There have been some pretty geeky train station-related posts in the past on Tokyo Fox but this one really pushes the nerd levels to the extreme! Only those stations located geographically inside Tokyo are included so the Tokyo Disneyland stations, for example, are not included as they are technically in Chiba prefecture.
I should add that this wasn’t done on one trip. In fact, it was done over the space of about two years as I really didn’t want to make specific journeys just to see the inside of a station! In that time TheTokyoFiles not only beat me to it but bettered it by doing it for the whole of Japan! Click here to see that post.
For those who don’t know, Japanese has three styles of characters for writing. Kanji comes from Chinese and is the most complex with each one representing a concept. Hiragana is for Japanese words and katakana is for foreign words. I mentioned in a Room 101 post about Japan six years ago that I was not a fan of the latter as the word has to fit in with the sounds available in Japanese meaning that some words get completely butchered and can be a mystery when read!
The 18 stations are listed below in alphabetical order (maybe not the best of ideas as it means a load of Haneda Airport ones come early!) with words in bold identifying which parts of the station name are in katakana. It should be noted that the katakana word biru (ビル) in numbers 2, 3 and 4 below is short for building and is not used in the English translation.
1. Ariake-Tennis-No-Mori Station (有明テニスの森駅) on the Yurikamome Line
2. Haneda Airport Continue reading →
