It’s been like a year since I went to Japan, but it’s basically like there’s different train “lines” and each line has a start location and an end location. If you want to go somewhere, there’s a map for each line that will show at which stations each line will be stopping.
Presumably, you’re somewhere in the middle of the line’s start/end so you’d pick the correct train line that goes to the station you want to go to. You just have to make sure you get on a train going TO that station, instead of away.
The other part then is just checking whether you’re taking a train that’s going to skip over the station you want to end up at, which might end up happening if you’re taking 特急 or 急行 (which make less stops) or something. You’d have to get off early and then switch to a 快速 or 普通 train on the same line, to make sure you don’t overshoot.
But really, you kind of just memorize the routes you take often. Otherwise, you just use google maps, and it’ll tell you what lines to board and when to get off. The only hard part of that is that you end up in stations you don’t know constantly, and you have to run around and try to find the next line to board before it takes off without you.
If you want to get somewhere, someone will tell you that the place is near XX station, and you’ll just go there.
Source: also from the US, and I had to figure out what a train was
To be fair, plenty of them are terrible. LA is the second biggest metropolitan area in the US, and it only began its metro train system in in the 1980’s, and still doesn’t cover much of the area. And LA is better than most cities.
My impression of foreign countries is always shock at how good their trains are.
It might be the biggest in the USA, but by no means is it a good system. Constant breakdowns and delays, inconsistent service, regular fare hikes…the list goes on. And, coronavirus also put a huge strain on the MTA (operates the NYC subway). Their ridership has been down over 80% for much of the pandemic, and they didn’t collect fares on buses to minimize contact between employees and passengers. They say they need $11,000,000,000 in federal funding or they will be forced to cut lines and service, making things even worse than they already are.
I’ve ridden Amtrak all the way from San Francisco to New York, except for one bit in the middle, because I wanted to visit Ann Arbor, and the only way out from there on Amtrak is back to Chicago.
The phrasing made me picture, like, a video game map or something - you can run around freely on the map wherever you want, or you can use the train to essentially “teleport” to a different map. There’s no way to travel between districts except by train.
Alternately, the Districts in the Hunger Games books, which are also connected only by train.
