I don't know for sure, but after living in Japan for 5 years now, whenever something in a Japanese business feels antiquated, inefficient, or just plain backwards and wrong, it's usually because some manager in an office who has been there longer than everyone else decided that it's good enough.
It probably sounds like I'm exaggerating, but loyalty to the hierarchy goes deep here. I don't know how many times I've had to hold my tongue and not state a fact because if I did, the manager would "lose face". Not an insult, a criticism, or even an open question, just a fact-- if I know it's contrary to what a manager thinks is the right way, he gets to sit back and keep his ego puffed up for no good reason.
Once my manager asked me to aggregate a list in excel to find a final count for a range of parts used in our blueprints. I used a pivot table in Excel. It took me about two minutes. He snapped back, "How are you doing this so quickly? It must be wrong. Do it like this:" and he proceeded to take a screenshot of each page of the sheet, send the screenshots to chatGPT, and ask it to aggregate them. Dear god I wish I was joking. It took him over an hour and still left room open for human error (or AI error I guess). I showed him the pivot table method, he just scoffed and walked away.
I have heard from some native Japanese people that it’s all about efficiency—as in maintaining a comfortable level of inefficiency. Jobs at traditional companies in Japan are more of a lifestyle, and your co-workers are your family (sometimes moreso than your real family). The workday is slow and steady. Disrupting this dynamic by making everyone work harder or faster is frowned upon.
Not everyone likes this setup, especially the young, but many older Japanese prefer it, as it helps them maintain a comfortable lifestyle that they are used to, until eventual retirement. I won’t say either side is in the wrong here, it’s a cultural choice, but it’s probably not sustainable once the older generation retires.
I've worked in a similar asian country and that's one of the reasons I left. You cannot intellectually and professionally grow in this sort of environment.
It really depends on industry and size - notably, it's ironic but smallish-medium businesses are the most stuck in old practices. They don't have shareholders or the org structure to change things, while the largest companies, makers, ad agencies, etc have largely moved forward to more outcome focused process. The hierarchy definitely still slows things down, requiring a lot of paper approvals to actually do anything. But holding your tongue in a meeting is frowned upon at at least many large cap.
He was transported to Australia in the 19th century, but thanks to a shipwreck he ended up joining an Aboriginal tribe. He was taught their language and joined their society to a certain degree (they thought he was dead, so a limited degree).
He was horrified by the level of violence in their lives, and sometimes when two sides were lined up to do battle he would appear and go around knocking the weapons out of their hands, which prevented the battle.
I like to imagine faux-outraged tribesmen loudly lamenting "Oh no, the ghost took my weapons! Obviously we can't have a battle now. Oh well, nothing to be done."
My experience was arriving by train company X to a large station, having bought what I thought was the correct ticket to continue with company Y. On the platform for company Y's train, there was a small sign in English reminding foreigners they actually needed two 'tickets' to use the train (just as the article mentions) and I'd only bought one of them. There was a machine just the other side of the adjacent ticket barrier to buy the missing part.
Except the custodian of the ticket barrier would not let me pass through to use the machine, since I had not entered through this barrier. He looked at my tickets, and said that since I had entered on company X's train, I must go to platform 48 or whatever and use the barrier there. I was on platform 1.
This was an enormous station, and I missed the intended train.
Another journey involved 7 printed tickets for a one way journey with a couple of changes.
But instead of simplifying this, the Japanese have invented a complicated ticket barrier where you can stuff in all 7 tickets together, and it clips the relevant one(s) and returns them in the correct order.
- yes you need to speak and read Japanese
- a lot of sites embed the information inside of images, not text, which is not that easy to translate automatically and your AI agent probably won't think to check it unless you use screenshot navigation by default
- a lot of the booking will be done or expedited by phone calls
- yes you need a Japanese phone number
- yes you need a Japanese debit/credit card most of the time for online systems (or pay at the conbini, aka physical locations in Japan, American credits cards also work usually)
Japan is what it is. It's not super friendly infrastructure if you're not living there. No they don't want to change it.
I’ve been a tourist in Japan twice, and maybe it’s because we were using fairly well-worn routes or weren’t there for long, but we neither spoke Japanese, or had a Japanese payment card, or Japanese phone number, and managed okay. It’s not that impenetrable.
Yeah, well trodden paths by tourists will be more accomodating, but it doesn't take much deviation from that well trodden path to hit roadblocks. Even in Tokyo. Japan is huge. And tbh a lot of the experiences are soft-locked behind language comprehension.
Japan resident since 1983. I read Japanese fluently, but I also hate reserving Shinkansen tickets online. When I want to reserve, say, a one-way ticket from Yokohama to Osaka, I have to click through multiple popups warning me that I cannot pick up the tickets in Kyushu or Hokkaido (or something like that, I don’t remember the details) and various other things irrelevant to my trip. When I can, I prefer to buy paper tickets from the machines in the station; the interface is much better.
In addition to the various reasons mentioned by others, this inefficiency is partly the result of government-led deregulation aimed at promoting competition. JR used to be JNR, a single nationalized railway system. It was unified but customer-unfriendly, losing money, and prone to labor disputes. When it was privatized in 1987, it was divided into six companies by region (plus a separate nationwide freight company). While the various JR companies mostly cooperate with each other, and service has indeed improved overall (stations are much nicer than they used to be), the decentralization also leads to problems, including insufficient coordination among the companies about reservations and ticketing.
Another unintended consequence of deregulation has been the complexity and inefficiency of payments at the retail level. While 7-Eleven convenience stores accept several dozen types of digital payment [1], most retailers can afford to handle at most a few. As a result, different stores accept different combinations of payment methods. Some (including a small restaurant near my home where I eat once or twice a week) accept only cash, while others accept only digital payments (some forms, that is) and refuse cash-only customers. There’s a large department store near my home where I can pay with Suica on some floors but not on others.
