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I have a hot take on the price of JR Passes. For those unaware, they are exclusively for foreign visitors. In the "old days", travel to and in Japan was considered very expensive, so JR Pass was envisioned as a way to encourage more travel on trains and in Japan. Now the script has flipped. Japan is no longer expensive for people travelling from other highly developed nations. Quite the opposite: It is now cheap. The era of cheap JR Passes is dead. The primary purpose now is convenience. With the exception of Nozomi super-express Shinkansen between Tokyo and (Shin-)Osaka, every JR train is included in a single ticket.

> Too bad because it used to be a really good deal...

Considering the environmental woes & collapses coming down the pike, I'd like to see a trans-border effort to drive down the price of mass transit _everywhere_. Put it on the G7 agenda, the OECD agenda, the UN General Assembly agenda, ...

But the regional passes are still a good deal. If you are in Osaka or Kyoto, and want to take a day trip to Hiroshima, it more than covers the cost, in addition to granting access to various museums plus other benefits.

No only that, but to ride the fastest Shinkansen you still need to pay additional fee on top of JR Pass.

Eki-melos are the things that I really liked about taking trains in Japan.

The chirping bird sounds to help blind users find their way to and from the platforms is also a pretty interesting design decision.

The flip side of that cultural sense of duty is unfortunately a rise in "black" companies (ブラック企業, burakku kigyo) and employee exploitation[1] leading to very long working hours (often unpaid) and high karojisatsu rates (suicide from overwork / stressful working conditions)[2].

At least in the past, companies like JR East were known for their worker exploitation and unfair policies, leading to decades of hostile labor disputes with Kokuro (the National Railway Workers' Union)[3].

In 2013, a family sued JR West after an overworked employee committed suicide. The family claimed he worked over 100 hours a month, and that during some months, he worked over 254 hours of overtime[4].

Japanese trains are renowned for being extremely punctual, but operators often punish employees for the smallest mistakes. They fine employees if the train is delayed by even a single minute, leading to one driver suing JR West in 2021[5].

I know the west likes to romanticise Japanese culture, but the reality of the working culture in Japan is far from romantic.

[1] https://izanau.com/article/view/black-companies-japan

[2] https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/karoshi-deep-look-japans-...

[3] https://www.jil.go.jp/english/archives/emm/2006/no.74/74_si....

[4] https://japantoday.com/category/national/family-files-lawsui...

[5] https://www.vice.com/en/article/japan-railways-lawsuit-late/

Yeah and we would feel that way in the west if the company didn't lay us off every time the stock market twitched and gave us company housing.

In the west the employee / employer social contract died sometime in the 80s. It's rare, especially in tech, to have employees with decades of tenure. You see Microsoft trying to buyout older employees recently.

The short term profit maximisation thing comes from leadership culture rather than employees per se

> A factor not mentioned is Japan's cultural sense of duty and honour. I don't think employees in the West generally feel such dedication or perfectionism towards their company

Diminishingly few.

It is a feedback loop.

And the concept of company families, of client corporations beholden to larger/older ones. They dont work together because of financial incentives or contractual obligation. The work together because they are fraternal organizations.

Here's another slightly related topic I wrote on a while ago. Not my best writing but I'm fascinated by this kind of history -

https://culturecompiled.com/p/strong-state-capacity-is-a-pro...

I think that's just coincidental. I've mentioned it to Japanese people before and they can't see the connection at all.

Although Japan also has extensive highways, and they're privatized in a similar way to JR (NEXCO East, West, Central) and are nearly all tolled - if you're driving alone, it's often the same price in tolls alone as a ticket on the Shinkansen (but the equation quickly flips when you more people in the car)

Rail companies were rather abusive - because they could get away with it. Also, shipping freight was much more profitable/easier/simpler than shipping people. When the interstate system was being built, folks would much rather drive than ride a train (or bus for that matter).

Rail is hardly abandoned in the US, the US has a top tier _freight_ rail network. It's just passenger rail that sucks big balls in the US.

Rail is great when you have a lot of people or things moving on the same path.

Highways are great when everyone has a different path.

Japan has most (but not all) of its large destinations on the pacific coast, which works great for rail.

I'm sure passenger rail networks used to have more routing options than amtrak does now, but it's hard to get between a lot of places by rail without going through Chicago. In the western US, you can go north/south in the pacific states or near the missisipi. Sure mountains are hard to cross, but there's no north/south in the plains either... Or Atlanta to Florida, etc.

Germany has both the Autobahn and rail.

The US did not abandon rail, it just used it for freight

Europe shifts people by train, not freight.

The US/Canada/Mexico is about 10% more than the EU, but it shifts 7 times as much freight by rail.

japan is a small island the US is one of the most extensive and biggest distance from population centers country on earth

I tihnk that helps explain the feasiability of train on each country more than inherent choices

> There are around 100 train companies in Japan. JR is 7 of those 100. The other 93 are NOT JR. Drawing any conclusions about Japanese trains from inspecting 7% of them is just wrong.

JR is a whole lot more than 7% of trains (downthread you claim 38% of passengers, but even that understates things; over 60% of passenger-km are with JR).

> Eiden

Not what it's called lol.

> Those others, except maybe 1, are all private, and have always bene private.

Yes and no. Other operators are structured as private companies but often have significant public ownership, and even those that are notionally 100% privately owned often have strong ties with the political system via the keiretsu system, and always collaborate very closely with local and national governments in practice. E.g. fares are regulated, not simply set at "what the market will bear" levels; conversely the government provides a lot of legal support and subsidy for building new lines.

This article is about the JR branding and design, not train operations. The title may be overstating the case, but the content is definitely not drawing over generalized conclusions about railroads in Japan.

Not to mention the idea that JR is only 7% of Japanese railroad makes little sense in real life. JR carries a majority of rail passengers in Japan. The long tail of non JR railroad companies in Japan are small, regional operators owning maybe one or two lines with infrequent services. Many of them are also private only in the sense that they are incorporated in the same way as private companies. But if you dig a little around you will find out they are actually owned by local governments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-sector_railway

What does any of that have to do with the article, which is about the branding and logo of JR?

Yeah, it's always obvious when this kind of thing is written by someone who has only ever been to Japan as a tourist, if they have at all.

Just a deep fundamental misunderstanding of how things work.

> "Hanshin, Hankyu, Kentetsu, Nankai"

Also Keihan. And most, if not all, of these companies have huge land and real estate development projects generating non-rail income all up and down their lines.

Why are you frustrated when you didn’t even read the article?

Tech industry needlessly idolizes the country, so you're unfortunately bound to read this slop until the heat death of the universe.

Although I'm seeing more and more public transit around the world (including Japan) adopting tap-to-pay so you can use your regular debit/credit cards.

Been wanting to write about this. The graph of interoperability agreements that makes this possible is crazy.

My first visit to Japan, there were still places that would only accept a subset of IC cards and not all.

Confusing, perhaps. Inconvenient, not really, the same Suica/Pasmo cards work everywhere and handle transfers seamlessly.

This is not the time to grind your axe against privatization and inequality.