Fares in Japan are ALWAYS distance-based, never flat rate. When you buy a ticket, you are buying passage between two stations...
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...rather than buying a single trip of indeterminate length. Your ticket will bear the names of those two stations on it...
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...and is checked (either by the driver or at fare gates) at the station you get on at and get off at, to make sure it matches.
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What if you're taking an express train? Or riding first class? Or overnight? For each service improvement, *you buy another ticket*
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So, if you buy a ticket from Tokyo to Mito, it is valid for travel between those two cities...but if you want to take the express...
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...then you pay an "express fee," which comes with another ticket--which, unlike the first kind, is checked onboard by the conductor.
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If you're taking the express AND reserving a first-class seat, you pay a "green fee," which comes with another ticket, etc...
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This cuts down dramatically on staffing needs: onboard ticket inspection is only necessary on trains with those additional services
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Nowadays, most fares are paid using smart cards, but the principle is the same: one fee is charged at ticket gates, surcharges paid onboard
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By making sure that everyone is paying for exactly as much service as they are using, railways can more easily keep costs in line w revenue
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Now, with that said...it's not *quite* a perfect system, and there are two ways to dodge payment...
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The first way is what I call "joyriding;" you buy a ticket from your stop to the next stop, but ride around the network in between
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This is no use for dodging fares to actually *get* anywhere (since you can't exit at any station not on your ticket)...
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...but it's a cheap way to explore the railways themselves, you just have to stay on board or inside fare gates at stations...
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...until you get back to the station adjacent to the one you boarded at, exit, and walk the rest of the way home.
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The second way is much more pernicious, and you can't get away with it using a smart card--only paper tickets. This is the 2-ticket approach
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You buy TWO tickets, each for a single-stop trip, before going through the fare gates, and use different ones to enter and exit.
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There are a number of mechanisms in place, formal and informal, that prevent this sort of cheating
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The first is that ticket machines or clerks will only sell you tickets for their own network; eg you can't buy Keio tickets at Odakyu stops
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Consequently, your range is already limited to within a single company's network. But that's just the informal barrier...
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The formal barrier is that tickets are marked in some way (usually a hole punch) as you *enter* the system, and that mark is checked at exit
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So, when you try to sneak out of the system at your exit using the second ticket, you're very likely to get caught at the fare gates
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...because the tickets are mechanically marked, and it's unlikely you'll manage to mark it the same way so the fare gate reads it properly
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So REMEMBER! Don't try to cheat the trains! If you get away with it, you hurt them, and if you don't, you hurt yourself!
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