It’s not unusual to get stuck in line at a cash register while the teller and a customer ahead try to figure out how the customer can pay.
Buying tickets is a pain. You have to buy two tickets, and physically stack them together at the same time and feed into the machine at the gate.
Some trains and buses in remote areas only take cash. Some only take EXACT fare and the driver does not have change and will refuse you. I asked my hotel for exact fare by exchanging my foreign 10$ USD bill. The staff informed me it was illegal for them to exchange money. Lo and behold I looked it up and it is indeed illegal as you need a foreign exchange license.
The stacking two tickets thing is pretty much a relic of the past now. Your first ticket (local fare) is your Suica/Pasmo card, and your second ticket (express surcharge) can be loaded into the same Suica/Pasmo straight from the smartEX app where you bought your ticket, meaning all you need to do is tap the card once.
It's admittedly a PITA to set up the first time around, but once you've done it, it's silky smooth.
Most of the machines will literally just print you both tickets if you select the right option.
Your complaint about the money exchange is wild to me, I don’t think I’ve seen anyone try to do that in my 15+ years being in and out of Japan. Why would you expect to hand over a non local currency to them and have that work…?
Some buses demand exact fares because their fare machines don't have change calculation mechanisms. They usually tolerate overpaying, it just feels ripped off. I've done it once when I was young - I still want that \290 back.
Exchange is illegal, but not making change. Perhaps because of the language barrier they thought you might want to pay with USD.
There is a change machine in nearly every bus/train with conductorless operation, you take a boarding ticket when you get on and you pay when you get off. They're used to tourists screwing up and just ask where you boarded.
I think it's cultural familiarity and resistance to change. My Japanese wife has no problem booking us tickets and it's been over 20 years since she left Japan -- the interface is probably the same as when she left Japan. People there are used to it and it's good enough for locals so no reason to change (even if it's more difficult for foreigners to use).
When I visited Japan with a friend in an area that's less touristy than other places, I had my wife book my bus/train tickets from the USA since the websites were so hard to navigate and it took a phone call to the bus company to book those tickets - she sent me a note to show at the ticket window to pick up the tickets.
Her mom complains when anything changes, it's been over 2 years since her favorite affinity card switched from in-person redemption to an online app and she still complains about the change.
"2000 since 1990" first time I heard it
"2000 and stopped there" during 2010s
"2000 since 1980" lately, post-COVID
and I don't like it. I'm not offended though I yearn for Japan 2000 through rosy glasses, I don't like that COVID set back people's expectations from the concept of year 2000 by a decade.
I think a fundamental issue is just that there are so many train companies. I don't think many (any?) other countries have quite so many, even JR isn't just one company. Even when individual companies put some effort into a renewal making things easier, when the experience starts from first finding out even which company to book from, there's a huge barrier to entry.
I think it is possible to define a booking standard so a meta provider could handle things, like trip.com etc for flights, maybe someday.
I don't have a better way to validate my claim, so please feel free to correct me, but it seems like Switzerland and Japan have a similar concentration of transportation companies per 1000km² [1], yet with the SBB Mobile App [2] you're able to book any journey within Switzerland (and even cross-country) by just selecting origin and destination.
I think there's no excuse to just have a better transportation system, and I think every country should aim at excellence in this field (along with having public transport arriving on time).
When Norway (unfortunately) privatized and tenderized* the railway, they at least made a provision that every ticket should be purchaseable through a government owned entity. Which means you can use the government app ("Entur") to travel plan and purchase, even between operators and even modalities (trains, busses, trams, etc).
* (using the word wrongly), and it was a hack job. The existing operator is still owned by the government (NSB, renamed to Vy), but then had to bid on contracts to win their existing lines back. Which they of course were predetermined to lose most of, otherwise all that work from the right side government would have been useless.
Of course, NSB then also couldn't have any advantages having been the sole provider from before. So men in suits decided which IT systems they were allowed to keep, and which should be the basis for the Entur app/system.
I came in as a consultant at Vy to reimplement what got severed, without having any prior knowledge/advantage.
The UK had/has far too many companies following the 1990s privatization, but any company can sell a ticket on any route -- online, at a ticket office, or using a machine.
I don't know the rules, but at least the company with the cheaper/slower trains from London to Birmingham shows their faster/dearer competitor when searching, and vice-versa, although you do need to search "London Terminals" to "Birmingham Stations" rather than specific stations. (The trains use different stations.)
Not surprising UK and Japan share trains as well as so much, thanks for the example!
I have some vague recollection of being confused by this when in London a while a back. I think, instead of buying a ticket from a seemingly unrelated company I ended up re-searching at the source. Can't remember a price difference, most likely there wasn't, but it felt shady. So I guess integration still isn't necessarily a great UX...
Tried to book an esoteric guide, website required activex, the book button wouldn't show up, didn't find out until later it was only activated during business hours. Some worker had to turn a toggle when they openned shop? There weren't many other options, ended up sending them a fax. All the Apple dick sucking and US bases and still can't get some whatsapp service like 3rd world countries.
JR East is currently rolling out a new, streamlined booking portal. However, in classic Japanese style, attempting to access it from a non-Japanese IP returns a 403.
There was also news earlier this year that all the major JRs will introduce a unified booking portal in 2027, but I was unable to find any proof of life that this is actually happening.
This year Japanese suffered a massive PII leak of 300 million records in total (= 2x the population, 10x compared to last year). Unsurprisingly, the IP block didn't help much ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
> a unified booking portal
Maybe this [1]? It seems more like SSO rather than a unified booking portal though.
Btw, JR East is also introducing new terminals [2] something similar to McDonald's kiosks. In terms of UX, it's quite similar to SmartEX, you can pay by credit card and tie it to your Suica. The traditional ticket vending machines seem to have been getting complicated for years even for locals.
