The Tokyo train system

In my first post about Tokyo, I mentioned that the train system is confusing. Below is a train network diagram. It's a bit smaller than the map I have in my bag, but is the best I could find in a quick Google search, and does well to illustrate the complexity.

Just for comparison, here is the Prauge Metro:

and here is the Brisbane train network:

Actually, the Brisbane Network looks more complicated than Prauge, which I wasn't expecting, however I suppose it has a larger area to cover. Nevertheless, I'm sure nobody will argue that the Tokyo system is much much worse.


Today we went to Kamakura, which I promise to write about soon, because it was fantastic. However, today, I'll just tell the story of the transport. It took us just over an hour by train to get from our closest station to Kamakura, and a bit over two hours coming back. I'm not sure exactly what happened. I'm pretty sure we were on the right platform to come back, but maybe there were different trains pulling into that platform, and we got on a wrong one. Or maybe we were in fact on the wrong platform. Anyway we got on a train, and it was headed in generally the right direction. I read for a bit, snoozed, then looked at my watch and realised that we'd been travelling for over an hour, had definitely not missed Tokyo (the central Tokyo station where we were to change trains), but the stops were getting further apart. Usually stops get closer together in central Tokyo. A quick discussion followed, and Hunty and I decided to get off our extremely crowded train at the next stop to get our bearings.

We failed to actually establish our location, but quickly determined that the train we had been on had not been taking us where we wanted to go. Fortunately, we were at a major station, and were able to find a train on a different line that was heading back towards Tokyo. As we sat on our new train, I stared fruitlessly at our map, trying to figure out where we had gone wrong. After about fifteen minutes of study, the various squiggles finally started to make sense. Then, I managed to locate a few of the upcoming stations, and shortly I knew where we were. From there, I could trace back to the station we had changed lines on. It was well north of central Tokyo - and Kamakura had been south. I then traced the route we had taken. Somehow, we had been on a train that had circled west of central Tokyo, arriving in the north without ever going anywhere near we wanted to go. Thankfully, from there, we managed to find our way back to our hotel with only minor (usual for Tokyo) confusion.