• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Tipping is not necessary. A 20% surcharge is added after 11pm or for taxis summoned by radio. There may also be an added charge if you summon the taxi by phone or reserve the taxi. Finally, taxis can usually take up to four adult passengers (one person can sit in the front). Drivers are sometimes willing to bend the rules for small children.

Train & Subway

Several cities, especially Osaka and Tokyo, have mass transit rail systems comprising a loop line around the city centre and radial lines into the central stations and the subway system. Subway systems operate in Fukuoka, Kōbe, Kyoto, Nagoya, Osaka, Sapporo, Sendai, Tokyo and Yokohama. They are usually the fastest and most convenient way to get around the city.

For subways and local trains, you’ll most likely have to buy your ticket from a machine. They’re pretty easy to understand even if you can’t read kanji as there is a diagram explaining the routes; from this you can find out what your fare should be. If you can’t work the fare out, a solution is to buy a ticket for the lowest fare. When you finish your trip, go to the fare-adjustment machine (seisan-ki) or counter before you reach the exit gate and pay the excess. JR train stations and most subway stations not only have their names posted above the platform in kanji and romaji but also the names of the preceding and following stations.

Tram

Many cities have tram lines – particularly Nagasaki, Kumamoto and Kagoshima on Kyūshū; Kōchi and Matsuyama on Shikoku; and Hakodate on Hokkaidō. These are excellent ways of getting around as they combine many of the advantages of bus travel (eg good views of the passing parade) with those of subways (it’s easy to work out where you’re going). Fares work on similar systems to bus travel and there are also unlimited-travel day tickets available.

Return to beginning of chapter

TRAIN

Japanese rail services are among the best in the world: they are fast, frequent, clean and comfortable. The services range from small local lines to the shinkansen super-expresses or ‘bullet trains’, which have become a symbol of modern Japan.

The ‘national’ railway is Japan Railways (JR; www.japanrail.com), which is actually a number of separate private rail systems providing one linked service. The JR system covers the country from one end to the other and also provides local services around major cities like Tokyo and Osaka. There is more than 20,000km of railway line and about 20,000 services daily. JR operates the shinkansen network throughout Japan. Shinkansen lines operate on separate tracks from regular trains, and, in some places, the shinkansen stations are a fair distance from the main JR station (as is the case in Osaka). JR also operates buses and ferries, and convenient ticketing can combine more than one form of transport.

In addition to JR services, there is a huge network of private railways in Japan. Each large city usually has at least one private train line that services that city and the surrounding area, or connects that city to nearby cities.

Types of Trains

The slowest trains stopping at all stations are called futsū or kaku-eki-teisha. A step up from this is the kyūkō (ordinary express), which stops at only a limited number of stations. A variation on the kyūkō trains is the kaisoku (rapid) service (usually operating on JR lines). Finally, the fastest regular (non-shinkansen) trains are the tokkyū (limited express) services, which are sometimes known as shin-kaisoku (again, usually operating on JR lines).

SHINKANSEN

The fastest and best-known train services are JR’s shinkansen, Japan’s famed ‘bullet trains’. Shinkansen reach speeds of up to 300km/h and some experimental models have gone significantly faster. In addition to being incredibly fast, shinkansen are also incredibly safe: in more than 30 years of operation, there has never been a fatality.

The service efficiency starts even before you board the train. Your ticket indicates your carriage and seat number, and platform