I already ranted a bit about this in my conclusion of this blog post [1], but I'm happy to rant again here: it's beyond my comprehension why planning a train journey in Japan has to be this messed up. You first have to figure out the route (and Google Maps doesn't have all the operators there, so good luck), then you have to figure out how to buy the ticket for said route - which is an entire different system for each operator (e.g: JR East and JR West are completely different in their booking system) - even if you do it in person, each operator has its own machine and some tickets cannot be bought by credit card.
Then you have to deal with the consequences of Japan never modernizing (trying to use a credit card for the online reservation is painful, although things are improving a bit on this side). A few years back, less than 5, it was also impossible to reserve a train ticket using a foreign credit card (non Japan-issued Mastercard, with 3d-secure). I also had a very negative experience using a virtual credit card as you need a physical one to pick up your tickets...
I always want to laugh and cry at the same time when I read their domain name for booking the ticket (because of course their app is only available in the Japanese Play Store / App Store):
https://e5489.jr-odekake.net/e5489/ibpc/CBTopMenuPC?LANG=en
Try any other variation of the above URL and you get... a 404.
Anyways, beside this, it's such a beautiful country. Can't wait to go back again.
Regarding booking train tickets, I normally recommend that people use a major, domestic tourist agency, such as JTB. The majors will have English language support. For a small fee, they can print the tickets and mail them to you, or you can pickup at an office upon arrival in Japan. For obvious reasons, they can also accept foreign credit cards.
Seriously? I shouldn't have to use a tourist agency to buy a train ticket...
> Can you give an example?
In the Kanazawa area, almost all buses operating there were missing. I also don't know how, but they seem to have like 4+ different bus operators for such a small town. I also tried building a solution for myself using the available GTFS feeds, but unsurprisingly almost none were available (thus it's not really Google Maps' fault).
The general problem is how to ensure quality in a low-competitive-pressure environment, especially public services which are natural monopolies. Quality only appears randomly if the right people happen to be in charge.
Look at what competition does in the AI model space. Imagine there was just OpenAI vs the actual case where there's Anthropic and others which pressure and copy each other.
I wonder if there's any solution to this, I couldn't think of any.
But having traveled around Japan extensively, I've had a very easy time buying train tickets in person, at the station. You can buy in advance if you want, but I've rarely had any need; just go, and buy a ticket for the next train.
So I guess I'm not too surprised to see that the website design is crappy: it's an afterthought.
While I agree that online booking in japan can be difficult the frequency (especially between Tokyo and Osaka) allow you to book the same day easily. And especially first time going there limited express can be a bit daunting.
But once you get used to it; booking a ticket for shinkansen feel more alike buying a metro ticket than a airline ticket.
I have a different opinion about this after visiting Japan for the first time this summer. I think they need to accommodate an aging population with technological advancements. It's a classic problem of making old systems work with new technologies. And this in itself is a great achievement if you look at it holistically. Yes, young(er) people can complain that is to hard to buy train tickets or have to interact over the phone for things that can be accomplished online, while old(er) people will probably have harder times adjusting to things like contactless payments, but in the end they managed to make the entire society, as a whole, function and move forward. It can be done better? Yes, definitely, but I think this is iterative and it will improve over time.
You raise an interesting point here. To use digital Suica/PASMO/whatever in Japan, your mobile phone needs to have NFC hardware called (Sony) "FeliCa (Osaifu-Keitai)". Few Android phones sold outside of Japan have this hardware. However, Apple is a bit special -- I think all modern iPhones sold globally support it. (Please correct me if wrong.)
Google also tells me:
> Samsung confirmed it's working with JR East to bring Suica and FeliCa support to Galaxy phones sold outside Japan starting in 2027.
As far as I'm aware, at least some of the Pixels sold outside Japan have actually had the same hardware for several generations, it's just disabled in software due to licensing
I found that out before I went, so I took an iPhone specifically for the job. The ease is gives you makes it worth carrying. As for northeast of Tokyo, very few visitors do that, sadly.
Japan has "Super Tickets" because it allows you to combine a shinkansen ticket with other rail journeys and use a single base ticket to connect between any two stations on the network, many with different infrastructure owners. It's very convenient once you grok it.
Often the Super is printed on the base ticket if you buy it together.
But maybe you use an IC card or virtual IC card and put the super ticket on it using the SmartEx app and reschedule or cancel with a few taps. Some people do that instead of whinging about inflexibility of legacy systems that still exist but no one uses.
I'm visited Japan for the first time recently and that's what I'd recommend as well. At first I tried to search for it online and when I couldn't figure it out within 2 minutes, I decided I'll deal with it later. When I got to the station, there are machines that support English which you can enter your destination and whether you wanna include the IC fare. Haven't had any problems so far
The phrase “Japan has been living in the future since the future since the 80s” comes to mind. For a country so deeply rooted in the technological revolution of the last 50 years, it certainly doesn’t feel like it when your there. It’s a weird mix of culture, history, and a deeply capable people hamstrung by economic forces.
I think a lot of things stick around because they have a good bespoke manufactoring industry and maintenance practices. Old infrastructure and automations that were built during the bubble era still work and you can still get parts made for them.
A more puzzling aspect of it is, if you show up at a rural station near Akita, they'll sell you a multiple connection ticket to a rural station near Nagoya in seconds, using some hyperoptimized mainframe-terminal-style green-on-black text UI. A system that only requires you to know where you want to go does exist, maybe the problem is that every rail company has built their own version of such a system and there is an agreement to not compete online.
Until you want more than the base fare ticket (reserved seat, green car, Shinkansen). I used the green ticket machines in those cases. That just works.
Takes 30 seconds in Apple Wallet to issue a new card and put an initial load on it. Don't understand what the problem is. Buy it before you depart, put 2000 yen on it with a visa/mastercard, get on the train at the airport.
