Yesterday I headed up to the excellently named Takadanobaba in search of the end of the line. A wander around the area failed to reveal any useful coffee shops, and those that were present were so full there was no chance of getting a seat. I found a pair of second hand record shops next to each other, one looked like it would be great, but was mostly filled with Jazz and Deep Purple live albums. The other looked awful but had some limited edition Mad Capsule Markets posable robots. How could I resist?
Onward to the terminus, which was situated in an area so deeply uninteresting it didn’t even have any coffee shops. Onto the tram, then, nothing to see here. Getting on was less traumatic than I’d expected, simply putting a coin into a machine, with a flat fare no matter how far you’re going. Only one minor error in getting on, trying to put my coin in the note slot. Some of the locals were doing worse than that and they could read the sign (I assume).
The tram itself was reasonably unremarkable, though it did somehow have a very european feel to it, but that might just have been that my previous encounters with them have all been in europe (oddly enough). The line winds its way through Tokyos suburbs, with brief flirtations with commercial districts, most notably where it crosses the Yamanote line. At times the line runs along the centre of the road, sometimes in its own space, sometimes in a lane on the road, but the majority of its length it runs on a dedicated route.
It seemed quite busy, mainly with older people, who all appear to have passes which let them ride for free (they may have to pay for these), most of the younger people either paid their single fare or had a stored value card similar to those used on the railways.
The driver changed halfway along the route, at the tram depot. The control appeared to consist of an accelerating lever and a brake, oddly without a dead mans handle (is this common on trams in Europe? I guess the likelihood of falling asleep between stations on such a suburban run is fairly small). More concerning was the little covers each driver had for the accelerator lever, a little knitted colourful woollen ‘condom’ to slot over it. There may have been a matching one for the brake, but I couldn’t see how that was operated.
After much winding through the suburbs we arrived at a small centre of some kind, nothing particularly notable about it except that, as I wandered around, I discovered the Meiji-dori, my walk will bring me back here at some point in the future…
Disappearing down the nearest subway station I head out of the city further to the end of the subway line, where I take another walk around, this time in a place with far too many second hand record shops for its own good, sadly again none of them containing anything vaguely interesting. Oh well.
Today I visited LaForet again, where I set off a domino run of maniquins (sp?). By the time I noticed what was going on there were hundreds of shop assistants juggling them and there wasn’t really much I could do to help. Oops.
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