Kitayama Rail Pages
About Kitayama Rail
There is one page for each of the 47 Japanese prefectures. The page consist of three blocks; the links, the line tables and the statistics.
Links
From here you can go to all main pages and the pages for the adjacent prefectures.
You will also find links to the different sections in the line tables block.
Line tables
"Line tables" is a set of tables with all railway lines in the prefecture.
It's divided into five sections:
- Shinkansen lines
- JR lines (other than the Shinkansen lines)
- Non-JR lines
- Metro (Subway/Underground) lines
- Tramways
Each table has the same layout:
| Name |
Major stations |
Length
(km) |
Comments |
| JR Hokkaidō |
| Chitose | Tomakomai - Numanohata - Minami-Chitose - Shiroishi -
Sapporo | 56.6 |
|
- The table is divided into sections for each railway company. A short form of the company
name is shown as a section header, like "JR Hokkaidō" in the example.
- Name: Every railway in Japan has a name. You will find it in timetables, on maps etc.
For every line you can click on the line name to get to the Line page for that line.
- Major stations: Start and end of the line as well as major cities and stations along the line.
If the line passes the prefecture border, an appropriate station (e g the next city or the next junction)
in the other prefecture is used as "end point". This is marked by [ ], e g [Aomori].
Sometimes two lines can run in parallel. Stations on the "second" line are marked with grey text and a darker background.
- Length: If a line passes the prefecture border, the split has been estimated.
For parallel lines is the length of the "second" line not shown here in order to avoid double-counting of the
distance.
The lines are grouped into "Line pages". All major lines have their own page, minor lines
are grouped per perfecture on one or several pages.
Header
The header is just a list of lines on this page. From each row in the list, there's a link
to the line section.
Example of header list:
Line section
The section is divided into blocks for each railway.
The full names in Japanese and English are shown in italics below the short name, if
I have been able to find them!
For each railway are the lines listed. The line type is shown in italics below the line
name if it is something else than a normal JR /Non-JR line.
Explanation of the station table:
- General: Sometimes two lines can run in parallel. Stations on the "second" line are marked
with darker background.
- Map: Links to Mapion and Google maps.
- Station name: All stations are listed.
- Connecting lines: The railway and line name of all connecting lines at this station.
If the connecting line is shown in bold , most trains are
through trains. If the connecting line is shown in italics ,
the connecting line is not using the same station, but it is within walking distance.
If the station name on the connecting line differs, the name is shown within [] brackets,
e.g. [Shin-Matsuda].
- Km: Distances.
- City: The administrative district of the station. The reason for including it is that
sometimes the name of the station could differ from the place name. The suffix indicates
the status of the district:
- -shi: City
- -machi or -chō: Town - smaller places than Cities
- -mura: Village - even smaller places!
In Tōkyō is the town district "-ku" shown.
- Prefecture: The prefecture is shown only for the first station in each prefecture.
This page is a list of all 47 prefectures in Japan together with some general and railway-specific data about them.
Most columns are self-explanatory.
Just some comments:
The length of the prefecture's railways is based on the data compiled by me when creating the "Kitayama Rail Pages".
The railway density is a measurement that shows how much railways the prefecture has related to its area.
Data for some other countries: Germany 127, Switerland 123, Belgium 123 (the three top in the world); Sweden 27.
The railway penetration is a similar measurement to show how much railways the prefecture has per capita.
Data for some other countries: Canada 260, Australia 256, Sweden 140, New Zealand 140 (top four in the world);
Switerland 72.
The line index is an alphabetic list of all lines with hyper links to the corresponding
Line page. If a line doesn't have a specific name, the railway name is used, but marked with
a "*" after the name to indicate that the name is a railway name and not a line name!
I have sometimes added an "extra" name to distinguish between branches, translated a part of the name
etc. Such "extra" names are within ().
The station index is an alphabetic list of all stations listed in Kitayama Rail Pages with hyper links to the corresponding
Line page. You can also open a Mapion or Google map for the station in a new window by clicking on the "Map" link.
I've always been interested in railways - particularly in timetables and maps.
I love to travel by train and enjoy the scenery from the seat and to walk around in
busy or rural stations. The interest for Japanese railways started on a vacation trip
to Asia in 1993. I realised that Japan had an extensive rail network, that I wanted to
explore, either at home as "Desktop traveller" or in real life on the rails.
But, both the language and the distance was a huge barrier to get information about the
Japanese Rail network. However, I managed to get some information. I found a good atlas (Teikoku)
on a sale in a Stockholm book-shop. That's how my deep interest for Japan's railways started.
Finally I get hold a a timetable book from 1993.
The latter one is a challenge
itself, as it is completly in Japanese. I decided to do a "survey" - a list of all railways
in Japan. In the summer 2001, I started the survey, and used Internet a lot to find
all the information I wanted. I stored the information in Excel. After a while I realised
that there was nothing like my list in English on the Internet. I decided to learn a bit
about HTML and create a site. Nowadays you can find a lot of similar information in Wikipedia, but I have decided to keep my work updated!
The first version of the site was published in October 2001
with just a few prefectures. I realised that it wasn't fun. A lot of boring typing of
HTML-code. I took a new approach; all the information is stored in an Oracle database
on my PC. I'm using PL/SQL-scripts to generate the web pages. Much faster, much more
reliable, fewer errors etc. A disadvantage of this approach is the the pages could be
a bit "to structured".
In April 2002 I finished the complete list of all rail lines in Japan with their major stations. It's continously updated with the network changes.
This page is updated Oct 02, 2023
