12 ms·
Station of despair: What to do if you get stuck at end of Tokyo Chuo Rapid Line
- nwroot 2y agoEnjoyed this. Thank you.
- Haeuserschlucht 2y agoSad and disappointing like any dead end station.
- Trasmatta 2y agoFor some reason it didn't seem sad and disappointing to me at all. I love weird little places like that so much.
- Moru 2y agoI would be totally happy with a big place like that as end station. Here you are lucky if it's two houses next to eachothers. Probably noone home anyway. I have fond memories of people falling asleep and then back in school next day talking about how their parents had to drive two hours to pick them up in the nowherelands. This ofcourse before mobile phones was in the hands of schoolkids. Most of the time the busdriver stopped where you usually got off. Looking back and noticing you are asleep they get up and prods you to get off the bus :-) Such nice drivers we had then.
- mitthrowaway2 2y agoIt's pretty nice actually. With a Big Echo and Lawson's within just a few minutes walk from the station, you're all set for a reasonably comfortable night on the cheap, with a toothbrush, hot chocolate, snacks, and a private space. Probably still best opting for the hotel though.
- derr1 2y agoCan always hang out at Big Echo if they're open until the early hours. Most I know are usually open until 5am!
- astrange 2y agoIt's not that sad. The secret is to do the opposite of American development; don't build parking lots and giant streets everywhere and let people open late night businesses in walking distance of the station.
- Trasmatta 2y agoI love stuff like this so much. Part of me wants to go to a Station of Despair and survive the night now. I live in NYC and I've thought about doing the "take every train to the end of the line" thing before. It would, of course, be a much different experience.
- walrus01 2y agoThere was a guy who set the self-imposed goal of visiting all 472 subway stations and taking a photo with the station name sign: https://bensol.medium.com/i-visited-all-472-subway-stations-in-new-york-15b2d3737573 https://bensol.medium.com/i-visited-all-472-subway-stations-... photos here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/19dangAIVe2l6nQNW2HKVWIz8kArU06ly https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/19dangAIVe2l6nQNW2HKV...
- walthamstow 2y agoI attempted visit all 270 tube stations in London in 24 hours with some friends when we were younger It involves a lot of going to the end of one line then finding a way to the terminus of a another line and go back into town without going back on yourself.
- autoexec 2y agoI always wondered why they didn't just keep the trains running, even if only for a handful of runs overnight. Seems worth it to keep drunk salarymen from wandering around the streets until morning only to have to go back to work.
- Liftyee 2y agoMaintenance, perhaps? For the London Underground at least, the power is switched off after the trains stop running (4th rail) so workers can safely go onto the tracks. Also, it would almost definitely run at a loss (excluding externalities)... same reason why many Chinese cities' subsidised metros close quite early. Agreed that it's probably beneficial in the big picture but maybe hard to justify to superiors?
- singleshot_ 2y agoMay I ask what the third rail is for in your neck of the woods?
- itcrowd 2y agohttps://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/fourth_rail https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/fourth_rail
- jffry 2y agoIt seems the London Underground uses a four-rail system http://www.trainweb.org/tubeprune/tractioncurr.htm http://www.trainweb.org/tubeprune/tractioncurr.htm
- daedrdev 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_electrification#Fourth_rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_electrification#Fourth...
- rtpg 2y agoMy understanding is they do a _lot_ of maintenance at night. I have to imagine it might not be worth it though. The whole "city that never sleeps" vibe is relatively localized to a couple neighborhoods and having all lines run through the night would be a bit of an extravagance (all that for, what, the 5 hours they're not running?). Train drivers aren't cheap! And we invented technology for getting small groups of people home already, it's called taxis. Post COVID I think there's been a huge push to just chill out even with the 24 hour stuff. Lots of places close earlier than they used to, and some places that used to be 24 hours just go until midnight now. There was a bus that would go between a couple of the nightclub spots throughout the night, never took it though. Maybe there would be a decent business in running "commuter"-y buses throughout the night between certain areas, at least to try and get closer home.
- mikeInAlaska 2y agoEnded up on Elmendorf Air Force Base (at the hospital) this way once as a little kid in the early 1980s. The bus actually went from Anchorage onto the air force base and then called it quits. That was definitely my station of despair. "Mom... drive onto the military base and get me."
- hinkley 2y ago“I’m here to get my son.” Uh, ma’am, if he’s enlisted he cannot just leave.
