Platform routine

Here's a photograph I took at Inage yesterday afternoon. A 'local' from the west side of Tokyo has just pulled into plafform three headed for Chiba. Luckily it's a still quiet time of day - school is already 'out' but most kids are still involved in 'club activities'

The working of trains on a plaform like this is unimaginable in Britain. Between seven and eight in the morning fourteen stop here and in four cases there is only two and a half minutes between one leaving and the next pulling in. Forty four sets of doors along the eleven car E217 unit will open and passengers getting off will spill out between lines of commuters already waiting at the marks on the platform where the doors will draw up. Perhaps 500 people will get on the train and it will be away within thirty seconds.

It's a method of train operation that is conducted with military precision. And of course it relies on passengers as well as staff to make it work. More than a million people use the Sobu Line to commute into Tokyo every day - it is one of five main routes into the capital operated By JR