Relatedly, I just started playing this game where the concept is you're lost in the corridors of a Japanese subway station looking for Exit 8. Very authentic feel.
Relatedly, I just started playing this game where the concept is you're lost in the corridors of a Japanese subway station looking for Exit 8. Very authentic feel.
I stayed at a capsule hotel just a block away from the station this summer, that was quite the experience. I was there for not even 3 full weeks but I think I'll feel nostalgic for Japan for the rest of my life, a strange and stunning country.
Is it not really claustrophobic being in a capsule hotel for 3 weeks? Spending a night there for the novelty I can imagine but 3 weeks wow.
I spent a few nights in capsule hotels, I was surprised at how not claustrophobic it was.
What most people don't realize is everything there is around the capsules. Usually, when you enter the hotel, you start by going to the locker room. There you put in all the stuff you won't need for the night, that is, essentially everything. You may even get a yukata robe, a towel and some toiletries, so it can be literally everything, including your clothes.
Then you can take advantage of the amities and relax. You may find showers, hot baths, massage chairs, etc... Only when it is time to sleep you go to your capsule, which is essentially like a bunk bed with privacy, maybe with a bit of equipment like a TV, alarm clock, charging plug...
Now, I probably wouldn't stay in a capsule hotel for 3 weeks, but I could definitely spend 3 weeks backpacking, stopping in capsule hotels for the night. It is not really designed as a place to stay, more like a place to spend the night with no preparation. Also, while it is cheaper than regular hotels, it is not that cheap, and if you really want cheap, there are other options.
I'd be down for capsule hotels if there was a locked door/screen with some real heft, but apparently they're basically just curtains?
Curtain is still a step up from a bed in shared room at a hostel. Personally I’ve never felt unsafe in a hostel, a little exposed at times, and annoyed when people turn up drunk and make noise getting into bed, but not unsafe.
I realize it's extremely unlikely that anything actually bad will happen, it's just a psychological thing for me.
It depends on the place. Most of them just have curtains, but some have plastic doors that your can close and lock.
I stayed in APA business hotels for two weeks, often the same price as the capsule hotels even when I booked them the same day and you get a very acceptable room and bathroom.
Often when I say that people tell me not to support the big hotelier chains and offer some independent options, which I might try next trip. I do think people might be a bit misguided though, independent or not they are still faceless hotel chains. Which one gets my $60 is hardly a matter of social responsibility.
If you are like me and are there for the urbanism, staying in a businesd hotel fits the atmosphere honestly. They're commoditized hotels, perfectly serviceable, pragmatic like much of urban life there.
Things may have changed, but I remember capsule hotels being more around $30 than $60, so, about half of what you pay for in a business hotel. Ballpark numbers.
It brings me to my other point. Capsule hotels are best when you are travelling alone. As a couple, they don't really make sense. In fact, some capsule hotels are for men only, or have men and women in separate areas. This is because they often feature public baths and there is some nudity involved, which is normal in Japan.
Oops, I meant Japan for 3 weeks. Capsule hotel was 2 nights. Yes that would have gotten very psychologically difficult.
I hear the first impression that is the dominant experience most foreigners get is very superficial. When you live there it's actually very different and it doesn't quite match up to the initial illusion you get from vacationing there. But I wouldn't know, I just vacationed there and had the exact same experience as you.
I lived there for ~7 years and would +1 this. Living and working there is very different.
London, Paris, Berlin, New York, Los Angeles, Seoul, Shanghai, Sydney... All Global Alpha cities would be similar.
I'm not so sure about London. I visited once for a week and decided that I wouldn't like to live there because it's so crowded, but maybe the big city goodies (especially the museums, access to global food and public transport) would make it worth it. If it wasn't obvious, I come from a very small town.
Now that I have lived there, all of that was very much confirmed.
People who visit Asian cities the first time romanticize the hell out of them and base their entire understanding on a culture they couldn’t hope to penetrate on a first viewing. This is a known problem with pretty much every “expat” circle in these cities - it’s noticeably more pronounced.
(I have lived in or spent significant time in all of these cities you listed)
Is that some sort of play on Paris syndrome [1]? But in that case, it is expectation not corresponding to a first impression.
Nah I think the negative aspects of living there aren't apparent when you're vacationing there. The working culture there and making friends is very different.
Is that not the case for pretty much anywhere?
Nah. The experience in Japan is especially jarring.
