This page gives a detailed description of how to read a Japanese language railway timetable.  It is intended only for those seriously planning their own trips within Japan, and who may need to use the Japanese National Timetable book -- the Jikoku-hyo.  There will be a few images here that you may want to print out for reference if you ever have to do so.

If you did not get to this page from a link on Randy's Japan Guide -- "Riding the Trains" page, then you should go back there for a quick overview of just what the Jikoku-hyo is.

Also, if you just need to plan a simple trip in Japan from point A to point B, you should first try the free automated English-language route planner at Hyperdia.com.  That may be all you need!

This page contains no large images, but the links below lead to some pretty large image files, or pages containing large images, which may take time to load if you have a slow connection.

Organization of the Timetable Book

First of all, I should reiterate that the Jikoku-hyo is written entirely in Japanese.  You will be pretty much lost if you cannot at least recognize the written names of the places you want to go -- if only from a bilingual map of Japan.  It would be much more useful to be able to read the phonetic Japanese scripts -- Hiragana and Katakana.  While these scripts may be quite esoteric to the tourist, anyone who spends much time in Japan can learn to read these phonetically in a week or two, with some practice.

The first part of the Jikoku-hyo has about 20 pages of maps of the various sections of Japan, as well as more detailed city maps. These are explored in more detail below.

Following the route maps are 9 or 10 pages with layout maps of 25 major city railway stations, showing where the various platforms (purple), ticket offices (green), and travel agencies (pink, or red for Japan Travel Bureau) are.  They also show telephones, restrooms ("WC"), and -- if you can read Katakana -- coin lockers. I do not reproduce any of these station maps here.

Right after the station maps is a page of Explanation of Symbols; I've copied many of them for you, see below.

After that comes about a thousand pages of timetables! The first part -- in light green paper -- are the super-express train timetables.  The first 60 pages of this are only for the Shinkansen -- bullet train -- timetables.  These are followed by another 40 pages showing only Special Express (Tokyu) trains on various routes; then 4 pages showing the few overnight Special Express trains with sleeper cars.  All the Special Express routes are repeated in the body of the book for each line, but this light-green section is meant to be a shortcut for people who only want to see Special Express trains.

The rest of the book is the color of newsprint and shows each of of the rail routes throughout the country.  First come the Japan Railways routes. Private railways are shown farther back, then come ferry, boat, bus, and tramway routes.  They also have schedules for urban subways, as well as airline routes and tour buses. In the very back are pink pages of information in Japanese, and a "yellow-pages" in yellow of travel related businesses: hotels, inns, restaurants, etc.

Route Maps

As mentioned, 20 color pages at the front of the Jikoku-hyo contain route maps of the country. These are reference pages that tell you on what page of the book you will find the schedules for each rail, bus, or ferry route.  Without these maps -- and being able to read them! -- the book won't do you much good at all.  Click on the small map fragment image at right to take you to a page with an example piece of just one of the maps.  It will give you an overview of how to use the maps, to find the correct timetable pages for your trips.

Reading the Timetables

Timetable Symbols:  A large number of symbols are used in the timetables. The most common ones are summarized in the image linked to by clicking on the fragment on the right.  These are copied right out of the Jikoku-hyo page (right after the station maps) and translated [roughly] by me.

In general, trains run the same schedules every day, so the timetables usually mention the occasional "days off" only in footnotes.  However, some -- but not all -- routes have different timetables for weekends than during the week. They will have duplicate sets of timetable pages for these two schedules.  The keys for these tables are found in large print on the vertical margins.  The symbol you see on the left of this paragraph is for Weekdays Only -- it's in white.  While the symbol for Weekends and Holidays is in black; it's shown at the right of this paragraph.  Also note that many of the routes take a number of pages to show all the trains in one day; each page may show only a couple of hours of trains. The good news is that there are lots and lots of trains on the main routes in Japan!
Example Pages

Next, I have created a few fairly large images of pages -- or parts of pages -- right out of the Jikoku-hyo. There are a couple from the bullet train schedules, and several others from regular routes. I have added English text to these images to explain what you are looking at.  Below you will find links to these various images, each of which has its own explanatory notes in English.  You may find it useful to print some of these out as a reference when looking at a real timetable.

1. A Page from the Bullet Train Schedule.
2. Details of the Bullet Train Schedule.
3. A Rural Timetable on the Japan Sea Coast.
4. Details of the 1st page of a Chuo Line Schedule.

Here's your plan:

• First figure out where you'd like to go.
• Find the locations on an "English" (Romanized) map of Japan
• Make a note of all the major towns in the vicinity.
• Find the same locations on a Japanese language map
• Copy or find copies of the town names in Japanese.
• Get out your Jikoku-Hyo (Japanese National Timetables) and
• Find the color maps in the front. See the Route Maps page linked to above for details
• Locate the map in the Jikoku-hyo with the part of the country you are going to.
• Search like hell to find the names of the towns you're going to.
• Determine the possible rail (ferry, bus, etc) routes to get there
• Find the Red Page Numbers on the map corresponding to the routes
• Write down all these page numbers.
• Go to the pages referenced in the Jikoku-hyo
• Try to find the characters for the towns you want to visit or pass through.
• If you can read Hiragana phonetics, they are on the right side of timetables.
• Make sure you have the timetable for the correct directions of travel.  Up trains () travel towards Tokyo, Down trains () away from Tokyo!
• Find the page with the time of day you will be travelling
• Find the trains that will be fastest or most convenient for you.
• Look for the few trains that will go "all the way" without changing.
• Write down the arrival and departure times, and the train name
• Write down the reservation code for that train (if any)
• Write down the platform number the train leaves from (if available)
• Repeat the process to find connecting routes to get to all your destinations.
• Compare timetables to find reasonable connections.
• Optionally take this information to a station and buy reserved tickets
• Pack your bag and go!

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