HOW TO FIND YOUR SEAT ON THE SHINKANSEN

After decades of using Japan’s Shinkansen (high-speed train) I’ve finally solved a conundrum concerning the seating numbers.

If you’re unfamiliar with the workings of the Shinkansen, you can either buy a ticket and get on board the small number of non-reserved cars grabbing any available seat, or be like the more civilised folk, and get a reserved seat to guarantee you don’t end up standing. I always go with the latter option.

There’s only one problem : which end of the car do you get on?

Let me explain. Your ticket will tell you both the number of the car and also your seat number. For example, when I went from Hiroshima to Kyoto some days ago, my ticket told me that I would be in car 12, seat 5D.

Well, finding the car is easy. In this respect things are way more user-friendly than the haphazard methods of boarding I’ve seen around Europe. Before you even get to the platform, signs tell you which escalators to use to get you to the right area for your car number. Then, electronic signs above the platform and markings on the ground show you where you have to line up for each car entrance.

But here’s the problem - which entrance do you need? Each car has two, one at the back and one at the front. Get it wrong, and you’ll be pushing past the all the people who got on at the right entrance in order to get to your seat.

Now, years ago, I thought it must be simple. Surely the seat rows are numbered according to the direction of travel - the lower seat numbers being at the front of the car nearest to the engine. Seems logical, right?

Well, yes and no. Sometimes that seemed to be the case, but many a time I have got on at the wrong end and had to force my suitcase through the throng coming the other way.

Now the answer is pretty simple, and I’m sure you’ve guessed it, but this is one of those things that baffled me for years.

If you’re travelling from Tokyo heading south-west to Nagoya, Osaka, Kyoto and Hiroshima, then the numbers are indeed arranged with row 1 being at the front of the car with respect to the direction of travel. So if you have car 12 seat 5D, you have to line up at the car entrance nearest to car 11. If, however, you are going the other way, from Hiroshima to Osaka, Kyoto, Nagoya or Tokyo, then you would need to line up at the car entrance nearest to car 13, since the train is going the other way.

Well, it can’t only be me who was baffled by this, because finally the authorities have recognised the confusion and plugged this gap in an otherwise brilliantly organised train system by posting signs to help you. 

On a train heading north in the direction of Tokyo, the seat numbers are against the direction of travel

So there we are - a mystery solved after years of miscomprehension.  I’m going to file this under all the other seemingly simple things I only worked out decades later. Like stretching guitar strings to stop them going out of tune when you bend them - that also took me thirty years to ‘get.’