Went in 2014 for just a week. Still feel nostalgic.
And still miss burnt miso ramen. Nowhere else in the world seems to do it.
Now you have me pining for the sansho pepper ramen I will never forget in Ginza.
I was there this August with my family. I got my 6 year old kid hooked on Coco's Yichiban.
Not even sure it's easy to find in Japan these days to be honest. The place I knew closed a few years back.
Kinton Ramen just added it to their menu
I have long wanted to go to Japan, but I am afraid it is not in my cards. What are you most nostalgic about?
Japan has a weird mix of nice people, affordable/good food, historical structures that are well preserved, and modern/futuristic buildings/transportation. It is an "easy" place to visit, not expensive, good public transportation, and lots of well known things to go see (that are more than just tourist traps).
For a first timer, I suggest spending more time in Kyoto and Osaka and less time in Tokyo (but generally, you do Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka on your first trip there and then diverge from that if you go back).
Did you make it to the park? One of my favorite spots in Tokyo.
early 2010's, i land for the first time in Japan, with vague instructions to meet my AirBnB host "by the entrance to Shinjuku Station"
story ended happily after finding a hotspot and sending an email, but this visualization makes that instruction seem even more hilarious in hindsight
a pin pointing out a location using this map would be a perfect waypoint!
I moved to Japan in 1983, and for the first few years I lived and worked near Shinjuku Station and passed through it every day. I also spent most of my free time in the Shinjuku area and wandered around exploring a lot. It took a full year before I really knew the area and could find any entrance or tunnel without getting lost. The station has changed and grown a lot since, and acquiring that sense would take even longer today.
As it happens, I will be going to Shinjuku later today for the first time in four years to meet an old friend for lunch. I spent some time online yesterday looking at photos and streetview of the area. My friend has been living in the Tokyo area as long as I have and used to go to Shinjuku a lot, too. But he doesn't use a smartphone and we're meeting on the south side of the station, which has changed a lot. So I prepared a four-page PDF with maps and pictures showing where we will meet, and I told my friend to print it out and bring it along. I hope we're able to find each other.
Let us know how it goes!
Thanks! We found each other without any problem. My friend was a bit miffed that I seemed to think that he would get lost. Otherwise we had a pleasant lunch.
Later, I walked through Shinjuku and Kabukicho up to Shin Okubo to see how the city had changed. It was good to see that the Shin Okubo area is still as multiethnic and ungentrified as it was twenty years ago. A couple of backstreet one-person coffee shops I used to frequent were still there, though closed for the New Year's holiday.
This sounds like the beginning of an awesome indie movie :)
I might have suggested meeting at the "farm" above the South side of the station. I think it's on the fourth or fifth floor. Of course, theres only one farm in the vicinity and it's small enough that you won't miss each other.
In ‘96 I was there and popped out one of the little side exits, nearly got lost enough to have to ask for help.
For your lunch: The Shake Shack there is fantastic!
early 2010's, i land for the first time in Japan, with vague instructions to meet my AirBnB host "by the entrance to Shinjuku Station"
A famous and much easier one in Tokyo is to meet at the dog [1]. Now, granted, it's in Shibuya and not in Shinjuku.
Darn do I miss Tokyo...
Shibuya station atleast vaguely makes sense, even after all the construction.
I firmly believe that the only people who can truly navigate Shinjuku station, are people who work there and people who live there. Seems like no matter what, Google maps/Yahoo will tell you exit via b14 and every exit sign will helpfully guide you to North East, East, and all the exits a1 through a10.
It's always easier to exit the station and then figure out your final destination, which can still be annoyingly hard.
A fun skill to have is knowing how to reliably navigate Shinjuku in the rain without ever seeing rain - purely by moving via the underground, since it connects pretty far (e.g Sanchome).
I did a similar thing on my college campus during the winter snow months. Most buildings were connected in one way or another and then there was a seldom used tunnel no one knew about connecting two science building basements. I could comfortably cross the majority of campus only stepping outside for a few brief steps.
In Shinjuku you meet at the Giant 3D Cat.
I learned to never let people dictate rendez-vous points at landmarks or stations if I can.
It never makes sense. If it's a landmark or sizeable train/bus station there must be a cafe or a park with notable features nearby. If it's in the middle of nowhere there will be a bench at an easy to describe place.
Telling people to stand in wide and potentially crowded areas for a significant amount of time if they dare coming early is just cruel.
