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Using Yahoo Trainsit

Yahoo Japan has some great features that can make your life on the magic island just a little bit easier. If you check out Yahoo Travel, you can access a feature that will tell you how to get from one train station to another. The details are plenty, with alternate routes, time to destination, where to change trains, and even how much it costs. It took me a while to get into the habit of using it, but no matter when I asked a Japanese person how to get somewhere, they almost always whiped out this webpage and printed a page for me. Cell phones also have access to webpages that give the same type of information.

If you go to Yahoo Japan, and check out the 'rosen' link (shown below), you can access the train mapping feature.

First, type in your origination and destination stations in the below locations...
Yeah, you have to type them in Japanese, but if you could read the link on the first page, I think you'll be okay! [UPDATE 4/18/2004] I found out that you can actually enter your data in English Roomaji here. For example, if you type "Kikuna" you'll get the same results as below!

In this case I selected "Shinjuku". There are more than one train stop that begins with the phrase "Shinjuku", so you need to select the specific one.

Click submit, and there you go! It will show you the price, where you have to change trains, and the time down to the minute. As you can see, you need some Japanese skillz to use this tool. But if you got em, it will help you out a lot!

- Created 12/2003