This isn't so much an example of "Japan is wierd lol" but "you're tapping it wrong".
Oh the JR Group reservation system is too cryptic and unapproachable to you? Don't worry, it is to everybody. Except for hardcore train nerds and nerd-turned-company-employees. But even they would not deny that it is not very intuitive.
The problem is that all ticket systems that deal with JR Group has to be a front end to a system called the MARS System[1][2], and day-to-day operations of Japanese train and travel industry rely on its specific behaviors and intricate nuances, and that the collective of nerds and nerd-employees had adamantly refused complete changeover of the system for years. It's like you can have a webapp wrapping over the old 3270 terminal commands any way you want, but anyone with a badge and the uniform will insist that it's faster to have them hit the real analog buttons in the right order. Or just use Vi or mysql shell or something.
Some of JR ticket machines reserved for express trains with different frame colors compared to others are actually what are considered self service terminal of this MARS system rather than being ticket machines, and its UI is apparently close enough in structure that it even triggers the same unconscious habit of tapping the bottom 1/3 of the right part of the frame for retired or current employees. Which means it'll be unintuitive as it gets.
To effectively use the MARS user terminal and get JR tickets, you have to have a mental image of the ticket you are seeking to obtain, the MARS command sequence that yield that ticket, and operate the terminal accordingly, whether the terminal in front of you was the older crew terminal or newer terminal or its travel agency subvariant or the kiosk version stalls or one of numerous web interfaces or whatever it is. Some of fields such as seat numbers and choices of possible routes can be determined as you go, but in the way conforming the JR ticketing mechanisms.
I don't know enough about those stuffs myself nor I find that embarrassing. I just know enough to know it's called MARS System and if there were stations in "via" fields of a ticket that the train I will be on won't even be passing, it must be some MARS shenanigans. I certainly don't find it fair to expect someone just visiting Japan wanting to see some wooden temples and maybe try matcha, to be perfectly fluent with those. But if you were wondering why... ^this^ is why.
1: Pronounced mulls system like the Roman god. From the Wikipedia page: the original MARS 1 went online in 1960 and features were extremely limited. MARS 100 onward that replaced the original model were built on Hitachi mainframes. 305 onward were developed by a privatized JR Group company instead of the national company, JNR. Current iteration has the model number Series 500 MARS 505. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%9E%E3%83%AB%E3%82%B9_(%...
> The most frustrating experience I had was booking a ticket online, only to get a message after confirmation: “You’ll need the physical credit card to retrieve your ticket at the station.”
Most (all?) airlines require this. In practice, it's only checked if your name differs from the name in the credit/debit card.
Other than that, the user fails to explain why booking a train is harder in Japan? They have multiple operators/lines but that's normal for a big/dense city like Tokyo.
I've taken hundreds of flights in and between the USA and EU and never once had to show anyone my credit card. In a number of cases, the ticket was booked with someone else's credit card.
For (non-Schengen) international flights, I usually have to show someone my passport.
This is for getting tickets printed on the spot, not for using the already printed tickets. People buy tickets online and have it printed later at the airport/station kiosks, which lets you prove your identity abusing the fact that customers realistically don't forge a credit card. It can be an ID/password login at the busy station using unresponsive touchscreen, or a membership card of the airline/train, or maybe even a driver's license, but CC is probably the most convenient(unless...).
The fact that a ticket bought online must be printed on paper at all seems anachronistic in 2026. I would expect, or at least hope for a QR code saved to a smartphone as the default.
Add Oceania to that. As long as I've been able to produce the proper passport(s) and visas for my journey I've been let on the plane, throughout all kinds of complex journeys.
I have had a round trip flight recently that involved two passports, a work visa, and an ETA, and a total of 5 layovers across 3 airlines. As long as I produced the correct identity documents at any given check in desk, I was allowed to board, without ever producing a credit card.
Didn't happen to me for a domestic flight with JAL recently. I was actually surprised how little they checked; just a QR code was sufficient (although my memory might be fuzzy due to the international flight just before it).
I was never required to book a flight ticket with a physical card while booking online. And even if that's a policy, I feel like being told that before booking would be nice.
I don't know for sure, but after living in Japan for 5 years now, whenever something in a Japanese business feels antiquated, inefficient, or just plain backwards and wrong, it's usually because some manager in an office who has been there longer than everyone else decided that it's good enough.
It probably sounds like I'm exaggerating, but loyalty to the hierarchy goes deep here. I don't know how many times I've had to hold my tongue and not state a fact because if I did, the manager would "lose face". Not an insult, a criticism, or even an open question, just a fact-- if I know it's contrary to what a manager thinks is the right way, he gets to sit back and keep his ego puffed up for no good reason.
Once my manager asked me to aggregate a list in excel to find a final count for a range of parts used in our blueprints. I used a pivot table in Excel. It took me about two minutes. He snapped back, "How are you doing this so quickly? It must be wrong. Do it like this:" and he proceeded to take a screenshot of each page of the sheet, send the screenshots to chatGPT, and ask it to aggregate them. Dear god I wish I was joking. It took him over an hour and still left room open for human error (or AI error I guess). I showed him the pivot table method, he just scoffed and walked away.
I have heard from some native Japanese people that it’s all about efficiency—as in maintaining a comfortable level of inefficiency. Jobs at traditional companies in Japan are more of a lifestyle, and your co-workers are your family (sometimes moreso than your real family). The workday is slow and steady. Disrupting this dynamic by making everyone work harder or faster is frowned upon.
Not everyone likes this setup, especially the young, but many older Japanese prefer it, as it helps them maintain a comfortable lifestyle that they are used to, until eventual retirement. I won’t say either side is in the wrong here, it’s a cultural choice, but it’s probably not sustainable once the older generation retires.