- Liftyee 2y agoI wonder which other cities have examples of this phenomenon. Presumably any large one with a mass transit system - having lived in London (England) I can imagine some undesirable Tube termini to wake up at, but most terminus stops are still well within the suburbs. That is, unless you end up on longer distance commuter rail lines, where you might just wake up in Portsmouth. Those longer distance trains might be more akin to the line discussed in the article.
- walrus01 2y agoDrunk people on Vancouver's skytrain definitely do end up at King George (the terminus station furthest from downtown) if they fall asleep and miss their stop. The train stops running entirely at about 1:15 AM.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- nicoburns 2y agoI have a London-based friend who once woke up in a bus depot with the bus parked and nobody else around. Presumably the driver is supposed to check for anyone left on the bus before parking it and leaving it, but they didn't on this occasion.
- Animats 2y agoThere's an app for that.[1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFnkSuyRV54 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFnkSuyRV54
- rv3392 2y agoDefinitely most Australian cities. In Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne or Perth you'd be waking up in the middle of nowhere in most cases.
- GauntletWizard 2y agoI could have sworn I saw a Youtube video version of this article, but I can't find it in my history. I was reminded of another unusual end of line station, though: One you can't leave, because it's inside the campus of Toshiba. https://youtu.be/zVpLuZxsHq0 https://youtu.be/zVpLuZxsHq0
- larrymcp 2y agoGet a taxi or ride-share maybe? I was expecting the article to cover this possibility, but it didn't mention it.
- presentation 2y agoRide shares aren’t a thing in Japan and most people can’t afford blowing hundreds of dollars on a super long taxi ride - for reference from where I live to there, the dominant taxi app here estimates 40,000 yen in the day time, which is more expensive at night due to increased late night rates. Plus Otsuki is in the middle of nowhere - I presume there are taxi drivers looking to capitalize on this, but there may not be many of them so far from a major area. These train lines are very long, so you might be quite far away from where you were actually intending to go.
- sleepy_keita 2y agoA taxi from Otsuki (the station mentioned in the article) to even Hachioji (another station that's famous for being "the last stop") would take over an hour and cost >20,000JPY. At that point it's cheaper to get a hotel. Even if you have the money, the possibility of taxis just not being available at that time in a place like Otsuki is pretty high.
- ipnon 2y agoI submit to you the hypothesis that some people are poor.
- walrus01 2y agoThere is something delightfully oldschool about the design and layout and basic functionality of this Sora News website. It looks like webpages I saw about Japan in 2005. Nothing has needed to change since then, so they haven't changed it, and it works just fine. The "AKIBA PC HOTLINE!" hasn't changed at all in 20 years either. Worth reading with auto-translate for news about weird PC stuff and electronic items for sale in Akihabara. https://akiba-pc.watch.impress.co.jp/ https://akiba-pc.watch.impress.co.jp/
- allenu 2y agoI immediately thought of old school blogs in the 2000s when the page loaded. No annoying clickbait titles, memes, or reaction gifs, just personal reporting with short paragraphs and plenty of photos.
- walrus01 2y agoI once read that one of the reasons behind very straightfoward page layout on Japanese websites is a legacy of the internet-on-phone data services, screen sizes, and reading experience in the years before 2007/2008+, when the iphone and then android devices came out. Japan had its own domestic ecosystem of IP data to phones and web browsing 2006 and earlier, but page rendering features were very rudimentary, and you had to keep the total data transfer sizes down or nothing would load properly.
- creamyhorror 2y agoSoraNews24 (nee RocketNews24) has been like this since 2008, with basically no change in the article style, so yeah, it's a descendant of the 2000s Internet. Glad it's still going strong without changing.
- noelwelsh 2y agoGood read as I catch a train home close to midnight. I've often wondered what I would do if I fell asleep on the train and missed my stop. Peterborough isn't the most exciting town during the day; being there after midnight would rather unfortuanate. Thankfully it hasn't happened yet!
- rfwhyte 2y agoThis is honestly a super delightful article. It has personality and charm, and actually provides some useful information, despite said information having literally no bearing whatsoever on my life.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Trasmatta 2y agoYeah, I loved it. It reminds me of the weird little things you would read on the old internet.
