Sure, Tokyo has fancy digital signage, but Sapporo has a better old-school idea.
If you’ve ever stared in confusion at a Tokyo train map, you’ll know how complex the system is. Even for locals like our reporter Seiji Nakazawa, who’s lived in Japan’s capital for about 20 years, it can be easy to not quite know where you’re going, even when you’re inside a carriage, as the route isn’t always clearly displayed.
However, during a recent trip to Sapporo, on the northern island of Hokkaido, Seiji came across something on the the Sapporo Municipal Subway that totally impressed him. Instead of frantically scrambling for his phone like he usually does mid-route to find out where he was going, all he had to do was look up above the door of the carriage he was on.
“So? Trains in Tokyo have that feature too,” we hear you say. Well, Tokyo has something similar but they’re not an old-school retro-style permanent display. Instead, they’re brightly lit panels that switch displays constantly, and they often only show the next stop on the route.
▼ Not much help if you want to know how many more stops until your station.
Along the way, these panels might reveal more than the next station, but even then, it’s limited to around 10 stations if you’re lucky. More importantly, though, this display isn’t permanent, as it switches between different panels, and it often doesn’t appear until after you’ve left the station.
With Local, Rapid, Express, and Limited Express trains often leaving from the same platform, it would be helpful if this information was displayed as soon as you hop on so you can get off before the train leaves if it’s not the service you thought it was.
Seiji has made the mistake of hopping on the wrong service before, which is a huge inconvenience, so when he saw the display on the Sapporo subway train, he wanted to stand up and applaud enthusiastically.
This intuitive display is incredibly easy to understand, as it lists about 19 stations, and it’s a permanent feature so it’s displayed all the time. Best of all, it shows you where you are along the route by dimming the lights on the names of the stations you’ve passed, and keeping the lights for upcoming stations brightly lit.
With a system like this you don’t even need a phone on you to know where you’re going, as you can intuitively understand where you are at a glance. It’s a simple system that’s also useful for out-of-town visitors, as the names of the stations along the route are clearly displayed in Japanese and English.
▼ Incidentally, the Tozai Line also has a permanent display that’s even easier to see as it’s not an LCD screen.
In recent years, trains in Tokyo have been showing commercials and videos on their in-car displays, but to Seiji, that evolution is going in the wrong direction. Although he does sometimes watch the so-called “Train TV”, personally, he wishes they would just adopt the display design of the Sapporo Municipal Subway instead.
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