En Route: A Magazine About Trains in Japan [pdf]
tokyoweekender.com
tokyoweekender.com
I’ve lived in Japan for forty years. While I would not consider myself a train enthusiast, it’s hard not to get affectionate about them after having ridden them for so many years. My four-year-old grandson, who lives with me, is definitely already a fan. He can identify dozens of different trains and train lines, and currently his favorite song is about railway crossings [1]. It helps that we live a five-minute walk from one of the busiest places for trains in Japan [2].
For his birthday last month, I bought him a huge, incredibly detailed picture book about trains [3] that we have been reading together. It will be interesting to see how his interests evolve as he gets older. Fans tend to focus on particular aspects of trains—riding them, photographing them, recording their sounds [4], learning their schedules, etc.—and there are terms for each type of enthusiast [5].
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NN_EZA8lX4
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4po1SlK0c0
[3] https://zukan.gakken.jp/live/train_new/
[4] https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%E9%9B%BB%E8%BB...
[5] https://japanrailtimes.japanrailcafe.com.sg/web/article/rail...
I just showed my one year old this song and he's loving it.
I really enjoyed the Hara model railway museum in Yokohama as it's not just nice model railways but also the biography of Nobutaro Haras life and his travels around the world documenting trains.
https://www.instagram.com/francis_bourgeois43/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Bourgeois_(trainspotte...
I made a little python script/alfred workflow that plays an arbitrary 7 minute segment from an arbitrary clip from that channel. So I have a keyboard shortcut to drop me into a random train ride whenever I want to chill out (without risk of getting sucked into the social media wormhole)
My initial idea before reading your comment (probably hard too implement) - take around the "most replayed segment" if there is one.
Would love to have the script to play around!
The photos are magical; and so are the illustrations on pages 8 and 9 of the PDF.
One example is the "Royal Squid" on page 31 -- the website says that they're going to be closed indefinitely. While the building did not collapse but the tsunami flooded the building, and the parking lot is uneven.[1]
Seems like precautions would be necessary before visiting some of these sites, especially those in the Noto region of Ishikawa prefecture.
[1]: https://ikanoeki.com/blog/%e4%bb%a4%e5%92%8c6%e5%b9%b4%e5%b9...
From maybe 1979 to 1982, that is ;-)
We were thrilled when we spotted the Lufthansa Airport Express https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DB_Class_403_(1973) , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DB_Class_VT_11.5 , or gave us free cab-rides from Bonn to Cologne, or Koblenz and back on the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DB_Class_103 !
Later from about 1990 to 2008 in different parts of Germany (mostly Rhine-Ruhr-Area and Hamburg) whenever I saw lots of people on bridges or roadsides with cameras and tripods I knew there was something special on approach, and stopped if time permitted. It was often worthwhile because of thundering steam :-)
Meanwhile I moved away and visit only 1 to 2 times per year, but it still is like this. Maybe you are not watching? Or your ways don't go along where the rail tracks are, often enough?
Thinking about it, I haven't seen any of it over the whole Covid-phase. That was a definitive dent. I hope it starts again.
I'm not a trainspotter, but even I have heard of Mr Bourgeois[1].
I'd guess there is a trainspotting scene in Europe if he has 3.1m followers on TikTok.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Bourgeois_(trainspotte...
In video #2, an event is organized for the last trip of a specific train. The train itself is full of trainspotters and the platform is overflowing. People cry and scream.
Yes, there _is_ a scene over here but it's nowhere near the size and intensity of the Japanese scene.
He loved all forms of transit, which was largest single other category of books in his modest but very personal and interesting library.
Growing up poor and never making a lot of money himself he was tight with it as you can imagine. My grandmother died before he retired, and when he did he moved in with my parents. After a health scare post-retirement my mother convinced him that since he couldn't take what little he had with him he might as well do some things he enjoyed while he could.
So twice he took the train from the rust belt Midwest to Seattle and from there took Inner Passage cruises. He wasn't one to take pictures, and didn't talk a lot. But the enjoyment he got from these trips was obvious - he'd come back looking literally like a new man.
Anyway, any time I visited Grandpa in his room (where he was just content to sit unbothered and read) I couldn't help but pick up one of the myriad interesting books or magazines he had lying around. This certainly would have made the stack, he probably would have even excitedly showed it to me.
I haven't thought about that old cowboy in a while. Thank you for inspiring some meaningful memories.
Ha! One of? I'm going to tout it right now as the world's best, hands down, full stop, not even close. Second and third place - maybe Germany and France? Western Europe fills out most of the top 10. One can argue about exactly who goes where.
But you can't argue with number one, it's Japan, by a mile, in fact by 19,029 miles.
I hear from German friends that Germany’s train system has encountered a similar fate.
If only it were just the trains - but our government has gutted similarly education, healthcare, … it really is disheartening.
In a country the size of Germany clamoring to have an environmentally oriented politic, train should be a convenient alternative to both car and airplane but unfortunately the train network is a joke.
When can I move to Germany ?
In the UK if your train gets cancelled its either:
1. "Tough shit. Suck it up buttercup"
2. The infamous Rail Replacement Bus Service
So yeah, you would not find me complaining if the train company offered me a taxi voucher if my train was cancelled !
After that experience, I purchased a car and motorbike and I will never be convinced to give up my independence in exchange for that abysmal service. It was completely morale breaking. What's worse is I then worked in Japan during 2019 and experienced some of the best service I could possibly think would be reasonable. It's hard to defend in any form the absolute depressing state of the UK rail service.
Japan has many things going for it but also some notable issues. The various private operators can be confusing ("oh, your train doesn't leave from platform 4 in this building, it leaves from platform 4 in the Odakyu building"). There is virtually no transit available at night, even within the large metros. Once you leave the main lines the service frequency can be very spotty and the transfers very badly designed. No bike transport even on smaller regional trains (not counting "disassembled in a bike bag" as bike transport).
This also somewhat prevent having unified ticketing systems like you have in Switzerland.
The ticket you can buy in the train station is also valid for the local buses. Or even better (from a practicality point of view), you can use an app that track your start and end point and automatically bill you accordingly (you rare have to stamp your ticket when using public transport; you just come and go and there's sometime controls by agents).
I'm sure that there's some exception in Japan, like JR West, Central and East are technically different companies but the tourist JR pass allows you to go wherever, but it's hard to beat the convenience of the Swiss transports.
That's not even a high end or expensive train... Japan's rail system is for sure #1.
Japan is just lovely.
In one of Tokyo's high end districts you'll see 5 grand bicycles parked with locks that more resemble a shoe string than an actual lock.
Can't imagine the horror that must be the rest of the world through a Japanese person's eyes.
We will never have that in America in any shared public space ever.
Both have strong points, I would say people in Japan probably behave better than Swiss people.
Obviously, users still often complain.
[1] not that expensive if compared to owning a car