- croissants 2y agoIf you want the same kind of thing with no useful information, how about this report on the accuracy of a sign? https://soranews24.com/2024/06/27/is-this-7-eleven-sign-in-japan-really-711-metres-from-the-store/ https://soranews24.com/2024/06/27/is-this-7-eleven-sign-in-j...
- brazzy 2y agoAhhh, that reminds me of my year as an exhange student in Yohokama. Specifically the time when I cought the last train on the Den-en-toshi line from Tokyo towards my dormitory at Aobadai, only to realize that the last train doesn't go all the way - I think it stopped at Tama-Plaza, 5 stops early. There was a line of at least 50 people at the taxi stand, and I didn't fancy staying for 4 hours until the trains would run again, didn't see any all-night restaurants either. So I walked. Note that this was years before Google Maps, I didn't even have a cell phone. I just tried to follow the train lines, walking through unfamiliar, quiet, dark residential areas, occasionally passing the areas I knew, around the train stations, but seeing hardly any people even there. Then the train line went underground - I think that must have been here: https://maps.app.goo.gl/AhUkt1HcvquknHpK6 https://maps.app.goo.gl/AhUkt1HcvquknHpK6 With nothing else to do, I just continued through the night into the same direction, until I recognized the area around the Aoba Ward Office, where I had been to get my residence permit. I knew how to get back to the train line, across the flood plains of the Tsurumi river, and there I came across the only place that was actually busy at this time of night: a distribution center for the morning newspaper where delivery drivers loaded stacks of newspapers onto their scooters. I'm pretty sure it was this building: https://maps.app.goo.gl/YgEAFMGvrkbPkPxR8 https://maps.app.goo.gl/YgEAFMGvrkbPkPxR8 I continued following the train tracks for another half hour or so until I finally reached my dormitory to catch at least a few hours of sleep.
- adregan 2y agoI had a friend who used to fall asleep regularly on the first train after a night out and would wake up in the farthest reaches of the opposite direction of his home.
- hinkley 2y agoI had a weird sixth sense about sleeping too long on the bus/train and rarely went more than a couple stops too far. I think my record was an extra half mile on a quiet night with nowhere to be but bed.
- adregan 2y agoI used to have a really long commute when I lived in Tokyo and would regularly nap on the train. I was always amazed (and grateful) when I would wake up just as the train pulled into my station.
- idlewords 2y agoIf you haven't been to Japan, it's worth lingering over these pictures and noticing a few things: - The complete absence of vandalism - How generally clean everything is - Accessibility strip for blind people (bumpy yellow stripe in train stations and sidewalks) - Nothing is broken or out of service - How safe and welcoming the public transit system feels. Japan is worth the journey if you ever want to step into a high-trust other dimension.
- testfoobar 2y agoWhat is it that makes this possible in Japan? And why doesn't it happen in the US?
- cruano 2y agoAmerican individualism
- astrange 2y agoJapanese are more individualist than Americans. They just don't apply this to graffiti. They do sometimes litter, throw up in the sidewalk after drinking, and don't wash their hands after using the train station bathrooms. I mean, Tokyo isn't even that clean. I was just there and saw a rat on the sidewalk every night. They're like NYC and just leave commercial trash bags on the sidewalk instead of using trash bins. (Also frequently saw aggressive "no dumping" signs on the pile of trash bags. Not very high trust!)
- sho_hn 2y agoI think by individualism what people usually mean is the general "me, I got mine" attitude & the idealization of not giving a care to what other people think, i.e. "do your thing". I lot of what happens in the East Asian countries from peer pressure/accountability is to be actively defied in the West, and particularly in America. Keeping things clean because otherwise you might get judged by someone else is almost an incentive to litter.
- 2y ago
- neilv 2y agoThere's more despair when you miss the last train/bus in a US city, in an unfamiliar area, you don't have a phone, nothing is open, and the only other people you've seen seem to be deciding whether to mug you. (I've done this more than once, accidentally.)
- hinkley 2y agoI’m surprised things like Uber haven’t solved this. You’re a young person with a car, and insomnia. Good time to make some extra cash.
- anyonecancode 2y agoNever have I ever woken up to find myself in Far Rockaway, Queens.
- astrange 2y agoMy favorite thing about soranews is the English writers always call the Japanese writers "us" or "our reporter", but you never see any of them when they post pictures of the office. I assume they're being kept in a dungeon somewhere.
