Swipecards, Tokyo Marathon and a Starbucks Coffee

Tokyo metro system is pretty ingenious. Coming back from watching some friends run the Tokyo marathon - which involved lots of standing in the freezing cold trying to cheer through the streaming rain - I watched us all swipe our way through the metro system (us being an assorted collection daiwer scholars). I can remember the first few days here and the excitement of escaping from the official program on my first metro trip - alone. It felt like such an adventure into a foreign place, where a spaghetti of rainbow colours and odd chinese symbols made no sense to me at all. The different tune that every metro line played to help distinguish themselves from the other was not familiar then, but interesting and unique.

Today as I watched each of us calculating our routes back I saw that now each of us has the bright coloured lines embedded into our brains; a timetable of when and how is the quickest way home; we orientate ourselves by the Chuo Line Express or the Rapid Inokashira, the Yamonote. We know which stations are the crossover points between the rapids and the locals and move platforms accordingly. After many mistaken voyages across the city in contorted and inevitably incorrect directions, we now barely notice how ridiculously busy and manic Shinjuku (the largest station in the world) is - our eyes point only towards our route and are oblivious to everything else.

Tokyo has a wierd system of two separate companies owning the metros. This means there are also two different swipe cards and passnets. At first we ransacked our bags each change between metro companies. And although we are yet to enjoy the smoothness of Tokoyites - it is rare not to have atleast three metro cards filling up our wallets (one commuter for our route between school and home, one suica - passnet and one cutsie kitten embossed one for local lines).

This being Tokyo passnets are extra handy, as they also double up as electronic money. You pop into your local Starbucks and instead of going through the inconvenience of taking out your wallet you just swipe your metro card. Even cooler however is the fact that certain mobile phones can work as swipe cards too.

I have yet to reach such heights of Tokyo localdom - but this is only month 6 and with another 13 to go I don't know how long it'll be before I'll be dressed up in the kitten heals and socks crying 'cute' about 'phone-jewellry' and kitten passnets. No doubt I'll be holding my starbucks coffee, bought with my phone. I will of course not be drinking said coffee until I am safely back in the office, as naturallly the idea of drinking or eating in the street will fill me with the appropriate level of japanese disgust. Can't wait.