Journey in Trains at morning time is a horrible experience. But Trains are maintained well in time and it is convenient to reach at office in time. Daily I have to commute from Higashi Ojima to Kiba to reach to the office well before 9:00 AM. From Higashi Ojima station to Morishita I have to travel in Toei shinjuku line. From Morishita I will change to Toei Oedo line to reach Monzen Nakacho. From Monzen Nakacho again I have to change to Tokyo Metro Tozai line to reach at Kiba. The whole process, starting from my apartment near to the Highashi Ojima station to the office at Kiba takes approximately 35 minutes.
Today in the heavily crowded train literally I was pushed out at Morishita station. On the platform I could notice a crowd helping an old man who fell unconscious. It is not a surprise that today it happened, but people were helping him to take to the first aid.
Eventhough the trains are heavily crowded, Japanese people are well disciplined and follow the queuee system. Otherwise there would be many casualties for daily news. Tokyo's train system is so convenient that we don't need to keep any car for daily living as the trains reaches literally everywhere. My first experience with Tokyo train was on the day I landed in Japan and coming out from Narita Airport to the hotel at Katsutadai with my boss. He showed and taught me how to take a train ticket from Tokyo stations at the Narita airport subway.
At Katsutadai station, in order to go out, he told me to take the ticket from my pocket. I started searching everywhere and could not find. I thought, there is no need to keep the ticket once it is purchased. But fortunately, I got it from my bag as unknowingly I kept the ticket in the bag and forgot about it. It was my first experience with such a system to come out of the station by putting the ticket at the passenger exits.
The commutation in Tokyo metro trains is very convenient, except in the morning, especially in the trains going to Tokyo city. Trains towards Tokyo will be crowded, but manytimes it prompted me to think, if this same crowd was in any other part of the world, the situation would have been different for sure. The public discipline and the authority's vigilance keeps the trains well maintained and passenger friendly.
Bala-san forwarded the Tokyo metro map, which I used to keep everywhere I go. It is a useful guide for transfering the trains to reach the destination without fail. One good thing about Tokyo metro is that even if we miss our destination to get down, we can get down at next station and just change the platform, and return back without paying extra money. But it won't be a wise idea if we start travel between stations to and fro in the same line without exiting in order to make the Tokyo metro loose money !!!
The Tokyo Subway is one of the world's most extensive subway systems. Tokyo Subway’s networks are operated by Tokyo Metro Co. Ltd with 8 lines and Tokyo Metropolitan Bureau of Transportation (Toei in Japanese) with 4 lines. The lines are called Toei Subway.
Tokyo Subway and Japan Rail (JR) are separate and charges a separate fee from the Toei and other private lines.
There is a widespread complaint from many corners that the separate administration of two metro systems in the same city makes inconveniences to passengers.
Tokyo metro’s Shinjuku station has the reputation of being the world's busiest, and second largest railway station. This station has an estimated traffic of 2 million passengers per day.
Generally I use, Shinjuku line upto Morishita, Toei Oedo line upto Monzen Nakacho and then Tozai line to Kiba. To reach OVTA to attend our Japanese lessons, I use Tozai line upto Nishi Funabashi and from there JR lines.
I have observed some unique characters of Japanese people during my daily commutation to office and back to apartment. Yes, I will post them one day in this blog.
The following links will be useful for newcomers to Tokyo:
Tokyo Metro
Tokyo Metro map in English
Toei Lines
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