What kind of transportation are there in Japan?

The main purpose of this strategy is to talk about accommodation in Japan, but there are also traffic problems. When you go, you should check some relevant strategies, which are more comprehensive.

To sum up, I stayed in four cities in Japan for nine days and found that although I had read a lot of words and pictures before, I set foot on this land myself and found it really different. Aside from some well-known factors, we have to admit that Japan does have a lot to learn from.

Main feelings:

1, clean. It's so clean, it's not just chewing gum without scraps of paper, you can hardly feel the dust. All the cars, though strange in style, are as good as new, not to mention shiny bodies, and even the wheels are black, as if they have never been driven at all. Wear white socks for a day, and they won't get dirty at night.

2. Neat. Particularly orderly. There is nothing that does not line up. No one ran the red light, even if no one and no car passed by. All cars will stop far away to let pedestrians go first. All parking places, whether bicycles or cars, are parked neatly. Japanese car parking technology is so superb that it is almost close to the parking space and I don't know how to get in.

3. Be quiet. There are few people who speak loudly in public places, and they talk and make phone calls in a low voice. At first, our group spoke at a normal volume, which was very abrupt.

4. High degree of mechanization. You can use the machine. You don't need anyone. From hotel equipment to bus ticketing system to vending machines, you can see all kinds of machines in many places. This design is very user-friendly. You can put in a lot of change at a time and finish the change process automatically and quickly. Even many restaurants sell meal coupons by machine.

5. The service staff is very enthusiastic. Bow, smile, etc. They are all procedural, and they will be completed with or without supervision. Of course, some people think it's like being hot and cold, which is very modular, but at least such warm service is much better than being cold to people from beginning to end.

These are just my feelings these days. Maybe there are other places I haven't found. Perhaps these advantages are only superficial, and the deep motivation is not like this at all, but I still think the gap between us is very obvious. It is true that we have some historical reasons, but we should learn from these high-quality advantages.

Of course, the shortcomings are not without, and they are obvious. The most obvious disadvantage is: small. This will be mentioned many times later.

Hotels and guesthouses need to be booked at the same time as air tickets, to some extent earlier than air tickets, because hotel prices will not change much, but the number of vacant rooms is actually decreasing every day.

Our hotel standard is a cost-effective express hotel type, with Japanese rooms arranged in the middle.

For booking hotel websites, we usually use the following methods:

1, Booking: It seems to be the preferred website for all major raiders. The advantage is that you don't need to pay in advance, but you need credit card guarantee (credit card is necessary, if you don't have it, you can borrow it). Complete information and moderate price.

2.agoda: There are many evaluations, and there is no advantage compared with reservation. Although it seems that there is no need to pay in advance, the payment deadline is actually a few days earlier than the check-in time. The price looks low, but it doesn't show tax and service charge, so it can't be compared directly. The information seems to be more complete than the reservation, and some unpopular hotels can use this to make reservations.

3. Ctrip: For some mainstream hotels, Ctrip actually offers many discounts, and you can also buy Taobao vouchers to further save money. But Ctrip needs to pay in advance, and some small hotels, homestays and the like don't need it. In the hotel chain that determines the itinerary, it is recommended to make a reservation on Ctrip.

4. Others: For example, I have seen websites such as Sixteen Times, Jia Lan or E Road Dongying, but they are all similar.

We spent a lot of time on hotel search and looked at various websites provided by various raiders. Finally, we felt that there was still a lot of information but little effective information. I probably got some experience after this trip. If the accommodation requirements are not high, and the budget is the level of an express hotel, you can think less:

There will be comments on all major websites. Just pick a few more and have a look. After reading them, you will find that every store has good and bad things. At this time, it will be very tangled. I have opened dozens of stores and I don't know which one to choose. If you ask me, the principle is simple:

1. For express hotels, each of Japan's three major brands: Dongheng Inn, MYSTAYS and APA is actually of similar level, giving people a general feeling that the room is particularly small, but there are many things, which are very comfortable and humanized. The specific experience will be discussed later. Anyway, for students who have just arrived in Japan, the room equipment and comfort are not as good as those at home for seven days and a few blocks. Of course, the room space is also a few blocks away. Be prepared psychologically, and you will get used to it later.