PS: for people using Hachiko as a meeting place, there's a Starbucks right the other side of the crosswalk dammit.
The Tsutaya building that closed for renovations…? I don’t believe that Starbucks is currently an option due to that.
Hachiko is a small enough area that’s pretty much proven to work and is a location that any confused tourist can get pointed to easily enough - and signs inside Shibuya station will literally label it.
Why don't people choose somewhere random and empty, so that your counter-party is the only humanoid within 100 feet radius? I'm aware it's because that feels weird, but it should make more technical sense than knowingly going into mosh pits when you're just meeting someone.
Except when the spot around Hachiko is crammed with tourists, local or foreign because of its 100th anniversary.
Zoom in on shunjuku station with google maps. All those yellow boxes with letters and numbers are various exits/entrances. I wonder which one which entrance was meant as "the" entrance. I'm sure it was the one they use every day, but that wouldn't help a visitor. It's kinda surprising someone like an AirBnB host, who presumably has to communicate this with many travelers from many places, is so vague about it.
If you're getting directions via google maps and you have to exit a subway station in Tokyo (and maybe some other cities), it will give you directions underground to the proper exit. It will even tell you which subway car you should be on so you will be closest to the proper exit.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Shinjuku+Station/@35.69166...
In 2010 AirBnB would have been more novel, so maybe there wasn’t the same expectation. I stayed on Seoul a few months ago and in addition to a specific entrance number, my host had made a YouTube video showing a first person walk from the subway exit to his place.
yup my host profusely apologized and emailed me back with the specific exit and a line i could use to ask locals for directions, but when we met I felt he was almost disappointed that I didn't get that we were obviously to meet by the entrance closest to the road which led to the property (it was his apartment that he was renting out for the summer because his family goes somewhere north for the summer)
obvious to someone who goes there every day yes, but not to a jet-lagged traveler visiting for the first time :)
i enjoyed being in the first cohort of airbnb guests, quirks and all; felt more 'personable'
but yea I also remember that being probably the last year I felt comfortable traveling somewhere without a mobile device constantly connected
I can only assume that by "the" entrance they meant West.
the smart way to do it is to name an exit like Exit B5 or A12. The signs in the station, and Google Maps, will generally tell how to get to a specific exit. Or probably better would be a famous landmarks tho there aren't many to pick from in Shinjuku. A common one used to be "in front of the Alta building on the east exit" another still is "in front of the police station just outside the east exit
Similar experience before the era of ubiquitous smart phones ~2006. The hotel was nice enough to say how to get there from Shinjuku exit E8 (at least it wasn't the A series which I think goes to 15) and it took we half an hour to even exit the subway with my rolling bag. But I was completely disoriented and actual street numbering and signage unhelpful.
Then the fun started since I couldn't spot the hotel a kind Japanese couple decided to help. Their "crippling helpfulness" became clear only after 5 minutes that they were tourists and had no idea where the hotel was, but it took even longer for me to extract myself politely by pointing towards a taxi stand saying I knew where it was. I got in a taxi and gave him the address... he looked at me like I was crazy, drove forward 1.5 blocks and pointed to the hotel sign. Best Y300 ever spent.
Shinjuku station has also changed dramatically from all the construction over the last 10 or so years. I lived in Shinjuku (the ward; I was actually a few stations north on the Oedo line) in 2009/2010; was back there a few weeks ago and it was unrecognizeable. Right now, the whole area over by the Yodobashi Camera, and where they used to have the night bus pickup is all walled off under active construction (if they haven't finished already).
I just came back from Tokyo and while I was there I stayed at a hotel in Shinjuku. I used the train station so frequently that I can now navigate easily within the station, but if you are not used to Japanese train system, it is not so friendly to foreigners. For example, in Korea, Seoul metro subway system is so well organized that you do not have multiple platforms in each subway station. In Tokyo, there are multiple platforms in each station and each of the platforms can have different subway lines. Sometimes, a particular subway line can change to a totally different line at some station, and sometimes if you are not paying attention you are now all of a sudden going in a totally different direction. Also, there are multiple railway companies operating in Tokyo, which means if you buy a paper ticket, you need to exit the subway and buy another (or rather different ticket) to transfer if you need to transfer to a different line managed by different railway company (fortunately I have an iPhone, so I added Suica card to my apple wallet and used it to pay for subway as well as transfers). I started to wonder the reason why Japan has such complicated subway system. Then again, I am not an expert in this area so there might be reasons for it which I am not aware of
The key to understanding the Tokyo rail network is that it's operated by lots of different companies, Shinjuku alone has five (JR, Keio, Odakyu, Toei, Tokyo Metro). So if you're looking for the JR Yamanote line, first make your way to the JR station, and then find the Yamanote platforms.
