Electronic money on mobile phone and Japanese train rush hour

A few weeks ago, my colleague talked to me about electronic money on a mobile phone. He looked excited about it, but I was not surprised at it because it already has been common sense in Japan since 2001, which Japanese trains company, JR, started that service to make ticket less paper and save time to buy tickets in train stations. Now almost it all people use this service because it is very useful. Before this came out, people used to bought a ticket on ticket machines, but sometimes it was very crowed and took much time for waiting for long line. Of course, if you have commute card, it did not matter. So JR introduced a card, called Suica standing for Super Intelligence Card, in which you can put electronic money. Electronic money is recorded magnetically on the card. So if you have this card, you do not have to buy a ticket. When you touch a gate of train station by this card, then the gate has a sensor, and they can communicate magnetically by using magnetic field induced by motion of touch. Amazingly, accuracy is very good. When you touch your card when you enter a train station, a sensor recognizes that you are inside trains system. At this moment, no money is charged. When you get out of another train station, you have to touch your card on a sensor again, then money is charged depending on how long you travel by train and electronic money is automatically subtracted. If your recorded electronic money is not enough for fee, you have to recharge money on your card.

Many people would concern how to charge and recharge money, but you can do that either by manually by using machines at trains stations or by automatically when you touch your card on the sensor. You can recharge money automatically if you do setting in advance. Another good thing is for this card is that you can use this for any purchases, as long as stores can handle electronic money. I am really sure that this had triggered electronic money. So in any place, electronic money is available for usage. You can buy a dink at vending machine, a book at book stores, and a snack at Kiosk. A few year later after this card came out, cell phone companies came up with an idea which tried to implement this system on cell phones. It is successful and many cell phone already integrate it as a default.


By the way, we have another problem about Japanese train system especially during morning commute. That is too much people for limited number of trains. Tokyo is a place to work for almost all people and many peoples commute to Tokyo every day from other cities and prefectures because housing cost is really expensive, many peoples can not afford to buy a house while feeding own family in the center of Tokyo. So every morning, it is terrible situation for many people. More than 200% peoples get on a train. Train station employees try to push peoples into a train as much as they can. I found a video on Youtube which can show you exactly what real rush hour it is.

I am sure that you can figure out what happen in Japanese train station. When I was a high school student, I used to commute to the center of Tokyo from outside of Tokyo by taking one hour every day in summer in order to attend mathematical and physics seminars. And when I was a university student, I did same thing every morning. So I know how painful it is physically and how stressful it is mentally. Although it is a wonder, human being can get used to that situation while accepting that this can not be helped and avoided, and painful and stressful feeling gets less gradually as time goes on. 


Do not worry, I do not mean that this happens everywhere in Tokyo. If I say precisely, this happen at stations which are a little bit far from the center of Tokyo. When trains come to the center, peoples get off station by station, so it is not so crowed actually.


Just in case when you visit Tokyo for sightseeing, you should be careful to use train for moving somewhere especially in the morning.