In other words, for these hotel chains, the living conditions are actually similar, and the only difference is the price and location, so we only need to pay special attention to these two items.

Of course, this is only about this big chain brand. Suggestions such as other independent hotels are still optimistic. Some places in Japan are still quite chaotic. Don't make more trouble in order to save a few money.

3. Location should be the first consideration. Due to the developed rail transit systems in Osaka and Tokyo, it is strongly recommended that you choose a hotel within five minutes' walk from the subway station (Nara, Kyoto is the bus station). The shorter the walking distance, the better. It is better for adjacent subway lines to reach most planned destinations without transferring, or at least to connect with adjacent destinations as little as possible when checking in and checking out.

That is to say, when you are carrying your luggage, try to get off the subway to the hotel and try not to transfer to this subway. This is because the subway system in Japan was built very early, and most substations have no elevators. Moreover, because the subway is private, it is extremely inconvenient for different subway companies to transfer to the subway, and it takes a long way to get up and down. At this time, if you happen to have all your luggage on your back, it goes without saying how hard it is.

However, due to the large scale of Japanese cities, the actual distance is much shorter than the visual distance of the map. Many of you think it takes 20 minutes to walk, but in fact it takes 5 minutes. So some places seem to be not close to the subway station, but in fact it may be a turning distance. In this respect, it is necessary to brush other people's comments. If many people say that they are close to the subway station, they can basically consider it.

Other problems are mainly price and extra services. Generally speaking, express hotels don't accept breakfast (Dongheng Inn is recommended here, including breakfast, which includes rice balls, noodles, bread and miso soup), and the price is mainly calculated according to the head count. We always book an economy double room. There is only one double bed, which is not big. If it's a standard room, it's more than RMB 100 per person per night. You can decide for yourself.

Another important issue is the host family. The recommended website of the hotel is airbnb. Here you can choose the city, the general area, the number of people and the price. However, some popular homestays have long been fully booked, so your favorite house may not be free in the few days you live, and the hotel has changed a lot. Whether you will be satisfied with the strange people depends on luck. So look for more and see more. I suggest you arrange to stay in a Japanese room at least once. As for other ordinary types of youth hostels, people have different views. We were lucky enough to book a great hotel in Kyoto. The whole Japanese-style two-story building belongs to several of us for two days, and the price is cheaper than the express hotel. If you are interested, you can read the travel notes later.

It should be pointed out that B&B needs to pay in advance, which is almost impossible to cancel, and there is no reimbursement voucher or travel itinerary. Please consider carefully when choosing a homestay. In addition, in theory, most hotels can use websites such as booking, all itineraries can be booked, no advance payment is needed, and visas also need hotel itineraries, so students who are afraid of choosing hotels can choose some to apply for visas first, and then choose carefully.

Visa is extremely important, which is directly related to whether you can go to Japan. Although it is theoretically said that the visa can be completed in half a month, it is better to do it three or four weeks in advance. Express delivery takes time, and so does audit. If the materials are not enough, it will take time to make up, and it is better to be safe.

We chose Taobao for the visa, but the travel agencies on Taobao are mixed, and the price and quality are very different. We chose Xiangsheng Travel Agency in Beijing at a price of more than 300 yuan per person. When we went to the Japanese Embassy in official website, we found that this travel agency has the right to issue visas directly, which is quite reliable in the process of issuing visas. Although no one responded to the whole phone call and Want Want, because I was in Beijing, I basically went to the travel agency to communicate face to face, and the staff's attitude was not bad. Moreover, once the materials are in place, the visa issuance speed is only one week, which is still very fast.

Different areas are located in different areas. For example, another problem for students is that their registered permanent residence and place of residence are not necessarily together. If the household registration and residence are in the same territory (for example, Hubei and Tianjin belong to Beijing), then of course there is no problem. Otherwise, it may be necessary to provide a temporary residence permit or consult the staff.