You don't need to get separate paper tickets to transfer across companies, but you do need to get a special transfer ticket, which can be complicated. The good news is there's really no reason to deal with them these days, just get a Suica/Pasmo card and tap on/off.
The one complication is that there are extensive through services, meaning companies running on each other's tracks. This is super convenient, because it avoids having to transfer, but can be confusing. You can board a train in the Yokohama Minatomirai line and travel smoothly through the Tokyu Toyoko, Metro Fukutoshin and Tōbu Tōjō Lines to emerge right on the other side of the metropolis.
Is it still difficult to obtain a suica / pasmo card in Tokyo? Last time I was there it was difficult to obtain the card.
If you have an iPhone, just change your phone region to Japan, and use wallet app to add Suica card to your apple wallet. You can charge whatever amount to your Suica card using Apple pay and it's good to go.
As long as you aren't using a foreign Visa card! They are having some sort of spat with Visa right now.
Tourists should get a physical card at the airport. There are too many caveats and exceptions to phone wallet support for non-residents.
You don't need to change regions anymore.
And I think recently when you look up directions in Apple Maps, it even suggests adding a transit card if you don't have one!
Here, under Transit Cards in Maps. https://www.macrumors.com/guide/ios-16-maps/
It would be a _fantastic_ feature if I wasn't a control freak and didn't add one before I even boarded the plane, but still a very nice touch.
There’s no need to change any region; just open Wallet, press the + sign in upper right corner, scroll down to transit cards, and scroll down to Japan section to find Suica as well as PASMO and ICOCA.
Suica:
Sales of JR East's Suica card (image of a penguin on the front) will be discontinued for the time being as of June 8 due to a worldwide semiconductor shortage. [1]
Welcome Suica (for short-term visits):
Welcome Suica sales will be limited to the following for the time being from December 18th:
* JR EAST Travel Service Center, Haneda Airport Terminal 3 Station
* Welcome Suica exclusive vending machine, Tokyo Monorail Haneda Airport Line Haneda Airport Terminal 3 Station
Please note that only one Welcome Suica will be sold per person.
Please note that IC cards will not be sold at Narita Airport after the 18th. [2]
PASMO:
The sale of blank PASMO has been temporarily suspended.
The sale of Personalized PASMO has been temporarily suspended. [3]
PASMO PASSPORT (for short-term visits):
The card is available for purchase at 21 locations. [4]
[1] https://www.jreast.co.jp/e/pass/suica.html
[2] https://www.jreast.co.jp/multi/en/welcomesuica/welcomesuica....
This is partly misleading and partly out of date: Welcome Suicas have been available at the airport throughput, and regular Suicas are available again at major JR East stations.
Thanks for the additional info. I didn’t intend to mislead; the quoted passages are straight off the Suica and PASMO websites, so they are only outdated insofar as those websites are outdated.
I got mine from an ATM like machine years ago and it was very smooth.
They’re referencing the recent shortage in them.
I passed through visiting old friends last week and they had them at some stations but not all.
Apparently as of ~last week or so regular Suicas have started popping up again.
But it was never a problem to get one at the airport, which where a vast majority of people should get them.
If you skipped that part, it was quite painful in the past few months because of the IC chip shortage.
Six, technically - if you count the nearby Seibu Shinjuku line. ;)
It’s very easy these days. Apple Maps can tell you exactly where to go including platform and boarding time.
Paper tickets are confusing but basically nobody uses them. I don’t think it’s true that you need to get separate tickets for separate train lines. You do need to adjust your ticket if you prepaid the wrong distance.
Unless you mean two entirely separate lines separated by different gates.
There was a station (which I don't remember) I had to leave the subway and buy a different ticket to transfer. Some stations have multiple platforms stacked next to each other that it is easy to transfer even if the lines are managed by different railway companies, but that is not the case all the time. That's how I learned that there are multiple railway companies in Tokyo that are not cooperating with each other enough to make the transfer seamless. Once you make a few mistakes, it gets easier, but it is not so friendly to foreigners. Also stations like Shinjuku is so huge that it is very complicated figure out where your exit is. Then again, once you get used to it, it becomes easy.
