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Comment by gadilif | Hacker News Reader

I don't know. Personal opinion follows, YMMV: I've been to Tokyo recently. The subway system is much less convenient than, let's say, NYC. There are multiple operators, you need to purchase tickets separately to each one, it's not obvious for a tourist to understand the reasoning, and you can't pay with credit card (in 2023...), You need to either purchase a special card from a desk, or pay cash. In 2023. I consider that a hassle (it actually surprised me, I envisioned Tokyo as the city of the future. It is indeed, only it seems to be the future of 1993, sadly not of 2023).

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> you can't pay with credit card (in 2023...), You need to either purchase a special card from a desk, or pay cash. In 2023

Erm, mate "in 2023" you can ALSO put a SUICA card on your phone's electronic wallet. ;-p

Frankly, give me Japan's rail system any day of the week. You can get across Tokyo, with multiple changes, and plan your arrival to the minute. Try that in NYC, London or any other city !

And as for the Shinkansen, it puts most other country's railway systems to shame.

Fun fact (IIRC): The headway (time between trains) is consistently down to something like 1m50s during rush-hour on Tokyo subway. It's nuts how freaking punctual the system is !

> You can get across Tokyo, with multiple changes, and plan your arrival to the minute.

Except you can’t? You can know your arrival to the minute, but you can’t actually change it to the minute.

Which isn’t actually that much more useful than other systems. Occasionally you will be able to rely on cutting it close by scheduling your ride to arrive right before an apt, but most of the time you are basically in the same boat as in other cities: you are planning to arrive 10-30 minutes early because otherwise you would be late.

> Except you can’t? You can know your arrival to the minute, but you can’t actually change it to the minute.

I see the pedants have arrived.

I suspect you knew exactly what I meant. No further comment.

I understand what you meant, my point is that it isn’t actually that valuable.

I was clarifying so that my point could be made. I’m sorry that it rubbed you the wrong way.

I've lived in Prague for 15 years and never seen a late subway connection. Even village busses are 99% on time. NYC is a shitty yardstick.

Tokyo IS in a bit of a bind right now around IC cards for visitors.

Because of a "chip shortage" suica and passmo cards are not being sold right now (except for commuter cards)

Mobile suica and passmo only works on phones that have felica hardware and licenses. Recent iphones do worldwide, but most(all?) androids sold outside of Japan do not have this available.

You could have bought a Suica or PASMO card (whichever, didn't matter), max it out, and not think about it for a week or so.

That's what I did with my parents a while ago, they even paid their small stuff at the convenience store with it. I'm not sure they even remembered how cash looked like during their trip.

To your point, yes, the railway system is clearly the futur, almost solely because of the Felica cosystem.

> There are multiple operators

This is because there's just a lot more rail. Tokyo has 3x the density of stations (0.61 per mile vs 0.2) and 10x the amount of track (2929 miles vs 248) as NYC. Tokyo is just a much much bigger city.

> You need to either purchase a special card from a desk, or pay cash

Japan has been on the train card system for over 20 years. The same card works for all the operators. You can put it on your phone (if you have a Japanese phone). People don't use credit cards in Japan at nearly the same frequency we do in the West, so the train card acts as a debit card in a way.

Buying a card is slightly more inconvenient than using a contactless credit card, I'll give you that. But you get cleaner, safer more timely trains, way more stations, and way more destinations.

Suica fixes that. As for NYC being "more convenient", I would trade whatever it is you went through for clean and on time subway/train. I spend the least amount of time on the subway in NYC as I can.

It's not about the objective(?) reality, but public perception. In my Japan days (1980s-90s), American companies were having a terrible time marketing their goods in Japan, because of the Japanese (often wrong) presumption that foreign goods were inferior.

It's true there are inconveniences in Japanese life, but they are generally very predictable. What the Japanese hate is unpredictable inconveniences.

they are predictable because they grew up in japan.

they just xenophobic -- literally the fear of the unknown.

No they're not stop making things up. Most Japanese people and families cannot afford to travel. Wages in japan have not risen since the 90s and have actually gone down with inflation.

https://nbakki.hatenablog.com/entry/Changes_Wage-Workers_Sal...

ironically saying Japanese are xenophobic is xenophobic

For the three weeks I was there in March I bought a suica card at the airport and never had to think about fairs for subway or buses for the rest of the the trip. I also used it to pay fir food at convienance stores and roadside stops. That seems pretty darn convenient to me.

i routinely needed to go to an atm to withdraw cash to load up my suica while i was there. I dont understand how the Japanese people find that acceptable.

You can use your suica/pasmo on your phone, and recharge using Apple or Google pay. Works really well.

This is only if your phone has Sony Felica hardware and a license to use it. New iPhones do worldwide but android devices, including Pixels IIRC generally only have this available phones sold in Japan.

Also, there are just in the last year or two increasing restrictions on using foreign cards for charging transit cards in Japan, presumably to prevent churning.

> or pay cash

Now that is a world class invention. A damn sight better than Amsterdam or Brussels that have done away with cash on public transport. You are required to pay for an rfid or nfc card in order to get through the barriers. No more complementary tickets with other things.

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