Segue into how to pay train fare on weird local lines

The train line sure had a lot of splits for a train that only ran once per hour. It was a two carriage train with a door that connected the two carriages and one ticket box thing that I was unfamiliar with. Anyway, I still didn’t have a clue how the ticketing system worked at that point, but there was a sign on the doors that said that only the front door in the front carriage opened at unmanned stations, and I did figure out eventually, from watching other people that there were a few ways to pay the fare:

For collection,

1. At manned stations, all the doors with someone waiting to get off at them would open, and there would be a conductor waiting in the station itself to collect the fare in a little basket. This was similar to what I had experienced in the Nagano area when I took the Nagano Electric Railway Line on Day 16, and what I also saw happen at other stations today.

2. At unmanned stations, only the front door of the train opens for people trying to exit, and the driver on the train, who also doubles as the conductor, collects the fare. If one theoretically accidentally leaves through the second door like I did, which is where the people coming onto the train board at, instead of the front door, the conductor/driver will actually leave the train and intercept the person to get their ticket/fare.

2a. Sometimes, a station can be manned for part of the day and unmanned for another part. Especially in the evenings. Maibara Station turned into an unmanned station when I arrived there after sundown and the train conductor collected the fare instead. When I passed the ticket office on the way out, it was closed.

3. Occasionally there’s just a place to swipe one’s IC card (Suica/Pasmo etc) when getting on and off the ride. How nice when trains do this.

For payment,

1. One can get a ticket, single use or round trip or day use or whatever, from manned ticket windows like at Maibara Station.

2. There’s some sort of commuter pass I saw people using as well. In these cases they just wave the pass at the conductor as they’re leaving the train or the station.

3. In the case of the trip from Toyosato Station back to Maibara Station, I boarded the train and took a ticket from a ticket dispenser located just inside the door. This ticket had a number on it, signifying the stop I got on at.

When alighting, I then showed the conductor that ticket, paid the fare into the box next to him, and that was it.

4. Apparently on some unmanned stations on other lines, but not this one (or at least not Toyosato Station), one can sometimes just buy a paid ticket from an automated ticket machine as well.

5. Other lines also allow things like IC cards or the JR Pass to be used as or to offset payment. How nice, how nice.

The fare is usually shown via a from/to matrix, either at the station itself (showing how much it would cost to reach X station from there), or shown on a digital signboard over the front of the train that updates a bunch of boxes with all the numbers of the previous train stations and how much it would cost someone with that numbered ticket (station 11 in my case, for example) to alight at the next stop. The “price for alighting for someone with a ticket from station 11” would slowly rise as the train progressed on. Then they pay up by the front door while getting off the vehicle once they arrive at their desired stop. There’s usually a coin changer hanging around if needed as well. it’s kind of weird but interesting.

Then there are station changes. On my return trip, my train actually stopped at Hikone Station, and when I inquired, the conductor gallantly pointed me toward the opposite platform where a second train was eventually coming, and he made sure that I got onto the correct train. That train took me to Maibara Station safely. From research, it looks like it’s possible to get onto alternate routes from Hikone Station to Maibara Station that would end up costing a bit more than 590 yen in aggregate, which would probably have involved a platform change (a conductor with a basket was waiting here for the people leaving the platform) but that 590 yen was what I ended up paying anyway, despite the train change at the intermediate station, since I just crossed to the other side of the platform and waited for the next train instead of leaving the platform to go to another line. I just carried the original departure station ticket along with me to the new train.

It’s funny in hindsight though, how the random Nagano Electric Railway/Nagano Dentetsu experience helped me here, and how both that and this experience helped me later on as well — I later found out that buses and streetcars also operate in this exact manner — one boards the vehicle (usually via the rear door, though it varies), and either swipes a money card or grabs a ticket stating the stop which they got onto the vehicle from, and then swiped again or paid in coins when they exited the front door at their desired stop.