You might have to switch to, say, a JR train line. But that’s not a function of the paper tickets. Just different lines. Honestly the much crazier thing is that some trains go over tracks of different companies because they simply cooperate for the benefit of the consumer. You mostly don’t need to know whose line it is ever. The niche exception is for tourists with a JR Pass.
If you’re trying to remember a station in Shinjuku that was confusing with paper tickets, maybe you somehow used the Seibu Line? It’s “Shinjuku” but effectively separate from JR and Metro and a bit different as a result - or at least was the last time I needed it.
I don’t know many who ride that line unless living out on it or wanting to take the less crowded way to ‘Baba tho.
started to wonder the reason why Japan has such complicated subway system.
Because it's not just one company.
Something I just realized is that the reason why huge stations have multiple platforms is because there are so many people using the station they had to add multiple platforms to accommodate more subway trains to manage the crowd. But again, as a foreigner, I had much easier time using subways in Korea.
This is really lovely, it looks like something I'd see in a Deus Ex game on a giant screen.
On a different tip, this Catalan chap has done nearly 900 3D models of stations, ranging from huge and complex, to tiny and simple. They've been quite a hit in r/nycrail.
What is the license for these?
The images have a © watermark, so all rights reserved? I wish they had a contact button - I'd love to get some prints of the stations I've lived near. I may try messaging them on Twitter.
"I'd love to get some prints of the stations I've lived near"
Why don't you just print them then? The copyright police is not going to barge into your home, and even if so this might fall into fair use (depending on your circumstance/situation/etc).
I’d interpret it as offer to support the project and receive high quality prints. The author is clearly gifting the world an incredible portfolio; one ought, if able, to financially support such unique, open datasets.
Agreed, but from the thread it seems the author is very hard to reach/doesn't have a store/etc.
Immediately dove in to the Foc and Foneria stations in Barcelona. I thought we had some long escalators here in Washington DC but after exiting there and taking escalator after escalator after escalator (repeating) to exit the station, my mind was sufficiently blown. http://estacions.albertguillaumes.cat/img/barcelona/foneria....
I really wish Google Maps et al did a better job for subway/metro/transit stations with multiple entrance and exits. Oftentimes a station is shown as a single point on the map, while in reality the point(s) of entry can be a block or more away from what's shown. Likewise, choosing the right exit when you leave the station can save you multiple blocks of walking, depending on your final destination.
Even just showing the general shape of the station in 2D on the map would be helpful, though obviously this can be tricky when there's other points of interest above/below the train line.
Google Maps has subway exits in Tokyo, for that matter.
Yes they do but how many are wrong /out of date?
out of date
How often to metro exits change???
Stations undergoing maintenance or upgrading may have certain exits closed or even temporary platforms that change as the project goes on. Here in Chicago, the Red Line is undergoing a major rebuild that started over 2 years ago and will not be completed until 2025. Temporary stations have been set up at multiple stops, with different entrances that have changed as the project has gone on [1].
It may have only changed a few times over the last 2 years, but it's certainly a rude awakening when you're running to catch the train and you find out your stop is now a block away from where you thought it was.
0: https://www.transitchicago.com/redahead/
1: https://www.transitchicago.com/ctas-red-and-purple-moderniza...
I've generally found they're all correct. Sometimes, I run into situations where a particular exit is closed because it's after-hours (some stations close certain exits when it's late), and Google Maps doesn't realize this, but I haven't noticed any exits being outright wrong.
I think this is probably a local issue: Google Maps is better in some places than others. Google has a huge office in Tokyo, in Shibuya overlooking Shibuya Crossing, so Tokyo is probably one of the best-supported cities in GMaps for this reason. Other cities might not have such accurate information.
Yep here in Barcelona it's like that too. Single point on the map even when there's multiple exits (there usually are) and not showing which entrance is closer to which line. Real pita.
Open Street map is so much better for this but that totally lacks live public transport info with delays etc. So I end up switching between both which doesn't help.
I'm not able to rotate or manipulate the view except to zoom in and out on Chrome on a Mac, but I can rotate and do all kinds of fun stuff with this page with Safari on my iPhone. Am I just missing the keyboard commands to get this to work properly on a desktop?
they use mouse2 (right click) for rotation
Ahh, thanks! Somehow didn't think to try that instead of just clicking and dragging.
