Complicated trains made a bit easier

I've written here in the past about Tokyo trains and how complicated a journey can be. One thing I didn't mention was one particularly helpful tool that you can use to help you get around, and indeed I don't know what I'd do without it. It is a website called www.jorudan.co.jp/english/ (there is at least one other, but I can't remember what it's address is).

Here is how Jorudan works. You input the station you want to depart from and where you want to go, and the date, and time of departure or arrival. And then you press "Search".

Then sometimes you get this extra screen if there are several stations similar to the station you inputed, like here we have "Ichikawa" and variations on that.

Then it usually gives you several options of routes. Courtesy of the huge network of trains, there is almost always more than one route you can take. The information includes cost, time on board, total travel time and distance.

I've shown you the four possible routes it came up for my trip this morning across "town" to our OMF headquarters. "FE" means fast and easy (it is usually the route I take).

Route two, strangely, this time doesn't have a designation.

Route 3 is "E" or easy.

Route 4 is "LE" Low cost and Easy.

Today I took Route 1 and I caught all the trains I was supposed to catch, without any hassle. I didn't get a seat until my third train and nearly an hour into my journey, but it was a good journey nonetheless.

I've come a long way since I wrote this post nearly three years ago, but this journey to OMF headquarters is one that I've done many times now, so I'm comfortable with it. Ask me to go somewhere else and I can foresee that I'd be a bit more challenged, but no where near as uptight about it all as I was back at the beginning of 2011.