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kuczmama | 2 years ago

I lived in Tokyo for a little over 3 years from 2017 to 2020, and this video brings back some really fond memories.

Here's a few fun facts about Japan's trains:

- Every single station has a different song that plays. Here is a sampling of some: https://youtu.be/470_2wt2t1o

- In the deep subway stations they pump in bird sounds to make it not feel so deep

- The trains can be paid for with a specific card called the Suica card and/or pasmo card. This can also be used as a debit card at various shops. But recently due to the chip shortage these cards have been harder to get.

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jwells89|2 years ago

> The trains can be paid for with a specific card called the Suica card and/or pasmo card. This can also be used as a debit card at various shops. But recently due to the chip shortage these cards have been harder to get.

Something to note is that if you have a recent-ish iPhone (iPhone 8 or later), Apple Watch (Series 3 or later), Pixel (4 or later), or Pixel Watch, regardless of where they're sold those all have the Japan-specific bits in their NFC hardware required for the digital wallet version of Suica and other Japanese IC cards. For other Android manufacturers (Samsung, etc), you'll have to get ahold of Japanese models for that capability.

ranma42|2 years ago

> Pixel (4 or later), or Pixel Watch,

Unfortunately I could not get Suica to work on my Pixel 7a, while a fellow traveller with an iPhone had no issue. So AFAICT for Pixels you sadly still need a Japanese device to use Suica in Google Wallet.

kansai|2 years ago

Worth noting that if you have a US-issued visa card, you cannot use it to pay for IC via Apple pay.

yellow_lead|2 years ago

Garmin (Japanese model) watches have it too

murphyslaw|2 years ago

What I found really strange when I went there for a few weeks, was that the entire network ground to a halt before midnight. And this for a city of 25 million people.

Which I guess is why I found people sleeping in their suits near Shinjuku station. I still wonder where all the bar staff and their customers went to after closing up for the night. I asked the hotel staff and they said they could sleep on-site.

po|2 years ago

Two important side-effect of this:

First is that it drives people to head home earlier, and then they often stop at a second place in their local neighborhood. I honestly think part of why there are still bars in the smaller neighborhoods outside of Tokyo is because of this. You can feel a bar empty out around midnight, and the people who stay behind are all locals. In NYC, those people (the ones from NJ who had to catch the PATH at least) would be derided as "bridge and tunnel" folk, but here it's most people.

Secondly, it gives the subway a full 5 hours or so to do maintenance and repairs. In NYC, they were constantly re-routing trains during late night hours to do this kind of work. It is pretty disruptive for passengers and they come up with crazy workarounds like taking a bus between stations which really don't even make sense.

kalleboo|2 years ago

It also means that the first train in the morning out of certain stations is an odd mix of early morning businessmen in suits on their way to work and overnight clubbers/partyers on their drunken way home

jeemusu|2 years ago

> - In the deep subway stations they pump in bird sounds to make it not feel so deep The bird sounds are for visually impared people, to let them know they are approaching a staircase.

Taganov|2 years ago

I always thought the bird sounds were more of a guide for blind people, to give them a reference point for where the platform is, because I've heard them on above ground stations too.

matsimitsu|2 years ago

The bird sounds are indeed a guidance for blind people (to the escalators/elevators/exit).

1024core|2 years ago

Yeah, those bird chirps threw me off in the beginning: I thought some bird(s) has set up nests in there. But then I realized how uniform the calls were and thus must be electronic.