Japanese Railways

The book I read to research this post was Riding the Train in Japan by Erik Curre which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. In Japan lots of people have driving licences but cars are relatively scarce and many people use the train commute. When someone has a job his employer will often give him a train pass. The Japanese Railway is also second to none and includes the famous shinjanken or bullet train which is the fastest commercially used train in the world. Officially the train has a top speed of 300kph or 186mph but they have done tests where it has gone a lot faster. Interestingly it's cheaper to fly than to catch the bullet train. It's also probably Japan's biggest tourist attraction. There are 3 major types of train in Japan. The commuter trains stop at every stop and are the slowest. They have a sort of bench running down both sides of the train. Often you have to stand on these especially during rush hours. Then there are the express trains which only stop at the major stations. You can have upto 5 different classes of express train and each type will stop at different stops which is very confusing for tourists. These trains have comfortable seats. The final type is of course the bullet train. Tokyo is in the centre of the railway and its main station has 3 million passengers go through it every day. Many department are proprietors of their own railway line and the store will be right next to the station. When you see a house advertised for sale you will see how many minutes away the local railway station is in the advert. Tokyo, Narita Airport is served by 2 terminals, terminal 2 does the asian flights and terminal 1 does most of the rest. You need to know which terminal to go to because they aren't directly connected. You can waste a lot of time travelling from one to the other.