This is the view across toward the station from the hotel, and, yes, that tarmac is all road junction that I had to navigate across to get to the train.
Thankfully there was a crossing to help. Quite a lot of the crossings here are battlegrounds with lights holding back armies of several hundred commuters on each side of the road (or each corner in the case of lights at a crossroads), then halting the traffic and letting the battle commence. The worst are where there is a four way crossing, where you can go from any one corner of the crossroads to any other corner, all the traffic is stopped, but the centre of the cross is utter chaos. Its very polite chaos, which is part of the problem.
Having survived the road crossing the next challenge is the getting a ticket at the station. There are banks of ticket machines along the walls, each with orderly queues during busy times, of course. Above the machines are maps and fare charts. These vary in usefulness from station to station, the ones at Shinagawa are quite easily understood as they’ve at least got the fare list in romaji, other stations are not so helpful, especially as you get further out the centre.
Once you’ve figured out what ticket you want you need to get it from the machine, which is easy and it was four or five days before I even noticed they had a button to make everything English. The other option is just to get the cheapest ticket and use a fare adjustment machine when you get to where you want to go. This seems like a really good idea, especially for the those confused gaijins among us.
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