A major part of Japanese culture has to be the subways: unanimously known for being crowded, and also a nightmare to navigate.

The subways seem like an absolute bastard at first. With so many different lines, stations, fare amounts to consider, and stations having so many exits (up to 9 exits which can span a vast area!) – it’s easy to get lost and overwhelmed by it all. But once you get the hang of it, it’s actually a no brainer. Subways in Japanese are very English friendly, with maps being printed in English and self serve  machines being able to be set in English. My friends and I’s first day on Japan’s rails: we were a mess. Getting lost. Going around the Osaka loop line 3 times and not realizing that we’d passed the same stops over and over. But within 2 days we were working Japan’s rails like pro’s. It got to the point where we didn’t even need to set the ticket machines to English. We knew what to press and how to get our tickets fast. Even some of the locals were impressed; I actually got a “Sugoi!” for my effort! When we mastered the ticket machines, we upgraded to Passmo’s: a pre-pay system where you just swipe at gates and go.

There’s always something to see on Japan’s rails. Whether it be people K.O’d and conked out after a hard days work, people enthralled by texting or watching TV on their mobile phones, salary men playing Monster hunter on their PSP’s or folk kicking it with their DS’s. There’s never a dull moment. Train rides are surprisingly calming. It might just be me…being weird. But I found the train rides quite calming. The trains don’t bump all over the place like the carriage has been hit by 3 red shells as they do in some other countries. They just rock nicely. Plus, trains journeys are surprisingly silent – with the PA system punctuating the silence everytime a stop is approaching. Everybody just sits in silence until their stop. So you don’t have to sit and listen to loud talkers and silly little buggers playing music out loud on their mp3 phones. As you could imagine, trains and subway carriages get PACKED in the evenings. You needn’t even hold onto a hand rail or overhead handle, because you’re wedged so tight between people, that you couldn’t possibly fall over if you tried. Though if you’re a male and a foreign male at that, you may want to reach for the overhead handles. Women may wander what you’re doing with your hands otherwise. The last thing you want is to catch a case and end up being the topic of a sequel to I just didn’t do it.

Train stations also have their own unique jingles: informing passengers of when a train is about to depart. It’s one of those uniquely Japanese things that you don’t really appreciate or find cool until you’re at a train station and hear the jingles for yourself.

I hate getting trains at home. But in Japan I kinda looked forward to it. Purely because there was never a dull moment. And even though train stations were chaotically crowded and over run with people, it was always an organized form of chaos. Something that was often disrupted by my friends and I walking against the flow of people, weaving in and out of files of folk making their way to platforms, and obnoxiously walking right in front of people. Despite getting the hang of the stations and the tickets systems, my friends and I never did master the flow in which people move in train stations. I guess this is something that takes a bit of getting used to. Maybe we’ll get it on our next visit.