- jrockway 2y agoMost interesting to me is that the Chuo Line appears to have finally gotten its new rolling stock with Green Cars! I went to high school in Tokyo and was slummin' it in the 201 series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/201_series#/media/File:JR_EAST_201(Chuo_Rapid_Service).jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/201_series#/media/File:JR_EAST...
- tjpnz 2y agoThe green cars are double deckered and you can ride them for free until April!
- jeffchien 2y agoIf you get stuck there between ~10PM (the last train back to Hachioji that could connect to Shinjuku) and 11PM (or midnight if you can spare the change for the limited express), you can also consider going west to Yamanashi and Kofu. Let's just say that I was almost in this exact scenario from a long day in Kawaguchiko, but I ended up making it back to central Tokyo.
- unit149 2y ago[dead]
- NalNezumi 2y agoOh man this make me nostalgic! My mothers sides family were from an area close/along the Chuo rapid line, west Tokyo probably exactly between Otsuki & Shinjuku. Otsuki is actually not the most common final destination along Chuo Rapid Line, but Takao is. Takao is close to a popular hiking spot Takao mountain so there's definitely more stuff there compared to Otsuki. Probably the WORST "getting stuck at Chuo Rapid Line" is Actually mistakenly taking Chuo Line that transfer to Ome Line that could sometime go all the way to Okutama. There's literally nothing there, and you're deep in the mountain. There's so little light pollution there, that my sisters friend that live there told me that at night you can actually see the light pollution from Tokyo inner city from the east, and locals call it 煩悩の光 (The light of lust/carnal desires).
- biztos 2y agoI do hope somebody has made a movie, or written a novel, or started a band -- or, ideally, all three -- called 煩悩の光 .
- baxtr 2y agoWhat is it about Japan that people find even small empty towns like this fascinating? PS: I include my self here. Just spent looking at pictures of around Okutama. Very beautiful.
- ajmurmann 2y agoI wonder if it's because of watching anime as a kid. I even love the look of Japanese alleys with lots of wires hanging above. I'm pretty sure it's because it was a common sight in anime that was different from my lived reality.
- IggleSniggle 2y agoMy friends and family like to joke about "anywhere USA." There are places all across the US where the same design language, chain restaurants, etc are all the same. There will be some differences in local business and in political/religious signage, but otherwise, they are cookie cutter, somehow feeling basically the same from Anchorage AK to Tampa FL. Importantly, these are all connected by car line. I think there are a few things that make Japan fascinating to anyone who lives in a car-oriented culture, and a very important aspect is that even the small, out of the way, rural towns are still connected via passenger train, which changes the relationship of the small town to the central hub in important ways like what's described in the article here. Getting off the train in a small town is very different than getting out of your car in a small town. You can find this same dynamic in the US, btw. You'll find that old rural towns, that grow up connected to the central hubs by either boat or by passenger train, have a lot of the same charm and feel. But if things are developed along roads, there's no presumption about walkability: they are designed for people to get in their cars and go from one parking lot to another. Anyway, I'm actually totally clueless about this and speculating with very little informed knowledge outside my lived experience. I should probably delete this comment.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jounker 2y agoThe freakiest thing to me is the Lawsons. This was a tiny little convenience store chain that existed in a few counties near Cleveland, OH. It went out of business around 1980, but through some baffling chain of events managed to migrate to Japan where they seem to be only slightly less common than 7/11s.
- wahnfrieden 2y agoMister Donut also started in the US. Tower Records also lives on in Japan.
- gcanyon 2y agoShoutout for Mister Donut in Thailand! Lived there two years and ate Mister Donut often -- I had no idea it started in the US.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- mitthrowaway2 2y agoAnd Yahoo search!
- kkylin 2y agoWe were happily surprised to find Tower Records in Tokyo! It was great.
- rwmj 2y agoLawson's also big in China now.
- kalleboo 2y ago7-Eleven Japan also got so big that they bought out 7-Eleven USA. But now the Canadian owner of Circle K is bidding to buy 7-Eleven Japan so I guess it's the circle of corporate life.
- chasd00 2y ago
- BjoernKW 2y agoIn London, that's called Cockfosters. Other than that, there's an intriguing Clive Barker short story on how lonely passengers on those late-night trains actually end up ...
- empressplay 2y agoIf you party too hard in Melbourne and decide to hop on a V/Line train northbound on the Sunbury line and then pass out, you can end up in Bendigo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6yg4ImnYwA&t=8s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6yg4ImnYwA&t=8s
- ClimaxGravely 2y agoI always wondered what would happen to those people on the train. I tried waking them up but they do not budge.