Japanese visa materials have been relaxed a lot, and the core is the real estate license. Generally speaking, you need a half-year running water or tax payment certificate that can reflect the annual salary of 10W (it must directly reflect the salary of 10W, and some units' income is not reflected in the salary, so other auxiliary materials may be needed), and then provide a copy of the real estate license safely, which will basically not be refused. For students, on the one hand, provide their parents' property (some travel agency students need to provide two other property certificates besides their parents' running water, such as house, car, stock and deposit), on the other hand, provide proof of kinship (as long as their names are in the same household registration book).

In fact, the processing time of these materials is not long, but the personal situation is different. There may be some special circumstances that need to be communicated with the travel agency, so it is best to apply for a visa as soon as possible.

Visa also needs to provide air tickets and hotel orders, of which hotel orders are not necessarily the last hotels to stay in, so hesitant students can make free reservations first and then change them later. Besides, B&B can't provide orders. Please book any hotel in those days, and then cancel it after you get the visa. The ticket must be the last flight, so if you change it halfway, you must inform the travel agency as soon as possible.

Prepare your homework. After the visa is processed, you should start doing your homework in detail while waiting for the visa. As a developed country very different from ours, Japan must do a lot of homework in advance. For example:

1. Cities, attractions, hotels and their itinerary to be visited.

2. Overall arrangement of shopping links and corresponding lists and coupons.

3. Understand Japanese culture and history

4. Some restaurants or food types that I really want to experience.

5. Traffic strategy

I want to focus on transportation here, because the Japanese transportation system is very complicated, which is completely different from the simple subway-bus system in China.

First of all, please make sure that at least one of your peers is a traffic expert or at least not a road idiot. Because Japan's traffic map is very complicated and troublesome to study, people who are good at traffic will struggle for a long time, and road idiots have no concept of seeing it directly. It is unrealistic to expect to go to Google again. Without people who are good at transportation, even the subway may not get on.

So you'd better know the traffic situation in Japan in advance, and at the same time, you'd better study it in detail. Let me talk about my experience in transportation in detail. Here I will talk about what I think needs to be studied in the preparatory work stage, and other experiences will be discussed later.

The first is the website that needs to be carefully studied: the blog of stingy teenagers. This website is very famous, and its description of traffic, especially Kansai traffic, is very accurate and detailed. These materials will be read frequently not only before going to Japan, but also after arriving in Japan. He will directly describe some common traffic routes step by step, so it's best to keep them in his mobile phone for emergencies.

The first time I saw the extremely complicated route map of Japan's rail transit, everyone was shocked, and I didn't know what to say after reading many descriptions of the raiders. However, after I went there, I found that the context of Japanese rail transit was quite clear. You don't need to know about some irrelevant situations mentioned in the raiders. Actually, it's not that complicated. My understanding is as follows, I hope I can help you:

1, Japan's railway system is completely rail transit. It is not as big as China's railway transportation system. All railways are commuter rail transit, belonging to JR Company, which is divided into some subsidiaries, such as JR West Japan and JR Shikoku. What these subsidiaries have to do with us is JRPASS.

2.JR's railways are divided into two types. One is the Shinkansen, which is similar to the domestic high-speed rail. The frequency is much denser in China, which is the traffic between cities. One is called incoming line, and there is no peer-to-peer system in China. It feels like a large-capacity urban light rail, which is essentially a kind of rail transit. The distance between stations is longer than that of subway, which is mainly used in metropolitan areas. However, because it is a railway system, both ends will be very long and may be connected with surrounding cities, that is, the entire JR railway connects the entire rail transit skeleton of Japan.

Except JR, many cities have subways, just like domestic subways. However, it should be noted that only the subway line is a subway line-this sentence is not nonsense, which means that there are many private railway lines in Japan, probably referring to the lines operated independently by other companies, some of which are also underground, but they do not belong to the subway, so they cannot take a one-day subway ticket. It will be written on this map. It is best to get a general idea of which lines belong to the subway company and which lines belong to the private railway company. Generally speaking, the lines named XX are mostly subways (Qian Qian Line and Yutang Line), and those named XX Electric Railway are.

