Sign up to Nebula for only $30 per year:
Watch this video ad-free and sponsor-free on Nebula and support this channel:
Nearly 3 million people pass through Shinjuku Station every day, which is an insane number. But despite the massive number of people transported, the area around Shinjuku supports some great urbanism, with vibrant street life and lots of independent shops and restaurants.
Patreon:
Mastodon: @[email protected]
NJB Live (my live-streaming channel): @njblive
How Tokyo’s Subway Keeps On-time, Clean, and Safe
Life Where I’m From
—
Additional Reading and References
Busiest station – Guinness World Records
Shinjuku Station – Wikipedia
Metro Map of Tokyo
Rail Map of Tokyo
Map of Shinjuku Station
Tomoyuki Tanaka — Japan’s major landmarks drawn as if seen by X-ray
Apology for leaving 20 seconds early
Passenger Pusher – Wikipedia
新宿グランドターミナルへの再編
Tokyo starts massive renovation project for entrances to the world’s busiest train station
Shinjuku Station is getting a ¥72.8 billion makeover to make it easier to navigate
Tokyo’s Shinjuku Station undergoes S$755 million renovation to improve layout & ease congestion
JR East 2023 Financial Results
Poster; Metropolitan Railway fare chart, issued by the Metropolitan Railway, July 1886
—
Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:14 Shinjuku is busy, REALLY busy
1:36 Train lines (but no Shinkansen)
2:58 Navigating the station
4:06 Exits and gates
5:12 Not very impressive-looking
5:42 Platforms are boring but great
6:48 Japanese transit myths
8:10 The Hauptbahnhof test
8:52 The great streets around Shinjuku
9:44 Trains are the best
10:15 Connections to other places
10:46 Closing time
11:20 Amenities
12:42 Future construction plans
13:29 Way too many wide roads
14:17 Avoiding busy roads
14:48 The train station becomes a mall
16:04 Real estate, not railroads
17:08 A fractured station
18:30 Conclusion
19:25 Nebula
world , I Visited the World’s Busiest Train Station , #Visited #Worlds #Busiest #Train #Station
, urban planning,japan,tokyo,shinjuku,rail travel,train station
Sign up to Nebula for only $30 per year!
https://go.nebula.tv/notjustbikes
Watch this video ad-free on Nebula: https://nebula.tv/videos/notjustbikes-i-visited-the-worlds-busiest-train-station
Watch Life Where I'm From, "How Tokyo's Subway Keeps On-time, Clean, and Safe":
Nebula: https://nebula.tv/videos/lifewhereimfrom-how-tokyos-subway-keeps-on-time-clean-and-safe?ref=notjustbikes
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT6H_XMDm7s
Views are stuck on 357 for me
I visited Tokyo Disneyland the other day and at the end of the day, thousands of people started exiting the park at the same time. I was ready for 1 hr+ delay to get home based on how it’s like in the US. Incredibly, on every train arrival, massive crowds on the platform were cleared. I arrived home without any delay. Yes the train was packed, but the ability to travel like there is zero traffic at any given peak hours is incredible.
I feel like the good things you mentioned about Shinjuku station is just reflective of the great train culture found around Tokyo and Japan. That being said, as a Tokyo resident, i try to avoid Shinjuku as much as possible due to the crowds.
I believe it's over 3.5 million people a day, not 3 million. At least those are the latest numbers I could find.
I agree the Japanese ticket gates are great. But it's their ticket vending machines that are absolutely amazing. In my country if you want to buy a bus ticket at a vending machine, you have to feed in the coins one by one, waiting for each one to be processed. And of course about one in three will be rejected, because the weight is slightly off or something. So you have to rub the coin a bit and try again, or fish in your wallet for a new one. Meanwhile your transaction time expires because you took too long putting in the coins. The machine resets and spits out all your coins, and you get to do it all again.
In Japan, you take a fistful of coins, drop them in the receptacle, and the machine sorts them out incredibly quickly and with absolute accuracy. I lived in Japan for 6 months, and not once have I experienced the slightest glitch with the vending machines or the ticket gates.