It's such an interesting UI thing... every time a 3D model shows up here, someone makes a similar comment. (Another common one is model-relative vs viewer-relative rotation... like if you go to https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/kiyosumi-shirakawa-station-t... and you move the mouse left, should the view pan left or pan right? It's an option you can set in the gear icon).
That's not on you at all, I just wonder if there's active UX research in this specific area (3D viewing on the web, as opposed to in games or VR).
I have a normal mice on my Mac and scroll wheel = zoom, right-click drag = rotate, left-click drag = pan
Does shift+drag not work for rotating in your browser?
Too bad it doesn't seem to include the railroad tracks and the staircases/escalators to the platforms, which are the most prominent features to people who use the station as passengers.
I was able to make sense of the parts by looking at the surrounding road network, but without these, it's hard to make sense of.
I'm not sure (haven't been there in a long time), but isn't that what the flickering dashed blue lines are? In the legend, they're "歩行者ネットワーク", which Google says is the "pedestrian network".
The dashed lines are too steep to be escalators and they are not vertical so they can't be elevators either. Elsewhere in this thread, it has been suggested that perhaps the height between levels has been exaggerated for clarity, and that's why the escalators ended up looking impossibly steep.
It looks like they are exaggerated because there's huge distances between each level, even the above ground building.
It's quite easy to see why it's done, so you can easily look into each level without clutter
There are some pedestrian routes here and there. (Yup, "歩行者ネットワーク" means "pedestrian network") But the 改札内 / the area inside the ticket gates seem to be missing the pedestrian network. Also, the platforms themselves are missing, as there are the upper (2F) and lower (B1F) connecting passages, but nothing in between.
Looks amazing!
Off topic: I like how I understood the technical article below despite not knowing a single Japanese word, only by reading the code, would be interesting sometime in the future that people are using programming languages as a mean of universal communication!
Assuming the code is written using English words. Here in France it's not rare to come across a codebase that uses French naming for variables and functions, or even a mix of English and French:
void deleteCartes(Map[] cartes)are you vraiment sure?
As a French living in Japan, I can tell that it's the same thing for cheap companies that don't care about the code quality, but with an even worse mix of characters.
To reuse your example, I've seen things like that:
void deleteお問い合わせ(Map[] otoiawase)
I'm guessing the reasons why the escalator angles are so steep is because the height between the floors haven't been increased for greater clarity and are not to scale.
I was thinking the same thing, at first I assumed they were all elevators, then I realised they are not quite vertical, just at a very steep angle (speaking of which: what's the steepest angle that is practical for an escalator?). And of course, a station that is served only by elevators is not realistic, it would be a nightmare during peak hours :-D
There is one NYC subway station that is served only by elevators (and it is indeed a nightmare during peak hours): https://classicnewyorkhistory.com/new-yorks-168th-street-sub...
zooming in or out with the touch-pad is a nightmare (way to slow)
I'm using a mouse without a scroll wheel, and can't zoom at all. + and - on the keyboard would have been useful.
Very cool!
I also like these hand drawn 3d illustrations of stations: https://architizer.com/blog/inspiration/industry/x-ray-visio...
After visiting your link I've been looking for a while to see newer drawings from Tanaka, but they've lost the domain for their architecture studio site, and he has the same name than Godzilla's creator, so it took me a while but here's his updated studio site, where you can find more drawings on the "works" section.
It's crazy to me how well this works, especially on mobile.
If league or even TFT was as accessible as a tab like this it'd be the end of me.
Maybe I shouldn't tell you about GeForce Now, which can run League in a browser tab...? It works so well it's ruined my life, lol.
But yeah, it's an awesome JS demo!!
I’d never heard of Three.js until I saw a talk on it at a conference this summer. Really mind blowing what you can do with it.
simondev on youtube is porting his expertise across to js & three. Very entertaining. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQt0exToUEY
I find these 3D maps exaggerated reality a bit.
e.g. London Bank - nowhere near as insane, but even after going through it for years daily I still couldn't make heads or tails out of the 3D internet map.
Reality <> Internet
Presumably, as a regular commuter, you’d never use the entire station (instead sticking to one or two entrances, lines and platforms).
