Train Travel

Always make sure you have a map of the train system in your pocket. The extensive JR network covers much of Tokyo, as well as other are Osaka, Kyoto, and other areas of Japan, however, there are also many other railway companies that run their own lines. In Tokyo some of the ones you might run into are the Yokohama municipal subway (Yokohama Shiei chikatetsu), the Tokyu (Tokyu Toyoko) the Keikyu (Keihin Kyuko), the Tokyo subway lines, the Den-en-toshi line, the Sobu line. Each company will carry its own map, however, an comprehensive map showing all of the lines together will be invaluable and can be purchased at bookstores. They are also available in English.

The major train stations in big cities are now quadrilingual, with station names and general directions in Japanese, English, Korean and Chinese languages, while most of the smaller stations are in Japanese and English. This is a shame in a way for people wanting to improve their kanji skills, as stations are an everyday thing you see, follow a repetitive route giving you time to memorize the names of your favourite and neighbouring areas, and they contain some common kanji. Another good thing about them is that names of areas are often descriptive, for example the touristy “Sakuragicho” in Yokohama means Sakura Tree Town, “Hokkaido” contains the characters for North Sea Road, etc. So it might be worth ignoring the English in order to improve your ability to reading Japanese.