I've worked in a similar asian country and that's one of the reasons I left. You cannot intellectually and professionally grow in this sort of environment.
I had a feeling that this was because of hierarchy but I wasn't sure. Now I know. Thanks for sharing.
It really depends on industry and size - notably, it's ironic but smallish-medium businesses are the most stuck in old practices. They don't have shareholders or the org structure to change things, while the largest companies, makers, ad agencies, etc have largely moved forward to more outcome focused process. The hierarchy definitely still slows things down, requiring a lot of paper approvals to actually do anything. But holding your tongue in a meeting is frowned upon at at least many large cap.
No way to fact check this, but reminds me of the rude american as a service- position https://www.reddit.com/r/tumblr/comments/arcj6w/the_loud_ame...
That reminded me of the memoir of William Buckley.
( https://archive.org/details/lifeandadventur00morggoog/ )
He was transported to Australia in the 19th century, but thanks to a shipwreck he ended up joining an Aboriginal tribe. He was taught their language and joined their society to a certain degree (they thought he was dead, so a limited degree).
He was horrified by the level of violence in their lives, and sometimes when two sides were lined up to do battle he would appear and go around knocking the weapons out of their hands, which prevented the battle.
I like to imagine faux-outraged tribesmen loudly lamenting "Oh no, the ghost took my weapons! Obviously we can't have a battle now. Oh well, nothing to be done."
My experience was arriving by train company X to a large station, having bought what I thought was the correct ticket to continue with company Y. On the platform for company Y's train, there was a small sign in English reminding foreigners they actually needed two 'tickets' to use the train (just as the article mentions) and I'd only bought one of them. There was a machine just the other side of the adjacent ticket barrier to buy the missing part.
Except the custodian of the ticket barrier would not let me pass through to use the machine, since I had not entered through this barrier. He looked at my tickets, and said that since I had entered on company X's train, I must go to platform 48 or whatever and use the barrier there. I was on platform 1.
This was an enormous station, and I missed the intended train.
Another journey involved 7 printed tickets for a one way journey with a couple of changes.
But instead of simplifying this, the Japanese have invented a complicated ticket barrier where you can stuff in all 7 tickets together, and it clips the relevant one(s) and returns them in the correct order.
You could do it all in a phone app, but some people would lose their unnecessary and parasitic employment.
Lived in Japan for 4 years:
Japan is what it is. It's not super friendly infrastructure if you're not living there. No they don't want to change it.I’ve been a tourist in Japan twice, and maybe it’s because we were using fairly well-worn routes or weren’t there for long, but we neither spoke Japanese, or had a Japanese payment card, or Japanese phone number, and managed okay. It’s not that impenetrable.
Yeah, well trodden paths by tourists will be more accomodating, but it doesn't take much deviation from that well trodden path to hit roadblocks. Even in Tokyo. Japan is huge. And tbh a lot of the experiences are soft-locked behind language comprehension.
Japan resident since 1983. I read Japanese fluently, but I also hate reserving Shinkansen tickets online. When I want to reserve, say, a one-way ticket from Yokohama to Osaka, I have to click through multiple popups warning me that I cannot pick up the tickets in Kyushu or Hokkaido (or something like that, I don’t remember the details) and various other things irrelevant to my trip. When I can, I prefer to buy paper tickets from the machines in the station; the interface is much better.
In addition to the various reasons mentioned by others, this inefficiency is partly the result of government-led deregulation aimed at promoting competition. JR used to be JNR, a single nationalized railway system. It was unified but customer-unfriendly, losing money, and prone to labor disputes. When it was privatized in 1987, it was divided into six companies by region (plus a separate nationwide freight company). While the various JR companies mostly cooperate with each other, and service has indeed improved overall (stations are much nicer than they used to be), the decentralization also leads to problems, including insufficient coordination among the companies about reservations and ticketing.
Another unintended consequence of deregulation has been the complexity and inefficiency of payments at the retail level. While 7-Eleven convenience stores accept several dozen types of digital payment [1], most retailers can afford to handle at most a few. As a result, different stores accept different combinations of payment methods. Some (including a small restaurant near my home where I eat once or twice a week) accept only cash, while others accept only digital payments (some forms, that is) and refuse cash-only customers. There’s a large department store near my home where I can pay with Suica on some floors but not on others.
It’s not unusual to get stuck in line at a cash register while the teller and a customer ahead try to figure out how the customer can pay.
It’s a mess.
[1] https://money-creditcard.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/seve...
Buying tickets is a pain. You have to buy two tickets, and physically stack them together at the same time and feed into the machine at the gate.
Some trains and buses in remote areas only take cash. Some only take EXACT fare and the driver does not have change and will refuse you. I asked my hotel for exact fare by exchanging my foreign 10$ USD bill. The staff informed me it was illegal for them to exchange money. Lo and behold I looked it up and it is indeed illegal as you need a foreign exchange license.
The stacking two tickets thing is pretty much a relic of the past now. Your first ticket (local fare) is your Suica/Pasmo card, and your second ticket (express surcharge) can be loaded into the same Suica/Pasmo straight from the smartEX app where you bought your ticket, meaning all you need to do is tap the card once.
It's admittedly a PITA to set up the first time around, but once you've done it, it's silky smooth.
"This app is not available for your device". It's region-locked for a few countries (US, CA, AU, SG, HK, MY, TH.)
https://smart-ex.jp/en/app/download/index.html
Most of the machines will literally just print you both tickets if you select the right option.
Your complaint about the money exchange is wild to me, I don’t think I’ve seen anyone try to do that in my 15+ years being in and out of Japan. Why would you expect to hand over a non local currency to them and have that work…?
Many larger/premium hotels will change currency as a service.
Some buses demand exact fares because their fare machines don't have change calculation mechanisms. They usually tolerate overpaying, it just feels ripped off. I've done it once when I was young - I still want that \290 back.