Reminds me of how hacker scenes are portrayed in Hollywood films
When visiting Japan, I heard from the locals that Tokyo has three dungeons: Shinjuku, Shibuya, and Tokyo Central (Kayabacho, Nihombashi, Otemachi): these 3 station complexes are confusing and easy to get lost, even for locals.
OTOH, with some travel experience, Google Maps and my very basic Japanese, it was quite easy to navigate these. I only got lost once in Tokyo central area for 5-10 minutes (out of <= 100 metro usage). Shibuya and Shinjuku was much easier. I guess this is what happens when a city has 37 million people and some metro stations having dozens of exits. Google Maps navigation was incredibly useful, too: showed me which vagon car to take so I'll be closest to the stairs I should take when I get off the train.
And this 3D scanning makes things much easier. I'm looking forward to see Shibuya and Tokyo central versions.
Web doesn’t scale
You can only do X in native
I wonder where are the Web haters now?
Impressive, and interaction on an iPad touchscreen is fun.
greatest train station in the world
Please do Les Halles next. I need that!
Very cool, I visited Shinjuku station earlier this year and got lost in it more than once. Google maps does a decent job of giving walking directions through the station but finding my current location was difficult.
I think something like this would have helped me build a mental model of the station.
This does not include the 1km+ underground passageway you can take (exit E1) that takes you all the way through Shinjuku Sanchome station and then out near Golden Gai. I know it's technically a different station but you can get there without ever going above ground.
You might also like a similar thing for London Underground stations from 2012: https://stations.aeracode.org/
Reminds me of the beginning of ghost in the shell in all the right ways.
Fun story: Visited Shinjuku station in 2014 and left luggage on those machines that store luggage for coins to go on a quick stroll in town
Came back later, and had to spend almost an hour to find the place where we left them
That place is big
If you like this, you must check out Tomoyuki Tanaka’s hand-drawn 3-D illustrations of several Tokyo subway stations:
https://www.wired.com/2016/07/lose-tomoyuki-tanakas-x-ray-il...
(Tokyo Station, Shibuya Station, Shinjuku Station)
Fun side note: I liked these so much I contacted Tanaka-san directly and he agreed to sell me prints :)
This is the first time I've "seen" Shinjuku Station. What a beautiful introduction. I first read about the station in Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage and always wondered what it looked like. Neat.
Amazing. And even as a game …
Pretty confusing to have a map that doesn't show the train lines - of course a station doesn't make much sense once you leave out what a station is for. Also the area around the Miraina Tower exit looks smaller than it should be? It seems weirdly inconsistent about what's included or not too - the Odakyu station isn't there, but the Toei and Tokyo Metro ones (and even the bus station) are?
I can believe this is an accurate 3D map, because I’m looking around, and just as I was in the real thing, I’m totally lost and confused again.
This place has to be my nemesis when it comes to public transport :D
Would love a library of these maps for places all over
I remember my wife and I being lost at Shinjuku station several times trying to find a particular exit and random Japanese people seeing lost tourists would stop and do their absolute best to speak to us and help us out. One gentleman insisted on guiding us to the exit and walked with us for about 10 minutes
Very cool, I've been to shinjuku station last summer.
Beautiful map!
This definitely needs inverse mouse control for moving the map around.
I don't know the overlap of anime & HN, but it would be really cool to see the events of Jujutsu Kaisen mapped out on here too. They do a really good job of using real landmarks and scenery in the show.
https://www.reddit.com/r/JuJutsuKaisen/comments/17w7v9x/juju...
Technical write-up (in Japanese) here: https://qiita.com/satoshi7190/items/23d192372877af75b283
Some sort of a Digital Twin, fascinating. Nice model to play around with.
Okay this is awesome!
I feel like 3d visualisations are under utilised in general, for wayfinding, for organising stuff or files, revealing flows like here.
It's like we're stuck in a 2d paradigm somehow, but everytime i see even rather simple visualizations like this, i'm reminded of 90's cybernetic future that never happened.
I never go to Shinjuku station, just isn't worth it.
It's impossible to get lost in in a Japanese subway.They have made their subway systems so even the most confused people can figure it out.
I managed to get lost there. An incredibly nice person stopped and asked in English - I’m a tall white person - if I needed help and insisted on walking me to my exit, several minutes out of her way.
I love Japan and traveling around there is easy.
An incredibly nice Japanese person in subway who cares.
