And now, a brief word about how fares are paid on Japanese railways, and how this ensures their financial stability
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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*
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...
...then you pay an "express fee," which comes with another ticket--which, unlike the first kind, is checked onboard by the conductor.
If you're taking the express AND reserving a first-class seat, you pay a "green fee," which comes with another ticket, etc...
This cuts down dramatically on staffing needs: onboard ticket inspection is only necessary on trains with those additional services
Nowadays, most fares are paid using smart cards, but the principle is the same: one fee is charged at ticket gates, surcharges paid onboard
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
Now, with that said...it's not *quite* a perfect system, and there are two ways to dodge payment...
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
This is no use for dodging fares to actually *get* anywhere (since you can't exit at any station not on your ticket)...
...but it's a cheap way to explore the railways themselves, you just have to stay on board or inside fare gates at stations...
...until you get back to the station adjacent to the one you boarded at, exit, and walk the rest of the way home.
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
You buy TWO tickets, each for a single-stop trip, before going through the fare gates, and use different ones to enter and exit.
There are a number of mechanisms in place, formal and informal, that prevent this sort of cheating
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
Consequently, your range is already limited to within a single company's network. But that's just the informal barrier...
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
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
...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
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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