Why would a hotel/store/whatever accept foreign currency even if it was legal? It would be a massive pain in the ass for bookkeeping, etc.
Did that hotel accept USD for some reason? Otherwise yes it would be pretty far-fetched for them to exchange money for you, that's not strange.
Exchange is illegal, but not making change. Perhaps because of the language barrier they thought you might want to pay with USD.
There is a change machine in nearly every bus/train with conductorless operation, you take a boarding ticket when you get on and you pay when you get off. They're used to tourists screwing up and just ask where you boarded.
Japan is bad, but South Korea was the stuff of nightmares when I lived there with a Mac. So awful you had no choice but to laugh.
IE6, ActiveX controls, and mandatory keyloggers for online banking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_compatibility_issues_in_So...
I had no idea! We used to have mandatory keyloggers for online banking in Brazil not too long ago, but this is gone now.
WTF?! What's the reasoning behind mandatory keyloggers for online banking?
"there are so many fraudsters and scammers around, so we need our own good keylogger on your machine"?
it got so bad, even their _free online games_ needed to authenticate using a bespoke popup where you clicked in your pin number
towards the end it shuffled the digits after each click
truly cat and mouse
I think it's cultural familiarity and resistance to change. My Japanese wife has no problem booking us tickets and it's been over 20 years since she left Japan -- the interface is probably the same as when she left Japan. People there are used to it and it's good enough for locals so no reason to change (even if it's more difficult for foreigners to use).
When I visited Japan with a friend in an area that's less touristy than other places, I had my wife book my bus/train tickets from the USA since the websites were so hard to navigate and it took a phone call to the bus company to book those tickets - she sent me a note to show at the ticket window to pick up the tickets.
Her mom complains when anything changes, it's been over 2 years since her favorite affinity card switched from in-person redemption to an online app and she still complains about the change.
As the joke says:
Japan in 1980 was 2000
Japan in 2000 was 2000
Japan in 2020 is 2000
I think it was:
and I don't like it. I'm not offended though I yearn for Japan 2000 through rosy glasses, I don't like that COVID set back people's expectations from the concept of year 2000 by a decade.The way I heard it phrased is "Japan has been living in the year 2000 since 1980"
Been here since 1998. Can confirm. ;-)
I think a fundamental issue is just that there are so many train companies. I don't think many (any?) other countries have quite so many, even JR isn't just one company. Even when individual companies put some effort into a renewal making things easier, when the experience starts from first finding out even which company to book from, there's a huge barrier to entry.
I think it is possible to define a booking standard so a meta provider could handle things, like trip.com etc for flights, maybe someday.
I don't have a better way to validate my claim, so please feel free to correct me, but it seems like Switzerland and Japan have a similar concentration of transportation companies per 1000km² [1], yet with the SBB Mobile App [2] you're able to book any journey within Switzerland (and even cross-country) by just selecting origin and destination.
I think there's no excuse to just have a better transportation system, and I think every country should aim at excellence in this field (along with having public transport arriving on time).
[1]: https://www.perplexity.ai/search/08b4e2d1-f249-4827-8b69-2f3...
[2]: https://www.sbb.ch/en/travel-information/apps/sbb-mobile.htm...
When Norway (unfortunately) privatized and tenderized* the railway, they at least made a provision that every ticket should be purchaseable through a government owned entity. Which means you can use the government app ("Entur") to travel plan and purchase, even between operators and even modalities (trains, busses, trams, etc).
* (using the word wrongly), and it was a hack job. The existing operator is still owned by the government (NSB, renamed to Vy), but then had to bid on contracts to win their existing lines back. Which they of course were predetermined to lose most of, otherwise all that work from the right side government would have been useless.
Of course, NSB then also couldn't have any advantages having been the sole provider from before. So men in suits decided which IT systems they were allowed to keep, and which should be the basis for the Entur app/system.
I came in as a consultant at Vy to reimplement what got severed, without having any prior knowledge/advantage.
So much weirdness, and so much waste
The UK had/has far too many companies following the 1990s privatization, but any company can sell a ticket on any route -- online, at a ticket office, or using a machine.
I don't know the rules, but at least the company with the cheaper/slower trains from London to Birmingham shows their faster/dearer competitor when searching, and vice-versa, although you do need to search "London Terminals" to "Birmingham Stations" rather than specific stations. (The trains use different stations.)
Not surprising UK and Japan share trains as well as so much, thanks for the example!
I have some vague recollection of being confused by this when in London a while a back. I think, instead of buying a ticket from a seemingly unrelated company I ended up re-searching at the source. Can't remember a price difference, most likely there wasn't, but it felt shady. So I guess integration still isn't necessarily a great UX...
Tried to book an esoteric guide, website required activex, the book button wouldn't show up, didn't find out until later it was only activated during business hours. Some worker had to turn a toggle when they openned shop? There weren't many other options, ended up sending them a fax. All the Apple dick sucking and US bases and still can't get some whatsapp service like 3rd world countries.
JR East is currently rolling out a new, streamlined booking portal. However, in classic Japanese style, attempting to access it from a non-Japanese IP returns a 403.
https://go.jreast.co.jp/
There was also news earlier this year that all the major JRs will introduce a unified booking portal in 2027, but I was unable to find any proof of life that this is actually happening.
> non-Japanese IP returns a 403
This year Japanese suffered a massive PII leak of 300 million records in total (= 2x the population, 10x compared to last year). Unsurprisingly, the IP block didn't help much ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
> a unified booking portal
Maybe this [1]? It seems more like SSO rather than a unified booking portal though.
Btw, JR East is also introducing new terminals [2] something similar to McDonald's kiosks. In terms of UX, it's quite similar to SmartEX, you can pay by credit card and tie it to your Suica. The traditional ticket vending machines seem to have been getting complicated for years even for locals.
