The Japanese just love their trains. They love to buy electric toy train sets and make dioramas for it. Most cities also have entire museums dedicated to trains.
It's appalling that I've lived in Tokyo so long but have not blogged about the massive subway system. My bad, 悪いね. This is the map of it. If you think that's enormous, this system only covers the tokyo city centre. There are many other lines of several train operators sprawling out into the suburbs of different prefectures.
Unlike MRT trains that stop at every station along the line, Tokyo has several services:
1) Local: stops at every station
2) Express: stops at only a handful of stations
3) Semi-express: stops at about half of the stations (it's between Local & Express trains. Go figure.)
4) Limited express: It's a lot like the Express, except that it's a nicer train with plushier seats and pricier tickets.
The Express trains are good for commuters who live further in bed-town communities at the suburbs. These trains would cover 25km in 25 minutes. You select the service based on which station you're getting off at, and how fast you want to get there.
Other operators have names for their services like Rapid, or Rapid Express. You'd have to very carefully check which stations it stops at because these names can be rather misleading. The fast-sounding Rapid could actually be slower than the Semi-express.
These services run concurrently with each other, so a Local will remain at the platform of one station while the Express will pass it on via another platform. The most amazing thing is how there services run so seamlessly without colliding into each other, and without the use of a computer (which was the case in the 60s and 70s).
This is the front of a train. The right handlebar controls the gears while the left knob controls the speed. The train drivers take great pride in their work. I've seen many drivers, even while the train is on a nice cruising mode, stand earnestly in 'senangdiri' (drill: at ease position).
