Oh 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).
My 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.
I 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.
I have often wondered about this as well. I think the answer is, where else are you going to find a very small town, in the mountains, on a passenger rail line? For good measure throw in extensive local history (including historic sites), modern internet and cellular coverage, and maybe also some onsen.
Certainly there are a few to be had but (my impression) pretty much none in North America. Probably some places in Switzerland and Austria that tick most of those boxes which people seem to find similarly fascinating.
I live in a small decaying Japanese city and there is nothing fascinating about it. With a few exceptions, most Japanese cities and towns are really ugly.
Eh, you see the same kind of romanticism about the French, Italian, Greek, Swiss countryside, to list just a few.
It’s more so that US small towns are deeply uninteresting since many have been hollowed out to have the same chains. Japan has followed the opposite model and promotes obscure regional specialties like an obsession.
Hahaha I thought of this immediately when I saw the article title. I fell asleep on the train a few times and ended up in Ome or Okutama when I was living in Tokyo after a long night out. Ironically Okutama was/is still one of the most beautiful areas I have ever been, did a ton of drives out to that area to go explore the mountains
Something 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.
Have you never taken public transit before? You're one of today's lucky 10000: 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.
wow 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
Ahhh, 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.
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
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.
The 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.
7-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.
Lawson is big in Thailand, but I only see them at the BTS Sky Train stations. Well, I might have seen one in a mall but I'm not 100% sure, also in an airport.
Interesting to hear they're from Ohio. Their logo is incongruousy milk-just-like.
Here's their Insta, it seems to be their main online presence:
My wife and I enjoyed Tokyo for ten days in October of 2023. After a long day of site seeing, we would stop in at a Lawsons for a variety of snacks to eat while we rested up for the next day. The store was always clean and the small meals were very tasty.
(not related to Lawsons: we discovered the "joy" of a bidet in our hotel room. Upon returning home we immediately ordered a Toto.)
I 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.
Moscow is a severe case. The lines are going radially in all directions from the city center 250-300km away, with your stop somewhere along the first 40 min of the journey.
Well, how to decribe it... Simply put: you don't end up in a clean and cozy Japaneese town, there are few shady taxis who will be ready to propose you a comfortable trip back for around 200-300$. There is no convenience store open 24/7. If you're unlucky to end up there in the winter, then it's probably -20C outside. There is one 24/7 ATM corner which is mostly occupied by the local homeless people – so the ONLY warm option left is to go for a shining 24/7 slots machines/gambling place and try to gamble what you have for a taxi money or just to kill time. I once spent a night like this in Tver, gambling ~10$ what was left in my pockets all night with minimal bets.
I used to know a female comedian who hosted a comedy night once a month. She and her partner lived in Morden for the sole reason that she has fallen asleep on the tube and got stuck there so many times that they figured it was easier just to move there lol
My route home is via commuter rail so I don't have that luxury. I wouldn't possible know what it is like to wake up after a few beers and find myself on the last train of the night, four stations past my stop, but rumour has it that the night bus network is pretty good at getting me^H^Hpeople home, even if the wait can be cold, so long as you've not actually left London. Or Uber.
Crewe is a station of despair for the British rail network despite not being a last stop, instead in fact because it's something like the heart of the network. If you try to travel far enough across the island (especially from the north, I think) and you depart lateish or don't have the right tickets or enounter delays, the chances are excellent that you will be spending several hours overnight in Crewe. You can forget about finding a convenient and affordable bed, so instead you'll be slumped on a chair in the little waiting room, which at least is lit and heated, and feels like it's the secret heart of Britain. Or at least that's how it all still was the last time I was there, but I doubt anything much has changed since.
Crewe native here. It’s a big town rather than a small Mountain village, but aside from that it would be a similar experience to the article. There’s modern Best Western across the street. Pubs open until midnight or 1ish. Indian restaurants accommodate after hours drinkers and diners until the wee hours. There is a 24 hour McDonalds and some late night garages for supplies.
To note, ending within the suburbs doesn't help that much if everything is closed and your choice is wandering the streets, spending 5h at the only opened bar, forking for an hotel or paying a cab.
That said, France is the same regarding commuting trains, oversleeping in Paris's RER will lead you to pleasing but pretty far away towns.
Did it once, and spent about 5h visiting the sleeping town by foot to mark the occasion. Did it again in the midst of winter, and the staff allowed me and the two other blokes to stay for the night in the next departing train with the heating on.
Spain had trains going well into the mountains as well. I can't imagine how it goes for Russia, China and India.
> Did it again in the midst of winter, and the staff allowed me and the two other blokes to stay for the night in the next departing train with the heating on.
That’s a notably kind and humane gesture in the midst of winter.
I was trying to think of one in Berlin, but on weekend nights the metro trains run all night, and don't really cross over huge gaps of non-city like the one highlighted in the article. At any U-Bahn end station on a party night, you'll wait 15-30 minutes and get on the next train going the other way. On non-party nights, get out your navigator app and wait the same for a night bus.
You could definitely take a regional train passing through the city, for two hours to somewhere like Magdeburg, but you don't get on those by mistake as they run infrequently, only stop at the bigger stations, and have separate platforms.
In Copenhagen you could reasonably plan to go from the central station to, say, Høje Taastrup, but fall asleep and end up in Aalborg 5 hours and 400km away.
Høje Taastrup is a large suburb at the edge of Copenhagen, and the end of an S-train line, but anyone who lives there will know an intercity train is faster. Trains to Aalborg stopping at Høje Taastrup leave at 00:50 and at 02:50 tonight. The other suitable intercity and regional trains overnight are to nearer places, 150km or so.
