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Comment by kuczmama | Hacker News Reader

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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> 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.

Garmin (Japanese model) watches have it too

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

You can however buy a physical card (at a few of the major stations) then transfer it to your phone. Once it's there you still can't reload it directly, but you can use a recharge station (with cash) - just put your phone down where the card would go.

Sadly due to semiconductor shortage, physical Suica cards are very hard to come by atm: https://www.timeout.com/tokyo/news/sale-of-pasmo-and-suica-c...

FWIW I've been using Suica on a Japanese Garmin smart watch and refilling it with Google Pay on an international card without too many problems (and before that with Apple Pay with the same card on iPhone/Apple Watch), although there are probably some gotchas (Apple Pay at POS seems to be pretty hit and miss for in Tokyo and I've never figured out why).

Oh wow, that sucks. Glad I was able to get one when I was there in March. Tourists can still use https://www.jreast.co.jp/multi/en/welcomesuica/welcomesuica.... though it seemed like a worse deal than a regular card when I was there.

Outside of Tokyo you can still easily get one of the other regional IC cards [1]. They can now all be used everywhere in Japan including the Tokyo subway, provided you don't start travel in one region and end it in another.

[1] https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2359_003.html

I have a EU Garmin - is there a way to get Suica?!

The Japanese IC systems all use FeliCa, which not all devices support. I believe Garmin only has it enabled (unsure if this is licensing or hardware) in their East Asian models (Hong Kong's Octopus cards also FeliCa).

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FeliCa

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIFARE

Same with EU-issued visa cards! As I learned when visiting in July.

You can charge up the iphone suica balance using cash in the machines... a bit weird but that's what I did.

Getting back home first thing I did was get a mastercard to complement my visa, as it seems EU mastercards still works to charge Suica.

It would be interesting to read about why this happened, it feels like there are interesting payment processing details to learn from it :)

As a test I just successfully charged my Suica in my iPhone (card was issued in 2019) with my EU-issued Visa (issued 2021) through Apple Pay. Is there maybe some another condition that may influence whether it works or not?

Edit: this article explains it: https://atadistance.net/2023/03/15/troubleshooting-apple-pay... My Visa is actually listed as one of those which still work ("Some VISA debit cards work for adding money to Suica (DKB, Hyundai Zero, Revolut works depending on the country of the account, no other issuers confirmed).")

Really? Interesting! I tried with at least two different EU (Swedish) visa cards back in July and none of the cards I had worked.

Not in Japan anymore otherwise I would have tried again.

This article, linked to from a sibling comment here, seems to indicate it shouldn't work for you :) https://atadistance.net/2023/07/15/foreign-visa-cards-blocke...

edit: ha. you read the same articles better than I did.

Yes as per the article I'm luckily an outlier. :) But this is a very unfortunate situation especially in combination with the stopped sale of physical cards. I still have an old PASMO which I used for a commuter pass in 2016-2017 so I may be able to use this card when I visit Japan again next year. Well, unless these cards expire. Not sure about that.

Is it known whether this foreign-VISA situation is supposed to resolve and get fixed eventually? The article didn't mention whether the current situation is on purpose or an error. I fear that if this is on purpose it might actually get worse and other foreign cards eventually stop working as well.

>Not in Japan anymore otherwise I would have tried again.

I'm neither. Does this change anything? I could charge from home directly in ¥. But the card is from DKB so expected to work.

Here's an English blog that looks like it focuses a lot on Suica/Japanese contactless payments goes a bit more in depth both on the Visa issue and the FeliCa/NFC-F shortage: https://atadistance.net/2023/08/01/how-long-will-the-suica-c...

It was possible before, I had used it until last year!

But earlier this year I checked in with some 240 JPY left and found out that I couldn't charge it during the trip... Luckily it was enough for the 2 stations in the Osaka Metro to save me an awkward moment.

> 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.

The Pixel 6 and Pixel 7 apparently does have the hardware/software needed for Suica, even on non-Japanese editions of the phone.

However, it's blocked by Google in software depending on the device SKU (maybe because Google doesn't want to pay licensing costs?). If you have a rooted Android phone, you could bypass this check, see https://github.com/kormax/osaifu-keitai-google-pixel.

Hopefully it means that a future version of the Pixel will officially support it world-wide, but who knows. Japan has one of the highest rates of iPhone usage in the world, so there's not much incentive to support Android users.

In the Chigasaki train station (Kanagawa Prefecture), the tune is from pop tunesmith legend Kuwata Keisuke. That is his hometown. (Been since 2014, evidently.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrMeLLXifBY

I noticed the tune when passing through. Otherwise I wouldn't know where the dude is from.

Compare with:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UK5xSs9jBlk

"Why Tokyo Has Musical Train Stations" which goes into the history a bit:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2htXigbGsqQ

The first jingles were by Hiroaki Ide:

* http://connect.ajet.net/2020/04/11/one-man-and-a-history-of-...

A profile on Minoru Mukaiya, who has composed a lot of the more recent ones:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSG5IkRA9BE

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoru_Mukaiya

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.

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.

I have used both systems too, and while the NYC transit system is a shithole, I greatly appreciate the 24 hour service. There are also usually alternatives available for when things get shutdown.

Many European cities compromise, by running trains overnight on Friday and Saturday nights, but using only buses on Sunday-Thursday nights.

(Tokyo seems not even to have buses running at night, which is really strange.)

No, the whole public transit system shuts down sometime after midnight. At that point, you can either walk, ride a bicycle (there are rental/bikeshare bikes available), or take a taxi.

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

> - 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.

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.

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

Komagome is my favorite Yamanote line jingle: https://youtu.be/-GF_dku3Mgo?t=131

That's the famous folk song "Sakura, Sakura".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakura_Sakura

And, aha, here is likely why that station has that tune.

Komagome used to be called 染井村 (Somei Mura). It's supposedly the origin of that famous 染井吉野 (Somei-Yoshino) cherry tree.

Ebisu station has the beer company jingle. Its quite nice too.

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.

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