cat /proc/claus | java

My everyday commute goes something like:
Komagome->Nippori by JR yamanote
Nippori->Kitasenju by JR joban
Kitasenju->Kashiwanoha Campus by Tsukuba Express

This is an inverse commute, in the sense that I leave tokyo to study in the suburbs, while the vast majority of people leave the suburbs to work/study in tokyo. So I almost never get full train.

The “Nippori->kitasenju” leg of the trip, though, is particularly full in the opposit direction. If I happen to exchange trains in Nippori before 9:00 in the morning, I can see what is literally an army of commuters marching in my direction, as they leave the joban line to go to both sides of the platform. You can hear their footsteps ressonate.

Anyway - today I saw an interesting sign at Nippori - “passengers to Akihabara, please change trains at ueno, and not here”. To get to akihabara from Nippori, you can finish riding the joban line until ueno, and then change to the yamanote line, or you can just get off here and change to the yamanote line right away.

So I was a bit puzzled by this - Nippori is a much smaller station than ueno, with much less lines going through. It is much easier and faster to exchange trains here. Until I read today’s newspaper - it seems that the yamanote line in this section has been determined as the most packed train line in all of Japan, with a 211% fill rate of the train wagons.

News (in portuguese)

I’m so glad to do reverse commuting

This entry was posted on Friday, December 7th, 2007 at 3:12 pm and is filed under Life in Japan, websurfing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.