Japan's transportation system is amazing. In my hometown of Fremont, California, you needed a car to get around. My college town of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania had buses, but they were often delayed and did not go where you wanted. But in Kyoto, Japan, the transportation system is so good that you can go anywhere and be right on time, even without a car. How does this transportation system work? It is held together by regional trains, local trains, buses and bikes.
The regional train company is called Japan Rail or J.R. It covers long distance travel, often between major cities. Part of the genius of the J.R. is that it has many different speed trains running on the same train line. Local trains are the slowest, followed by rapid, express, limited express trains and then by the fastest, the bullet train. These different speeds seem to warp time. For example, you would expect it to take longer to travel 45 minutes than to travel 30 miles, right? Thanks to different speed trains, it takes me 30 minutes to travel either distance.
Next are the local trains. They cover travel within a city. For example, when I wanted to go to Northern Kyoto to hike up Mt. Hiei, I took a local train. There are five different local train companies within Kyoto. The benefit of this is that you can reach most places in the city with a local train.
