Cheating Japanese Train Gates (Video)

I wonder what station would actually let him do that. I can’t post these methods on my own blog of course, because my company monitors it, and might frown on such actions. However, in general, I will tell you:

1. If you happen to have a JR Pass from someone who visited you, keep it and flash it at local train exits and Shinkansen exits. Avoid smaller stations. Stick to ones that have Nozomi stops and regular traffic. Pick your spots when showing the pass to JR attendants; it’s best to cross the threshold when he’s busy with someone else. But what do you present on the trains, if they call for tickets? Well, JR staff won’t awaken the sleeping gaijin (maybe they will on limited expresses, but no where else).

2. Hiroshima Station’s gates are amazingly easy to circumvent, since they don’t have automatic gates. No matter what time of day you travel you could probably get away with just flashing your gaijin card or something that looks like a commuter pass at the ticket-taker and he wouldn’t think twice; they don’t pay too close attention in Hiroshima.

3. If you’re traveling a long distance by local train, buy the minimum fare ticket from your home station, then stop at a small station before you reach your destination. If it’s small enough, there won’t be a ticket-taker, and you can purchase the fare for the rest of the journey.

I’ve clearly put way too much thought into these, and there are more suggestions; I’ve finished a write-up to be published when my contract nears completion. In the mean time, don’t fret about sticking it to JR; it’s a corporation.

Where did these people film this, and why weren’t they stopped until the very end?
As for myself, I have never cheated JR…much. Not since my high school days anyway, where a friend and I used to play “pass the pass” at his station as there was a nice fence just along from the ticket wickets.

Don’t ever assume that JR/the cops/whoever won’t want to deal with foreigners. It’s far too risky. You might just encounter the one JR conductor who WILL waken sleeping passengers. Back when I first got here I once took an express train instead of a local by genuine mistake (I thought at the time my ticket was a ticket for all trains) and was told in no uncertain terms, by a conductor who wasn’t fazed by language issues, to get off at the very next stop. As that was my stop, I didn’t mind, but playing (or in my case then, being) the ignorant gaijin doesn’t always work. Come to think of it, Debito even tries it with a speeding ticket: http://www.debito.org/speeding.html

There is no need to remember fares from local stations. You are not required to know how much it is to pay if you ‘lost’ your ticket. However it will help if you know the NAME of the local station and can provide a good reason for being there (“so…why did you take the train from Nishi-Nippori to Ueno then?”). On expressways if you lose your ticket you can be charged the maximum toll possible unless you are able to produce a receipt from a shop (for example) near where you got on. So for trains it might work if you went to one station further up, bought something at a konbini, kept the receipt, went up to Tokyo or Osaka or wherever and did your business (have to pay that way) then trained back down again with a basic 140-yen ticket from Tokyo, arrive at your station and claim you lost your ticket, and show the konbini receipt as proof you were at X station. Depends how long the time gap is perhaps, though you could have done various other things in the area around X station.

Turner,
Where did these people film this, and why weren’t they stopped until the very end?

These videos were filmed at a small local stop on the Odakyu Line, at the Western edge of Tokyo. We were waiting for a friend to join us, and I was worrying about her coming out of the wrong exit or waiting inside. Since the station attendant was at the other side, and I didn’t think I would be able to get his attention, I just jumped through the gate to look around. This got a rather sizable laugh from the crew, and it snowballed into transit-hopping clusterfark you see here. All in all, it took about fifteen minutes and about ten different ways of hopping back and forth before the fellow came out to shake his finger at us. I think he was just hoping that we would go away.

Overall, I’m definitely not a fan of cheating on train fares other than for comic purposes. I’m totally enamoured with the transit system here, and it’s more than worth the price of admission.

This sure was fun though.

Not with me, but I’ve heard some people use the kodomo tickets for entry. At some stations a light turns on on top of the ticket gate, in others a small alarm will sound to alert station staff.

There is one risk-free trick for saving when you’re travelling with a group (two or more) on local trains. Everyone except one (let’s call him “the leader”) buys the cheapest ticket and rides the train up to one station before the destination. Then, while the rest of the group waits at the platforms, the leader leaves the station with his valid ticket, goes to the machines and buys the cheapest tickets for everyone and himself. He goes back in and distributes the tickets to the group members. The group takes a train to the final station and everyone passes the gates with their valid tickets.