Chiba eki

Here's a view of part of Chiba eki (station) taken from the top of the nearby Sen City Tower.

The station is a "Wye". On the lower right (platforms 1 to 6) the Uchibo Line and Sotobo Line tracks are coming in from the southern part of the Prefecture, and above them (platforms 7 to 10) the Sobu Line tracks are curving in from the east of the Prefecture. That's my train home!

On the left of the photograph the combined Sobu Line tracks are heading off to Tokyo - the nearest are the slow lines and then further away the fast lines.

Many Japanese stations tend to look the same - not surprising because so many were rebuilt in the 1960's and 1970's. This station was only completed in 1968, before that the main station for the town was about half a mile way. All the tracks were completely changed around here too - in the 1950's this was the site of the steam locomotive roundhouse.

Notice how large the passenger overbridge is compared with Britain. Actually here there are also two passenger underpasses between platforms here as well. It's very normal to have at least three links between all the platforms in busier stations in Japan because of the thousands of passengers that can arrive on every train in the rush hour

- Iain