Paradoxically, this level of sophistication has caused them to lag behind a bit. This highly convenient service infrastructure centered around cash and printed tickets meant they were much slower to adopt things like card payments and transit cards than other developed countries.
great vegan restaurants 10/10 train station honestly
I would love for you to visit Estação da Sé or Luz, on a very regular rush-hour Monday in São Paulo.
I will never forget the first time I visited Japan (been there many times since) in 2006.
I left Shinjuku Station from a North East exit (used to know the exit number by heart – next to a small koban cop station) and headed North towards Kabukicho, just wandering around, didn't know where I was going, and I hit the main street, and the neon and street music hit me like a physical force! The whole place throbbed with energy and light.
The area changed slightly over the years, but I always revisited, just out of nostalgia. Shame I could never re-capture the emotions that went through me that first time – but that's life!
I thought the busiest is Western Beijing station in China
commenting for algorithm. Please keep advocating for better public transportation and maybe in 10 years North America won't suck as much.
No Japan visit is complete without missing the last train at least once 😂
And I am sure the teleport gates they have in those gates for the paper tickets have had more than one person wondering if it was their ticket coming out at the other end. When I first saw that I was certainly going WTF you are tricking me, right?
Have been through Shinjuku a few times and one thing I noticed that even when there is some construction/maintenance at the station everything flows smoothly and you dont get hassled. The staff at japanese stations are always well dressed, polite and willing to help even if they may not speak English. I have seen train drivers take time to answer your questions if you stop them to ask something. When it comes to restrooms Japan is head and ahoulders above the rest of the world and thankfully they dont charge you unlike many European train stations.
I'm looking at the clothes people are wearing and I'm thinking: is everyone on their way to 1996?
As a Swiss citizen – another country known for punctual trains – I am not at all surprised about an apology about a 20 second EARLY departure. It is the norm that I'd arrive at the platform in the last 30 seconds of departure and would be pissed if it just decided to leave before that second hand of the clock hit the top.
“How often does the train go by?”
“So often you won’t even notice.”
15:43 This is a great shot of the the Mount Fuji near Satta Toge on the National Route 1 and under the Tomei Expressway.
In Copenhagen metro there are no gates at all, when entering.
You needed to get a suica card. Would have solved your ticketing problem. As long as you can get to one of the big JR stations, you can grab one and don't need to worry about tickets all across Japan. Icoca if you come in at Osaka, you can get that one at the airport station.
went to japan last fall and i fell in love SO HARD for their infrustructure
yeah even after using shinjuku station over a year i got lost once because i was meeting up with a friend near to local bus terminal, were i normally never exit, took a different line there then when commuting, and there was a construction blocking some stairs.
Waiting at designated lines on the platform and free clean toilets. Only possible when us Western barbarians invest in public transport AND accepting a change on our brutish individualist mentality. I'm afraid that won't happen in a long while. We rather enjoy the not so nice things like cigarette butts, chewing gum on the floor and dank dirty ass toilets where people do not even take the courtesy to flush their content away.
My favorite country to visit as a tourist 😍
It's so convenient to have public bathrooms at all metro stops. When I lived in Seoul, it made one less thing to think about when spending a day in the city — you know that you will always be able to take a piss when you go from one place to the next.
Thank you for this video! I lived in Japan for years, and it is so refreshing how overall welcoming it is to walk. Moving back in the US was such a major letdown, I miss Japan already. Great for the shout out for Life From I'm From channel, I love his channel too. Looking forward to your series of urbanist videos of Japan!
I think the primary focus for higways should be to move people from 1 city to another, Not to connect 1 part of a city to another. Trains can be used for both and are therefore better.
most airlines are also basically investment banks that fly a few planes sometimes.
#10:02 50 lanes….Americans don't mind that at all😂
but I personally couldn't live in a city with so many people crammed together…no matter how good the connections are
ah shinjuku my love