[1]: https://www.jreast.co.jp/press/2025/20250919_ho01.pdf (ja)
[2]: https://www.itmedia.co.jp/mobile/articles/2607/04/news030.ht... (ja)
I already ranted a bit about this in my conclusion of this blog post [1], but I'm happy to rant again here: it's beyond my comprehension why planning a train journey in Japan has to be this messed up. You first have to figure out the route (and Google Maps doesn't have all the operators there, so good luck), then you have to figure out how to buy the ticket for said route - which is an entire different system for each operator (e.g: JR East and JR West are completely different in their booking system) - even if you do it in person, each operator has its own machine and some tickets cannot be bought by credit card.
Then you have to deal with the consequences of Japan never modernizing (trying to use a credit card for the online reservation is painful, although things are improving a bit on this side). A few years back, less than 5, it was also impossible to reserve a train ticket using a foreign credit card (non Japan-issued Mastercard, with 3d-secure). I also had a very negative experience using a virtual credit card as you need a physical one to pick up your tickets...
I always want to laugh and cry at the same time when I read their domain name for booking the ticket (because of course their app is only available in the Japanese Play Store / App Store): https://e5489.jr-odekake.net/e5489/ibpc/CBTopMenuPC?LANG=en
Try any other variation of the above URL and you get... a 404.
Anyways, beside this, it's such a beautiful country. Can't wait to go back again.
[1]: https://blog.denv.it/posts/goodbye-travel-agents-hello-ai-ag...
It's a Japanese pun. 5489 = goyoyaku = your reservation.
Many of these used to be/still are phone numbers as well.
Yes but... https://e5489.jr-odekake.net/ returns 404.
Regarding booking train tickets, I normally recommend that people use a major, domestic tourist agency, such as JTB. The majors will have English language support. For a small fee, they can print the tickets and mail them to you, or you can pickup at an office upon arrival in Japan. For obvious reasons, they can also accept foreign credit cards.
Seriously? I shouldn't have to use a tourist agency to buy a train ticket...
> Can you give an example?
In the Kanazawa area, almost all buses operating there were missing. I also don't know how, but they seem to have like 4+ different bus operators for such a small town. I also tried building a solution for myself using the available GTFS feeds, but unsurprisingly almost none were available (thus it's not really Google Maps' fault).
The general problem is how to ensure quality in a low-competitive-pressure environment, especially public services which are natural monopolies. Quality only appears randomly if the right people happen to be in charge.
Look at what competition does in the AI model space. Imagine there was just OpenAI vs the actual case where there's Anthropic and others which pressure and copy each other.
I wonder if there's any solution to this, I couldn't think of any.
Booking online may well be difficult.
But having traveled around Japan extensively, I've had a very easy time buying train tickets in person, at the station. You can buy in advance if you want, but I've rarely had any need; just go, and buy a ticket for the next train.
So I guess I'm not too surprised to see that the website design is crappy: it's an afterthought.
Japanese websites tend to be bad in general.
Obviously there are bad websites in the US or broader West as well, but the average in Japan feels a lot worse imo.
While I agree that online booking in japan can be difficult the frequency (especially between Tokyo and Osaka) allow you to book the same day easily. And especially first time going there limited express can be a bit daunting.
But once you get used to it; booking a ticket for shinkansen feel more alike buying a metro ticket than a airline ticket.
I have a different opinion about this after visiting Japan for the first time this summer. I think they need to accommodate an aging population with technological advancements. It's a classic problem of making old systems work with new technologies. And this in itself is a great achievement if you look at it holistically. Yes, young(er) people can complain that is to hard to buy train tickets or have to interact over the phone for things that can be accomplished online, while old(er) people will probably have harder times adjusting to things like contactless payments, but in the end they managed to make the entire society, as a whole, function and move forward. It can be done better? Yes, definitely, but I think this is iterative and it will improve over time.
Suica on an iPhone, job done? If it's shinkansen then use Smart Ex to load the ticket onto the card.
You have to go though apps or the MV(as nerds call it) for reserved seats.
If your phone runs Android and you want to go east (north) of Tokyo, none of this will work.
You raise an interesting point here. To use digital Suica/PASMO/whatever in Japan, your mobile phone needs to have NFC hardware called (Sony) "FeliCa (Osaifu-Keitai)". Few Android phones sold outside of Japan have this hardware. However, Apple is a bit special -- I think all modern iPhones sold globally support it. (Please correct me if wrong.)
Google also tells me:
As far as I'm aware, at least some of the Pixels sold outside Japan have actually had the same hardware for several generations, it's just disabled in software due to licensing
I found that out before I went, so I took an iPhone specifically for the job. The ease is gives you makes it worth carrying. As for northeast of Tokyo, very few visitors do that, sadly.
Japan has "Super Tickets" because it allows you to combine a shinkansen ticket with other rail journeys and use a single base ticket to connect between any two stations on the network, many with different infrastructure owners. It's very convenient once you grok it.
Often the Super is printed on the base ticket if you buy it together.
But maybe you use an IC card or virtual IC card and put the super ticket on it using the SmartEx app and reschedule or cancel with a few taps. Some people do that instead of whinging about inflexibility of legacy systems that still exist but no one uses.
Or you could just show up and buy your ticket/pay your fare on the spot like 99% of the rest of Japan.
Think I’ve only ever had to buy a ticket online once before in all my years in Japan.
I'm visited Japan for the first time recently and that's what I'd recommend as well. At first I tried to search for it online and when I couldn't figure it out within 2 minutes, I decided I'll deal with it later. When I got to the station, there are machines that support English which you can enter your destination and whether you wanna include the IC fare. Haven't had any problems so far
Personally, I found a lot of systems to be a little behind regarding UX/CX in Japan.
