railway system
Travelling in Japan is convenient, but complicated. They have the railway system, which basically serves the whole country. You can go from the southern part of Japan to the northern part just by riding the train. But knowing which trains to board and which platforms, plus their schedules would make riding a train so complicated.
I remember the first time I rode the train on my own. I had to go online to research how I’d go from my place to the city. Good thing that you could search everything online. The train schedules are there, the lines that I need to board and even the number of minutes of waiting/walking that I need to do. It also gives the number of minutes you’re on board, and the total travel time. Maybe the only other thing that it needed was the platform number. But anyway, all the major information that I needed were already given. And since they’re trains are on-sched, don’t be surprised when people tells you that they’d be there by 17 minutes or 23 minutes. We could basically estimate the exact time we’re going to arrive at a certain place.
Because of the train schedule in our place (the train pass every 30 minutes!), I usually have to hurry (and run!) to catch the train. Don’t you hate it when just as you arrive the platform, the doors of the train close? Argh.. And then I would have to wait for another 30 minutes for the next train. Sucks, right? Anyway, I think I’ve gotten used to this schedule, though there were those times that I was left still by the train. hehehe.