This is very Japanese. My experience was that if you ask for help directly from a stranger, they will stammer and be flustered and not be so helpful; but if you stand around and look like the lost tourist you are, within a minute or two somebody will approach you and offer to help.
You should try going to Shinjuku with the Oedo line and change to the Odakyu line, it's an experience.
This one isn’t as bad as long as you know that many Oedo transfers are a pain due to just how far underground it is. Oedo in Shinjuku should, once you finally make your way up, be near enough signs indicating where Odakyu is.
This one is pretty messy right now as they're redoing the building, but yes with enough RPG skills one should find the way. Conversely, I've been avoiding Shibuya with all the construction, didn't know it also touched the Tsutaya/Starbucks building.
I take it you've never been to Nagoya?
I love all the people responding with “Nagoya” to this because this was my first thought too.
Shinjuku station is a special case because it is so huge.
More precisely, the problem is not the train/subway station part of the station, that part is surprisingly easy to navigate. The problem is when you leave the station. There are 200 exits, and there is a good chance you end up in a place you didn't expect.
You just need to memorize this handy song then https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpKbR_iHwio :-)
It's definitely possible. Try meitetsu station sometime. It's directly adjacent to the sprawling monstrosity that is Nagoya station (where it's also easy to get lost). Not only does it use a different, color-coded system of notation than other stations I've seen, trains stop at multiple platforms unlike virtually everywhere else. Consequently there are places where multiple signs are visible giving you different directions to the same train.
Many people skip Nagoya on their typical “visit Japan” trip and the trains there can be underwhelming compared to Tokyo/Osaka, so while I agree with you, it sounds like a case of OP not deviating from the “blessed path”.
And great, now I want red miso.
OT but since multiple others are mentioning Nagoya: what's the best place to get some sweetened miso in mayo bottle thing(the tsukete-miso) around or inside Nagoya station?
I mean, I'm guessing I can just buy online, but it's something Nagoyans refuse to admit that every household in Nagoya/Aichi has one despite all having one in their fridge. It's almost strange there isn't an akafuku and kakete-miso bundle package in souvenir shops.
I also found in my recent two week vacation that it was easy 99% of the time, thanks to good signage and Google Maps. But I did miss one sign in a way that was difficult to recover from; if my partner hadn't noticed it I might have gone pretty far before I realized my mistake.
Osaka makes it possible.
That’s so funny, I spent about an hour walking around Osaka station the first time I went there trying to figure out how to get out. Ended up back in same place quite a few times. Near the Hankyuu railway staircase.
In my backpacker days I once stored a backpack in a locker in Osaka and went out for the day. It took me quite a while to find it again!
LTP: Take pictures of the where you've stored your luggage/bags, "with" surroundings. That way you'll have a much easier time finding it. Especially in larger stations around Japan. Saved my ass in Shinjuku this year.
Do this for cars in parking lots too.
LPT
I got lost in Kyoto station the day I had to catch a train to Osaka to take a plane from KIX. So many platforms, different train lines, exits. It's crazy.
Somehow I've always done fine at Shinjuku, although during rush hour it can be trickier.
Osaka is notorious for very poor exit labelling
Why limit yourself to walking when you can build them :)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1122120/STATIONflow/
Or drive them :)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2546690/Tram_Simulator_Ur...
Lol! This is all too close to reality. Gives me goosebumps.
There's also a few metro station sims (more sim than horror):
STATIONflow: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1122120/STATIONflow/
Overcrowd: https://store.steampowered.com/app/726110/Overcrowd_A_Commut...
And of course Mini Metro: https://store.steampowered.com/app/287980/Mini_Metro/
Reminds me of the time I tried to leave a Japanese train station and wound up in an underground department store. Then I tried to leave the department store and I wound back up in the train station.
I love the concept of this game, very well thought and engaging
I had this experience in real life in Shinjuku station. It was the first station I needed to navigate when showing up to Japan. I didn’t care about which exit I went out of, I was just trying to get up to the surface so I could see where I was at with GPS and orient myself. After the flight (I don’t sleep on planes), I was very stressed out and sleep deprived. I tried to look like I knew what I was doing, but I was freaking out inside, I felt trapped. It was a really bad time. Thankfully, after some sleep, navigating the subway went much better.
This reminds me of an internet phenomenon I learnt about recently: the Backrooms [1]. The concept instantly reminded me of some psychedelic horrors from the 80s in terms of emotional response. I think this game might trigger a similar response.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Backrooms