Private railways (Hanshin Electric Railway, Beijing Express Railway). There is another situation in private railways, that is, after the subway line leaves the urban area, it can continue to drive from the terminal to the suburbs, but it is already a private railway and needs extra diplomatic money. But this situation has nothing to do with those of us who are only active in cities.

Other systems, such as trams, trolleybuses and mountain bikes, are actually not commuting tools but sightseeing activities, which I have never experienced.

Generally, there are all kinds of maps in Japan, which can be obtained free of charge at the station. In addition, there will be a rail transit route map of the branch. For example, the subway map only shows the subway and does not show other routes. Make good use of these.

Of course, Japan's rail transit system is more complicated than this, and it also involves things such as getting in and out of the station and transferring.

The problem of fast and slow trains, especially the problem of fast and slow trains, but this is already a problem that needs attention after going to Japan, and I will talk about it in detail later.

The traffic in the four cities we went to is probably like this: Although each city has JR, subway, private rail and public transportation systems, the commuting modes in each city are different: Osaka mainly relies on subway, Kyoto and Nara mainly rely on public transportation, and Tokyo mainly relies on the rail transit system of JR skeleton and subway branch lines. Knowing this helps to decide what kind of pass to buy.

Finally, taxis, which are generally not expensive in Japan, are not recommended unless absolutely necessary. Please feel free.

The above overview of Japan's transportation may help you understand the explanations on the major raiders. In short, in the preparation stage, you need to know about the transportation in Japan and arrange all the medium and large-scale transportation, such as the transportation between the airport and the city, and the transportation between cities. My later itinerary can be used for your reference.

Language Many people will ask your colleagues if they can speak Japanese or if they need good English. The answer is no, no. Because in Japan, although you can only communicate in English, it is really difficult to communicate in English. However, because they all belong to the China language family and Japanese characters are handed down from China, China people hardly have any reading difficulties in Japan. There are probably the following points:

1, almost all signs, station names, signs, public transportation, rail transit and other information can be directly understood, and most of them are Chinese characters (of course, the pronunciation is completely different, so pay attention to English pronunciation when reporting stations).

2, the menu can probably understand half, the following will say some common menu terms, it doesn't matter if others don't understand, ask for pictures or look at counter samples.

3. Other long explanatory texts should have several Chinese characters in one sentence. Although you can't know all the contents clearly by these, you can probably understand what you are saying.

When talking, almost all chickens can talk to ducks, which can be roughly divided into these situations:

4. In airports, large transportation hubs, good hotels and other places, if the staff have a high level of English, they can communicate normally in English. But on the whole, their English level is still relatively high, and they feel that CET-4 is enough. Don't make long and difficult sentences, it's useless.

5. Popular drugstores and electrical stores in large commercial streets, such as BICCAMERA and Ito Matsumoto, will have a large number of Chinese shopping guides, and some hotels that China people like to go to also have China waiters.

6. In other cases, it is difficult to order food in folk restaurants, ask for directions, and buy things in subway stations. First of all, please describe the core part of what you want to do in the simplest English (the simpler the sentence, the better, you can even jump directly into the word), for example, ordering food is this, this and big.

Bowl, no

Rice or something so that they can understand. Then when they answer you, they usually speak a long list of Japanese by themselves, but there may be some English words mixed in (many Japanese words are pronounced in English), but the accents of these English words are very wonderful. People who have seen Japanese cartoons should realize that the unique Japanese English pronunciation needs everyone to get used to. When communicating, what eyes, gestures, props and actions should be used together. Finally, many Japanese people are very keen on chatting. Smile politely if you don't understand ~

7. If it really doesn't work, you can download a translation app, such as a travel translator, but I think it's basically useless. The overseas version of the public comment will also have Japanese street signs, which can be shown directly to passers-by (although we can't afford the shops on the public comment).