Day 16 — No, really, my favorite part is the trains.
When you move to a different country on the opposite side of the world, you invite a lot of questions from concerned and curious friends and family. The lightning round of common ones:
“How’s your Japanese?” Still bad, thanks.
“How’s the sushi?” It’s great and you can get it everywhere. Same with ramen!
“Is the work culture bad?” At some companies? Yes. At my company? No, people work and socialize in normal amounts.
“What do you miss from the US?” Being able to read signs and labels, especially at the grocery store.
“Is it like an anime?” Yes, assuming there’s an anime about a programmer who lives a normal life but doesn’t get killed and revived in another world.
The most common question is probably “what’s your favorite part about living in Tokyo?”
Usually, I try to come up with an answer that makes me look cool. Something about Tokyo’s international status, the warmth of the people I’ve met, something about the beautiful views everywhere.
But I’m finally coming clean. My favorite thing has been the trains.
Not exclusively, obviously, the bus network is also excellent.
The problem with this answer is that it’s kind of lame on its own, but hear me out.
Before living in Tokyo, I lived in Atlanta, Georgia in the US. Atlanta is also a metropolitan area home to big businesses, excellent bars and restaurants, arts and culture, and plenty of wonderful people. And if you want to enjoy any part of that, you’ll have to drive. Its metro really can’t compare, even if it has the exact same kinds of places that bring me joy in Tokyo. In both cities, I’ve gone to board games cafes with friends, baseball stadiums to watch a game over beers, karaoke parlors to sing my heart out… But in Atlanta those took 30–45 minutes of driving (more in rush hour). And if you plan on drinking during any of those things, tack on an extra $50–100 for taxis or Lyfts.
Every cool thing is less cool when you know you have a long and boring drive afterward. Those same nights out in Tokyo aren’t necessarily better, but they are less bad.
And that’s for the fun stuff, it makes my job better too! Before I came to Tokyo, I was horrified by people with hour-plus train commutes, but when I moved closer to work I actually lost productivity. The time I spent on the bus was time I couldn’t spend on work and without wifi, so my options were to study kanji, read a book, or just look out the window. Those are the kinds of things that you usually promise to do for a New Year’s resolution, and I got the push to do them for free. In the US, even having to drive 20 minutes to an appointment felt like I was losing time I’d rather spend elsewhere.
And I get it, not everyone loves the big city. Some people need that quality time in nature to feel human and I can completely relate. The thing is, trains make that better, too. Atlanta is surrounded by beautiful mountain and river trails, and the worst part of hiking them was feeling tired and satisfied at the end of the day and then having to spend 90 minutes driving back into the city. Compare that to when I took a friend to a nearby mountain trail this summer. We met at a train station, spent an hour and a half talking about his trip so far while we rode to the mountain, spent the day hiking and grabbing some food at the town by the station, and then when we were the most exhausted we got to sit down and zone out on the train for the journey back home.
This isn’t even bringing up the joy of taking weekend trips by train. The number of small, interesting towns and sites that are $30 away from the city center is wild. Bump that number up to ~$100–150 (or be a tourist and get a JR Rail Pass) and you can ride in style on the bullet trains that crisscross all of Japan and really get out of the city. If you’re used to American airports and the TSA, I can’t overstate what an upgrade this is. Sitting in a comfortable and spacious cabin, having an inexpensive-yet-incredible boxed lunch and beer from the station, and watching the Japanese countryside go by has *redefined* what I consider to be civilized transit.
Obviously, the transit in Tokyo isn’t perfect, though. For the night owls and party animals, the fact that the trains all shut down at midnight is a pain. If you don’t keep an eye on the time for your last train, your options are to take an expensive taxi or to wait until the 5 AM train. Also, without that JR Rail Pass, the bullet trains get pricier than plane tickets shockingly fast. And of course, the convenience of it all means that everyone uses the trains, so they’re crowded most hours. Except for when it’s the rush hour when you need a stronger word to describe how densely you get packed in.
The trains also operate under different companies and charge different amounts depending on how far you travel, so knowing which lines to use, how to pay, and when to transfer is hard. Trying to ride using prepaid tickets can be crushingly confusing, especially for tourists who might not know about the reloadable cards that handle the math for you (ask me how I know this 😓).
But I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to live somewhere without good public transit again. Every new friend I make is easier to meet again, every drink at a bar is safer on the way home, and every event has one less question about how I’ll get there and back. To steal from a book about the benefits of meditation, good trains have made my life 10% better. Nobody’s favorite food is salt, but everything else is a little less vibrant without it.
Of course, it’s also possible that six months in I just haven’t lost the optimism from the honeymoon period of moving here. In another six months, maybe I’ll come down to earth and say that my favorite thing is that I can take authentic calligraphy classes or something.
But I know how I’ll get to those classes, and I know how I’ll get home afterward.
