Relationship between Special Exception for Departures and Arrivals within a Specified Metropolitan Area and Transfer Ticket This is the case involving the “Special Exception for Arrivals and Departures within Certain Metropolitan Areas. This involves tickets for travel between stations within 11 metropolitan areas, such as Tokyo and Osaka, and stations with an operating kilometer of 201 km or more from the central station within that city. The issue is that “a ticket originating (or arriving) within a metropolitan city can be used to enter or exit any station within the same zone of each” and “however, it is not possible to make a stopover at a station within the same zone. Here are some specific examples. If you have a paper ticket for “Tokyo metropolitan area → Osaka City,” you can enter at any station within the “Tokyo metropolitan area. For example, let’s say you enter at Komagome Station. From there, you take the Yamanote Line to Tokyo Station and transfer to the Shinkansen through the transfer gate. After getting off the Shinkansen at Shin-Osaka Station, you again go through the transfer gates to the conventional train side, and enter a station that belongs to the “Osaka City” area, for example, Osaka Station. However, since it is a rule that you cannot make a stopover within a specific metropolitan area, your ticket will be invalidated and collected if you exit at Tokyo Station after entering Komagome Station. The same is true at Shin-Osaka Station, the destination station. Therefore, it is necessary to go through the transfer gate, knowing that it will be crowded. This is a problem only at the arrival and departure points. For example, if you have a ticket from Tokyo to Wakayama and transfer to the limited express “Kuroshio” at Shin-Osaka Station to go to Wakayama, the ticket will not be invalid before you get off the train even if you exit at Shin-Osaka Station once.
The situation is different for ticketless services. However, the situation is different for EX Service and Shinkansen e-Ticket. Both of these services only apply to Shinkansen stations and do not apply to special exceptions for travel to/from within a specific metropolitan area. Therefore, in the case of the previous example, if a passenger boards the train from Komagome to Tokyo, then from Shin-Osaka to Osaka, the fares for Komagome to Tokyo and Shin-Osaka to Osaka will have to be paid separately. Smart EX and Shinkansen e-tickets are used with transportation IC cards, and EX-IC can now be used with transportation IC cards as well as IC cards dedicated for EX reservations. If this is the case, it would be convenient to pay for conventional train sections used before and after the Shinkansen with a transportation system IC card. Now, let’s see. If the calculation is separate, there is no problem to exit at the border station between the Shinkansen and the local line, regardless of whether you are departing from or arriving at the Shinkansen station. What we should keep an eye on is the existence of ticket gates that allow direct entry to the Shinkansen from outside the rachis. For example, at Tokyo Station, there are “Yaesu South Exit,” “Yaesu Central North Exit,” “Yaesu North Exit,” and “Nihonbashi Exit” as dedicated ticket gates for the Tokaido Shinkansen. For the Tohoku Shinkansen, the popular route is to enter through the ticket gate of the local line and go through the transfer gate, but there is actually also a “Nihonbashi Exit” directly connected to the Shinkansen. In other words, if you use the Shinkansen with ticketless service and the transfer gates are crowded, you can enter the Shinkansen directly through the ticket gate of the Shinkansen after exiting the train. However, the walking distance will increase, so it is advisable to allow enough time for this. In particular, the Nihonbashi exit is a good spot. In fact, it is quite common to see students on school excursions assembling near here. This is because the ticket gates are open and groups such as school excursions are usually allocated cars at the far end of the station. However, the Nihonbashi exit is located at the north end of the station, so cars No. 16 and 17 are right in front of you, but car No. 1 is about 400 meters away. Therefore, depending on the car, going up from the Nihonbashi exit may result in a long walk on the platform. At Hakata Station, the main Shinkansen ticket gates are the Shinkansen Central Gate and the Shinkansen Central Norikae Gate. In fact, however, there are “Shinkansen Hikari Hiroba Gate” and “Shinkansen Kita Norikae Gate,” which were added near Kokura when the Kyushu Shinkansen line was extended, and these are usually more empty. In fact, not all stations have such “inconspicuous ticket gates that allow direct entry to the Shinkansen. In many stations, the only way to enter the Shinkansen is through the ticket gate of a conventional train and then through a transfer ticket gate. Please check the map of the station you want to use in advance.
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