We have our first real experience with the Japanese train system. Our plans are to explore Tokyo and use an all-day train pass to get around. While Rod had experienced it before, Fran was not quite prepared for what she saw - rush hour in Ikebukuro, the second busiest station in Japan. Imagine yourself in a foreign country where you can't read many of the signs and you're looking for the direction of your train platform. All of a sudden a train empties and a thousand people in mass rush in your direction as they head for the exit gates. Fran learned, quite soon, to go with the flow of the crowd!
A word about the Tokyo train/subway system. The crowds are amazing - around 800,000 people pass through Tokyo station every day. From Tokyo station there radiates a complex web of subways, above ground trains, long distance trains and Shinkansen (bullet trains) that allow you to travel anywhere from a small neighborhood in the city to the ends of the northern or southern islands. The system is incredibly efficient; there is never any waiting for a local train: just walk up to the platform and step into the car. Trains roll onto the platforms every few minutes. There is a longer wait for long distance trains, but they ALWAYS run on time.
The tunnels which connect the subways and the trains stretch for miles - it's really like another city underground. There is everything that the traveler could want: restaurants, supermarkets, clothes shops, convenience stores. Many department stores connect to the tunnels by escalator. It's possible to navigate great distances through the maze of underground tunnels (as we did one day to get out of the rain for 1/2 hour to get from one station to another).
