Japan by Train

About this book

Most guides treat trains as the plumbing between sights. This one makes the ride the sight.

Japan by Train is a complete guide to 200 rail journeys, scenic lines and great stations, every entry in one traveller's format: the line and section, the journey and its highlights, exactly how to ride it (which side to sit on, what to reserve, what to combine it with), and an honest time guide for planning the day. Twenty shinkansen journeys read for their windows, not just their speed — Fuji across the tea fields, the Tateyama Alps wall, the undersea crossing to Hokkaido. Sixty-eight scenic lines through gorges, snow country and along three different seas. Forty joyful trains — dining trains, character trains, panoramic resort expresses. Twenty-four steam and heritage journeys. Twenty-eight stations that are destinations in themselves, from Tokyo's red-brick terminus to a platform standing alone in a dam lake and a station 486 steps underground. Plus the everyday network — airport links, city loops and beloved trams — that makes it all work.

It is honest where other books go quiet: durations are guides, never fake timetables; pass advice reflects the post-2023 Japan Rail Pass reality (a specialist tool now, not a default); and lines that are suspended or closed are labelled as such, in the entry, so no reader plans a trip around a train that no longer runs. Practical chapters cover the network's shape, passes and IC cards, reservations, luggage and manners, and the art of the ekiben — with model itineraries chaining the best rides into 7- and 14-day trips.

Build the trip around the rides. Japan rewards it more than any country on earth.

Written and created in Japan by Japanese author Aki Wakamatsu. Published by Takikawa TOKOTOKO Kids LLC, a Japanese publisher in Hokkaido, Japan. Authentic Japanese content, carefully made in Japan — not mass-produced.