stations in the West worked which caused me to get lost. Shinjuku Station is a massive shopping mall, a gigantic food court, a maze of underground passageways, and a multi-leveled labyrinth of platforms hosting a dizzying number of trains and rail operators. It has over 200 exits. Yes, two hundred. Everywhere you went, it was a mad rush of people speed-walking from one platform to another. It blew my mind to think about the fact that this what the place was like all the time. It was such an intense sensory overload that at one point, I stopped and chugged two entire bottles of water to re-orient myself and take some deep breaths.

As time went on, I got very accustomed to the train stations and how tightly integrated they were into everyday life. Everyone used it. Tokyo is built around its subway system. There’s so many underground walkways connecting the nearby stations that it felt like there was a whole different side of Tokyo under its street level. Some of the best ramen and sushi I had were in train stations. Restaurants are built for speedy food delivery and quick food consumption. The Tokyo Metro felt like a very natural extension of the city itself, and that’s what made it the very best subway system I’ve ever used anywhere in the world. And it wasn’t just Tokyo. Kyoto and Osaka had the same thing going for them as well (but thankfully, they were far less crowded).

So why is Japan’s transit system so good? Why aren’t the train stations of the rest of the world like this? An obvious reason is government investment in the rail infrastructure. Japan was one of the first nations in the world to debut a high-speed rail line with the Shinkansen (“bullet train”), and is now installing maglev technology to their most frequently traveled routes. Another big reason is the nation’s geography itself. Japan is a very densely populated country with its population somewhat evenly spread across all its regions. There are different industries concentrated in specific regions of Japan which are forced to cross-pollinate and disperse its people across the entire country, both for business and pleasure. This means there’s always a high frequency of people looking to get from one place to another, and mass transit is the best and most efficient way of transporting such large groups of people. It’s a small enough nation that a handful of long-distance rail lines will cover most of its population.

A system like this would never work in the United States because it’s geographically far too large to justify a return on investment for building out the infrastructure, and it would never build enough of a consistent ridership due to its low population density (and also because it’s got a very car-centric culture in general). Coming back to the United States, I find myself longing for easy access to public transit and am consistently disappointed when I don’t find it. The eastern seaboard of the US has so much potential for tightly integrated rail networks, but the American car culture will never allow it to happen. Amtrak only operates one profitable line in the entire country, and that’s the Northeast Corridor line which runs from Boston to Washington, D.C. It’s cheaper to just fly everywhere else. Europe lends itself better to a high-speed rail network due to the right population density and distance between cities, but it’s hindered by geopolitical complications in funding the rail lines because it would cross way too many international borders across countries with varying levels of economic stability.

So yeah, my favorite and most enjoyable part of Japan were its trains. I rode them every single day and got so used to them being a part of life that I was constantly daydreaming about how incredible it would be if every nation in the world had these. In a world accelerating towards climate doom faster than ever, Japan is positioned better than any other nation to adapt to it. Yes, I say that because it’s a nation that has suffered extreme flooding, intense heat waves, massive tsunamis, deadly earthquakes, crazy volcanic eruptions, sudden freak typhoons, and even nuclear detonations. Its trains are its lifeblood and the government invests a lot to constantly rebuild its infrastructure to resist the most insane threats from mother nature (as well as mankind). I have no doubt that no matter what happens, they’ll continue to invest in the railroads and keep innovating on the future of public transit, staying five steps ahead of the rest of the world in terms of speed, efficiency, and ease of access.