[Newsletter] Why does Japan's cursed Meishō train still exist?

▶︎ Watch the new video → https://youtu.be/jhGEMHMIqI8

I've got a really fun train ride for you this week. It's from the Meishō Line, a rural JR line in Mie Prefecture, just east of Nara.

The Meishō Line has had a very rough life. Several times over the decades, it has faced crises and threats and natural disasters, and each time it seemed like the line would be abandoned and the tracks torn up.

But, against overwhelming odds, it continues to this day.

What's especially unexpected about that is that so few people actually ride the train. Exactly what forces are responsible for sticking up for the line are mysterious, but it must have some powerful people in its corner.

My ride along the Meishō Line was on a pretty hot and humid day – thankfully, it would seem, one of the last such days of this year. (It's cooler, a bit, as I type this.)

I rode the line from end to end, as far as possible, Matsusaka to Ise-Okitsu station. I got out to walk around three of the stations on the way. One of those, Isegi, is the least-used train station in all of Mie Prefecture: one person each day, on average, boards trains there.

A highlight of the ride is the center station, Ieki, where there is a little ceremony eight times a day when trains going the opposite directions meet there. It's explained in the video, but this event is why some people are riding the train to begin with, to witness the very old-school technology in action.

When my train got there, I stepped off to film it. Having stepped off, though, the JR guy from the station who was beginning the special procedure stopped to ask me if I had a ticket – meaning I was interrupting the whole process, basically.

I was flustered, since I was trying to fade into the background to capture good video of everything. I stammered in barely passable Japanese that I wasn't getting off for good here, just watching the handover. It was all rather awkward and I didn't include it in the final video.

But he seemed to understand, and the rest of the process went off without a hitch. I blurred his face in the video, but you may detect his brief glare in my direction as he walks away. Apologies for my disruption. Jeez.

In the video, I get to the final station on the line, walk around looking for food, and end the video there. In reality, of course, I had to ride the entire line back (it's a dead-end line deep in the mountains). I didn't film this part – I was worn out from the humidity and felt the video was long enough and the return trip would be a repeat of what we'd seen already.

(Actually, my favorite shot of the entire video was recorded on the trip back – where we briefly enter a short tunnel and then go over a dramatic, narrow bridge over a river. I edited it in out of sequence to look like it was on the initial ride. Shhh, don't tell anyone.)

This will make more sense after you watch the video, but: when my return train got to Ieki station again, dozens of passengers boarded. Quite a shock after most stations offering nothing but bare platforms with zero passengers.

As I allude to in the video, the passengers were all high school students at the end of a school day. The line gets very few passengers in general, and students make up most of them, because the area's school is near this station. If it weren't for them, the line probably would shut down.

And, unexpectedly, not one but two of them got off the train at Isegi station. I wondered if they both lived there in that barely-a-community, and if so, did both of them also get on the train every school morning? If so, and factoring in weekends and summer holidays, maybe those two are why the station averages one boarding passenger per day.

And once they graduate, does that mean nobody will need that station at all?

In other words, this is one very strange and very compelling train line. I am glad to have gotten such a thorough and close-up look at it. One of my favorite recent rides.

▶ TRAVEL LOVERS, PARTNERS, AND MASTERS: Watch the extended 54-minute ad-free version, including more from the stations, neighborhoods, and rural communities; the tale of a rare 16th century Buddhist carved stone near Isegi station; more from on board the trains; and a complete look at the scenery and places I saw along the line → https://patreon.com/posts/138805559

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Everywhere is worth exploring!

–Jeremy