- tjpnz 2y agoStation staff do it at EOL.
- x86hacker1010 2y agoIm so intrigued by Japan. It seems truly like a dream. As an avid love for Haruki Murakami, I feel he captures the essence of Japan more than any other writer.
- thom 2y agoAh, the time I’ve spent in Tring.
- morepork 2y agoThere's an episode in the second season of Colin from Accounts that is basically this scenario, but in Sydney
- miki123211 2y agoSomething like this happened to me once on a bus, not because I fell asleep, but due to the line I was on changing its route, which I didn't know about. I just assumed it would go to my stop like it always did, so I didn't even bother checking. It turned out that this was the last bus of the day, in winter. I eventually ended up at the "loop", AKA the last stop where buses turn around, and waited around an hour for a night bus that could get me back to where I wanted to be. Doing this as a blind person, with nobody else around to help just in case, was quite scary.
- dcsan 2y agowow congratulations to you. I hope you weren't in a foreign country at the same time! I can understand why you might be a creature of habit and an unplanned bus routing is definitely a monkey wrench
- knotimpressed 2y agoI always wondered how blind people navigate situations like this on public transit-how did you know another bus was coming?
- immibis 2y agoHave you never taken public transit before? You're one of today's lucky 10000: https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/ Pre-smartphone, or if you don't have a signal, you check the posted timetable. In any decent good transit system, every stop, even the tiny bus stops in the middle of nowhere, has an up-to-date timetable on display. In a complicated area with several lines, they may also have a map showing all the different lines. Or - ask a human! A bus is driven by a driver, and they aren't omniscient, but they do know stuff because they have to drive buses every day. Worst case, they could point you to the right place to find routes and timetables. If they've got an hour to kill before they drive the next bus back, they know that. Post-smartphone, you get out your smartphone and check the transit operator's website or app. Transit apps are pretty useful: input where you want to go, and it tells you the fastest route to get there, including where you need to change to a different vehicle. I normally use the app from my local transit company (BVG), or the nationwide one (Deutsche Bahn) for long-distance trips; aggregators like Google don't always have the latest information. In Germany there is some kind of data-sharing program run by the government so that any transit company can give you accurate information for any other company's services and plan a route involving multiple companies. This might not be the case where you live.
- Kwpolska 2y agoThe depots for this train seem to be in areas that are much more populated (Wikipedia says Mitaka and Toyoda [0]). If Otsuki Station is the station of despair, this would suggest the trains ride empty from Otsuki to the depot. Why couldn’t they allow passengers on that final ride to the depot, requiring them to disembark at Mitaka/Toyoda at the latest? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%AB%C5%8D_Line_(Rapid) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%AB%C5%8D_Line_(Rapid)
- itsthejb 2y agoIt’s possible the last train simply parks there for the night. This would mean that you ride the same train back after this misadventure
- Kwpolska 2y agoThat would mean the train driver spends the night in the middle of nowhere, I doubt they would agree to that.
- iggldiggl 2y agoOtsuki might still be an booking-on/-off point for train drivers, with a number of drivers based there and regularly starting and ending their turns at that station and presumably living nearby. Or alternatively the train company finds it more convenient ferrying the driver with a taxi or company car to from the regular booking-on/-off point.
- readingnews 2y agoThere is something strangely magical about the pictures of the city streets at night. Lack of trash? How clean the roads are? The lighting? I have been out at night in plenty of places (not Japan), but it never looks like this. At first I thought it was their camera, but I think it is just Japan at night?
- itsthejb 2y agoI’ve never ended up in this situation myself, but I have many times lived on similar commuter lines. Hearing the names of those end of lines stations becomes a big part of your every day routine. In most cases I never even visited them, which looking back feels like a pity, and even disrespectful of their incidental importance
- commiepatrol 2y agoYou can't take an Uber back home?
- derr1 2y agoNo ubers in Japan. Well that's a lie. There is uber, but it only calls regular taxis. Taxis are very expensive in Japan.
- gregoriol 2y agoI really don't understand what this article is about: every bus/train/subway line from a city center usually ends up in an small-town place and if you are on the last bus/train/subway in the night, it will be the same emptiness everywhere, whether it is Tokyo or any place with public transport. And people miss their stop sometimes, literally happening everywhere.