Yamanote Minuto - 山手線

The Yamanote Line is one of the busiest train lines in the world. Running in a circle around the heart of Tokyo, it carries 3.5 million passengers a day.




I took this footage riding on the first car of the train on June 8, 2007. I started from Ikebukuro at 8:09 am and I arrived in Shinagawa ar 8:38. I wanted to take the entire round trip in one shot but at this time of the day the train was very crowded to eventually I was literally pushed out of the train in Shinagawa. So I took a rest for 10 minutes and at 8:48 I continued the ride until I came back from the point where I started, in Ikebukuro, at 9:23.

Therefore the video is made of two parts, combined together. The total length of the video is 1 hour and 4 minutes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cURm5c8kW48

In details the two parts are:

• 1st Part: From 08:09:29am to 08:38:48 - Duration  29m19s (Ikebukuro-Shinagawa)
• 2nd Part: From 08:48:55am to 09:23:36 - Duration: 34m41s (Shinagawa-Ikebukuro)
• Totale duration: 1h04m00s

From this video, and other shorter video, I made a one-minute clip called "Yamanote Minuto" that participated to a video content in Prato, Italy, for video of one minute.

This is Yamanote Minuto:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9XM_uN7QR0

This is an integral version of the entire loop speeded up around 1000 times compare to the original speed. There are also the name of each station. The video unfortunately has low quality:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRuF_-bvJl4

This is a version that is faster 500 times compared to the original:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMDwSqrOEsg

For more information about the Yamanote Line a good start is the Wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamanote_Line

If you are interested in Japanese trains, this is the hunting of an old steam locomotive. Nothing to do with the Yamanote Line, but still interesting to see:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL5Ri3PffNM