Clearly once great and really ahead, but a little dated, by modern expectations.
The phrase “Japan has been living in the future since the future since the 80s” comes to mind. For a country so deeply rooted in the technological revolution of the last 50 years, it certainly doesn’t feel like it when your there. It’s a weird mix of culture, history, and a deeply capable people hamstrung by economic forces.
I think a lot of things stick around because they have a good bespoke manufactoring industry and maintenance practices. Old infrastructure and automations that were built during the bubble era still work and you can still get parts made for them.
Even great Japanese corporations like Nintendo and Sony make it a lot harder for them to take my money than, say, Steam and Amazon.
A more puzzling aspect of it is, if you show up at a rural station near Akita, they'll sell you a multiple connection ticket to a rural station near Nagoya in seconds, using some hyperoptimized mainframe-terminal-style green-on-black text UI. A system that only requires you to know where you want to go does exist, maybe the problem is that every rail company has built their own version of such a system and there is an agreement to not compete online.
Apparently you need to use a Fax.
i think the idea is you get a suica card and tap it at the station
Until you want more than the base fare ticket (reserved seat, green car, Shinkansen). I used the green ticket machines in those cases. That just works.
Takes 30 seconds in Apple Wallet to issue a new card and put an initial load on it. Don't understand what the problem is. Buy it before you depart, put 2000 yen on it with a visa/mastercard, get on the train at the airport.
This isn't so much an example of "Japan is wierd lol" but "you're tapping it wrong".
Oh the JR Group reservation system is too cryptic and unapproachable to you? Don't worry, it is to everybody. Except for hardcore train nerds and nerd-turned-company-employees. But even they would not deny that it is not very intuitive.
The problem is that all ticket systems that deal with JR Group has to be a front end to a system called the MARS System[1][2], and day-to-day operations of Japanese train and travel industry rely on its specific behaviors and intricate nuances, and that the collective of nerds and nerd-employees had adamantly refused complete changeover of the system for years. It's like you can have a webapp wrapping over the old 3270 terminal commands any way you want, but anyone with a badge and the uniform will insist that it's faster to have them hit the real analog buttons in the right order. Or just use Vi or mysql shell or something.
Some of JR ticket machines reserved for express trains with different frame colors compared to others are actually what are considered self service terminal of this MARS system rather than being ticket machines, and its UI is apparently close enough in structure that it even triggers the same unconscious habit of tapping the bottom 1/3 of the right part of the frame for retired or current employees. Which means it'll be unintuitive as it gets.
To effectively use the MARS user terminal and get JR tickets, you have to have a mental image of the ticket you are seeking to obtain, the MARS command sequence that yield that ticket, and operate the terminal accordingly, whether the terminal in front of you was the older crew terminal or newer terminal or its travel agency subvariant or the kiosk version stalls or one of numerous web interfaces or whatever it is. Some of fields such as seat numbers and choices of possible routes can be determined as you go, but in the way conforming the JR ticketing mechanisms.
I don't know enough about those stuffs myself nor I find that embarrassing. I just know enough to know it's called MARS System and if there were stations in "via" fields of a ticket that the train I will be on won't even be passing, it must be some MARS shenanigans. I certainly don't find it fair to expect someone just visiting Japan wanting to see some wooden temples and maybe try matcha, to be perfectly fluent with those. But if you were wondering why... ^this^ is why.
1: Pronounced mulls system like the Roman god. From the Wikipedia page: the original MARS 1 went online in 1960 and features were extremely limited. MARS 100 onward that replaced the original model were built on Hitachi mainframes. 305 onward were developed by a privatized JR Group company instead of the national company, JNR. Current iteration has the model number Series 500 MARS 505. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%9E%E3%83%AB%E3%82%B9_(%...
2: https://www.jrs.co.jp/guideline/mars/
"If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it"
I think Japan take this too far
Whenever I need tickets it has been a smooth experience via ekinet[0].
Just entering a code later in a ticket machine was enough to get it printed.
0. https://www.jreast.co.jp/multi/en/
> The most frustrating experience I had was booking a ticket online, only to get a message after confirmation: “You’ll need the physical credit card to retrieve your ticket at the station.”
Most (all?) airlines require this. In practice, it's only checked if your name differs from the name in the credit/debit card.
Other than that, the user fails to explain why booking a train is harder in Japan? They have multiple operators/lines but that's normal for a big/dense city like Tokyo.
I've taken hundreds of flights in and between the USA and EU and never once had to show anyone my credit card. In a number of cases, the ticket was booked with someone else's credit card.
For (non-Schengen) international flights, I usually have to show someone my passport.
Did you mean most/all airlines in Japan?
This is for getting tickets printed on the spot, not for using the already printed tickets. People buy tickets online and have it printed later at the airport/station kiosks, which lets you prove your identity abusing the fact that customers realistically don't forge a credit card. It can be an ID/password login at the busy station using unresponsive touchscreen, or a membership card of the airline/train, or maybe even a driver's license, but CC is probably the most convenient(unless...).
The fact that a ticket bought online must be printed on paper at all seems anachronistic in 2026. I would expect, or at least hope for a QR code saved to a smartphone as the default.
Add Oceania to that. As long as I've been able to produce the proper passport(s) and visas for my journey I've been let on the plane, throughout all kinds of complex journeys.
I have had a round trip flight recently that involved two passports, a work visa, and an ETA, and a total of 5 layovers across 3 airlines. As long as I produced the correct identity documents at any given check in desk, I was allowed to board, without ever producing a credit card.
Didn't happen to me for a domestic flight with JAL recently. I was actually surprised how little they checked; just a QR code was sufficient (although my memory might be fuzzy due to the international flight just before it).
I was never required to book a flight ticket with a physical card while booking online. And even if that's a policy, I feel like being told that before booking would be nice.