Drunk 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.
Berlin has this and it's Schöneweide. There is a light rail ring with two lines going in opposite directions... and one line going straight into the middle of nowhere. If you don't pay attention it's easy to end up there by accident.
I 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.
A friend woke up in Leeds once. The main problem was the unexpected cost of a peak time ticket back to London the following morning, which is a lot for a student.
Chicago, too, particularly on Metra (the commuter rail network). The longest line is the UP Northwest line, about 63 mi/102 km to the far rural town of Harvard, Illinois.
Or, if you're heading to Indiana, the NICTD South Shore Line can take you all the way from Chicago to South Bend.
In the case of Paris, you would not really have that with the Metro which is confirmed to Paris and relatively immediate suburbs but with the RER (they share the same stations with the Metro) you can easily get off in the middle of nowhere (again - relatively, I am thinking about the south of Paris, mostly)
Milton Keynes (and a few other stops) on the West Coast Main Line function in the same way if you're unlucky enough to fall asleep on the last north-west commuter train out of London.
I wouldn’t want to end up in Chorleywood, near the north western end of the Metropolitan line, late at night. It’s a nice little village, but I suspect it would be pretty dead.
There 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.
SoraNews24 (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.
I 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.
I 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.
Ended 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."
Readit News
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).
PS: I include my self here. Just spent looking at pictures of around Okutama. Very beautiful.
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.
Certainly there are a few to be had but (my impression) pretty much none in North America. Probably some places in Switzerland and Austria that tick most of those boxes which people seem to find similarly fascinating.
I live in a small decaying Japanese city and there is nothing fascinating about it. With a few exceptions, most Japanese cities and towns are really ugly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR_Y0XOin8Y
It’s more so that US small towns are deeply uninteresting since many have been hollowed out to have the same chains. Japan has followed the opposite model and promotes obscure regional specialties like an obsession.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
Interesting to hear they're from Ohio. Their logo is incongruousy milk-just-like.
Here's their Insta, it seems to be their main online presence:
https://www.instagram.com/lawson108thailand/
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(not related to Lawsons: we discovered the "joy" of a bidet in our hotel room. Upon returning home we immediately ordered a Toto.)
I’m pretty sure this story is replicated by anybody who visits Japan. Once you use a bidet you can’t go back.
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Well, how to decribe it... Simply put: you don't end up in a clean and cozy Japaneese town, there are few shady taxis who will be ready to propose you a comfortable trip back for around 200-300$. There is no convenience store open 24/7. If you're unlucky to end up there in the winter, then it's probably -20C outside. There is one 24/7 ATM corner which is mostly occupied by the local homeless people – so the ONLY warm option left is to go for a shining 24/7 slots machines/gambling place and try to gamble what you have for a taxi money or just to kill time. I once spent a night like this in Tver, gambling ~10$ what was left in my pockets all night with minimal bets.
Cockfosters was proper despair, and Mordor (or Morden) well... don't.
What took the cake though was flying back and arriving at Stansted after midnight and waiting for the 5am escape back home in the depths of winter.
London offered many memorable evenings for those silly enough to party in the city a while back.
Not drinking so much is probably a way to avoid the despair, but where is the fun in that?
https://tfl.gov.uk/campaign/tube-improvements/what-we-are-do...
My route home is via commuter rail so I don't have that luxury. I wouldn't possible know what it is like to wake up after a few beers and find myself on the last train of the night, four stations past my stop, but rumour has it that the night bus network is pretty good at getting me^H^Hpeople home, even if the wait can be cold, so long as you've not actually left London. Or Uber.
https://sucs.org/~cmckenna/maps/busspider/2012-14/west-londo...
But if you don't wake up til the end of the line, it's probably pretty much like in Japan, except less clean.
That said, France is the same regarding commuting trains, oversleeping in Paris's RER will lead you to pleasing but pretty far away towns.
Did it once, and spent about 5h visiting the sleeping town by foot to mark the occasion. Did it again in the midst of winter, and the staff allowed me and the two other blokes to stay for the night in the next departing train with the heating on.
Spain had trains going well into the mountains as well. I can't imagine how it goes for Russia, China and India.
That’s a notably kind and humane gesture in the midst of winter.
You could definitely take a regional train passing through the city, for two hours to somewhere like Magdeburg, but you don't get on those by mistake as they run infrequently, only stop at the bigger stations, and have separate platforms.
Høje Taastrup is a large suburb at the edge of Copenhagen, and the end of an S-train line, but anyone who lives there will know an intercity train is faster. Trains to Aalborg stopping at Høje Taastrup leave at 00:50 and at 02:50 tonight. The other suitable intercity and regional trains overnight are to nearer places, 150km or so.
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[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFnkSuyRV54
Daisy: [answering phone] Hello? Oh, hi, Mike. Yeah, he's here, I'll just get him.
[to Tim]
Daisy: It's your boyfriend.
Tim: He's not my boyfriend.
[picks up phone]
Tim: Hi babe.
Mike: Hello Timmy!
Tim: Where are you?
Mike: Err, Sheffield.
Tim: What are you doing in Sheffield?
Mike: Fell asleep on the tube.
Tim: The tube doesn't go to Sheffield, Mike.
Mike: Yeah, I know. I, uh, must have changed at King's Cross.
Also not a despair place. But the point is you can go far. Same must be true in Japan.
Or, if you're heading to Indiana, the NICTD South Shore Line can take you all the way from Chicago to South Bend.
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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/
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.
Uh, ma’am, if he’s enlisted he cannot just leave.