You might wonder what the numbers and alphabets in s square shown next to the station name is on the station sign. Unless you read a travel guide book for Japan, you don’t understand what it is.
This is station numbering which was introduced to help those who are not familiar with Japanese language understand easily where they are by using combination of alphabet and Arabic numerals which is commonly known in the world.
Station numbering has been introduced at specific train sections in metropolitan area where multiple lines cross complicatedly and started from Meguro station, JR Yamanote Line in August, 2016 with consideration of Tokyo Olympic in 2020.
JR East Japan smart phone app was reflected in a part of train sections planning to introduce station numbering, which is mainly Tokyo Metropolitan area in October, 2016.
Contents
Station numbering structure
Station numbering consists of numeral part and alphabet part. In case a train company operates only one line or completely independent line which never connects to other local lines, a sign shown on station numbering is only number.
Alphabet part
Alphabets in outer black line is called three letter code indicating the name of station. The example image indicates us Tokyo station. Alphabets in the center white square indicates railway company and types of line. In example case,
- J stands for JR (Japan Railway Company)
- Y stands for Yamanote Line
In case more than two lines that has the same initial, even if those lines are operated by the different railway companies, an alphabet allocated on each station sign will be changed in order to prevent it from overlapping.
For example, Kintetsu railway company and West Japan Railway company (JR West Japan) doesn’t put the initial of company name and the train line name on each station but allocate arbitrary alphabets to each station.
In case of JR Tokai and JR Kyushu, the first alphabet comes to be the railway company name and second alphabet comes to be arbitrary alphabets for each station.
Examples of train line initial overlapping prevention
Tokyo Metro
Tokyo Metro and Toei subway
Osaka Metro
Yurimamome and Tokyo Metro
Toei Oedo line
Initial “O” can be misled by No. “0” so “E” is allocated to OEdo line
Numeric part
Numeric part is a series of number sequence starting from “0” or “1”. One digit number is expressed two digits like “01” to adjust figure length in the form of putting “0” in the first digit.
If number sequence is allocated based on a certain direction by the railway company, a young number or an old number doesn’t necessarily match railhead and the final destination. For example, the final stations of Ginza line, HIbiya line and Chiyoda line allocates “01”.
There is no perfect law of numbering stations but railway maps tell us everything.
The way of allocating number and alphabet has basic concept that I told you above but it is basically decided arbitrarily by each railway companies’ discretions in some reasons so there are so many exceptions that don’t follow the basic concept of numbering.
Therefore, we need to check and learn the numbering as often as you use train in Japan. I just put links of railway map below.