Every train, tram, bus and boat from 20 to 28 October 2026, cleaned from the phone's timeline, GPS, three IC cards, the calendar and booking emails.
The trip in four parts. Pick one; each has its own map, photos and numbers.
In Tokyo, from the monorail out of Haneda on 20 October to the Narita Express on the 28th: — rides covering — km (— miles), for — each. Taking the cheapest route every time would have saved — each, and the mistakes on the ledger below cost — each, most of it the lost Suica.
Every ride drawn along its real line, coloured by type. Circles are stations we used, sized by how often; small dots are stations passed through; squares are the places we went. Hover any line, station, place or camera; hovering a row in the ride tables below lights its line up here. The Narita Express runs off the right-hand edge for another 60 km; on a narrow screen the map shows central Tokyo only.
Each bar is one ride, from departure to arrival, on the day it happened. Wednesday 21st was the big one: Skytree, the wrong side of Musashi-Koganei, Koganei Park, Shinjuku and Nintendo in Shibuya.
Kilometres on board. JR includes the Chūō line out to Koganei; the Narita Express is shown on its own.
Kilometres per line, split exactly at each change of train.
Times we boarded, changed or got off. Shimbashi wins: Yurikamome, Ginza line, Toei and JR all meet there, two stops from the hotel.
Times a train we were on stopped or ran through without us getting off.
Each door-to-door journey re-planned across JR, Tokyo Metro, Toei and Yurikamome, walking to any station within 2 km, priced with the same fare rules the gates use. — of — journeys were already as cheap as possible. Across the rest, the cheapest options add up to — each.
Times include walking at each end and a 3-minute wait, so they compare like for like. "Yours" is from the GPS; the alternatives are modelled. The airport runs and the river cruise are in Passes and premiums.
| Journey | Day | What we did | Min | Fare | Cheapest option | Min | Fare | Fastest option | Min | Fare | Walk it | Verdict |
|---|
Wrong trains, wrong gates and one lost card. Together they cost — each, — km of extra riding and about — minutes. The wrong-way rides cost nothing extra: the gates charge the shortest route between where you tapped in and where you tapped out.
| What happened | Day | Who | Cost each | Extra km | Extra min | Evidence |
|---|
"Saving" is fares we paid minus the pass price, over the best-placed window. For the airport and the cruise it is the premium we chose to pay over the plain option.
| Option | Price | We paid instead | Saving each | When | Note |
|---|
| Day | Rides | km | Min on board | Fares each | Walked km |
|---|
Fares are per person. "card" means read from the Suica/PASMO chip; "inferred" means solved from Dad's card balance for the days his card had already overwritten; "estimate" means a published price, not a tap.
| # | Day | Dep | Arr | Type | From | To | Line | Stops | km | Min | km/h | Fare | Fare from | Notes |
|---|
Five sources were joined: the phone's Google Timeline export, its raw GPS fixes, the trip history on all three IC cards read with Metrodroid, the VickyAndrew calendar, and booking emails. Google's own distances for these rides added up to — km; measured along the real track it is — km. Of the fares, — each came straight off the cards, — was solved from a card balance and — is a published price. Your PASMO still holds —.
| # | Kind | Timeline said | Cleaned to | Evidence |
|---|
The 2026 fare tables (JR East after its March rise, Tokyo Metro, Toei, Yurikamome) priced every single-operator ride to the yen: — of —. The one miss is a Metro-to-Toei through fare, where the card's figure is used.
| Ride | Operator | km | Model | Card | Match |
|---|
Four Nozomi trains: — km (— miles) in — hours, averaging — km/h including every stop, with a top speed of — km/h on the Sanyō line. They cost — each, and booking the two Tokyo trips as EX Hayatoku 21 would have saved — each.
Speed from the phone's GPS against minutes after the booked departure. Dips are the station stops, labelled; gaps are tunnels, where the phone lost its fix. The dashed line is the line's speed limit, lower on the older Tōkaidō line than on the Sanyō line.
The Tōkaidō and Sanyō Shinkansen from Tokyo to Hiroshima, with the stations our trains stopped at and the closest point to Mt Fuji, — km from the summit near Shin-Fuji. Seat E is always on the Fuji side, both ways, because the trains never turn round.
Taken at speed on Nozomi 373, one of them just past the point where the line runs closest to Mt Fuji. The cameras on the speed chart and the line map are these photos.
| Train | Day | Route | Dep | Arr | Min | Track km | Avg km/h | Top km/h | Fare each | ¥/km | Car | Seats | Trainset | Fuji | Booked |
|---|
"Stopped" is the first and last GPS fix within 800 m of the platform. One fix means the train was there but the phone only checked once; "est." means no fix at all and the time is worked out from the fixes either side.
| Train | Station | km from origin | Stopped | Left |
|---|
Per person. "Against what you paid" also counts the JR local rides a pass would have covered that week, so a negative number means the option would have saved money.
| Option | Shinkansen cost | Against what you paid | Extra time | Note |
|---|
Two evenings and a full day from the karaksa hotel by Shin-Osaka: — rides, — km and — each. Tuesday's five Metro rides would have been — cheaper each on an Enjoy Eco day pass.
Picking the cheaper option every time would have saved — each. The pattern in Osaka is the reverse of Tokyo: JR is often cheaper than the Metro for short hops, and Bentencho has a JR Loop line station right above the Metro.
| Journey | Day | What we did | Fare | Min | Best alternative | Fare | Min | Saving each | Verdict | Note |
|---|
| Pass | Day | Price | We paid instead | Saving each | Note |
|---|
| # | Day | Dep | Arr | Type | From | To | Line | Stops | km | Min | Fare | Notes |
|---|
A day trip on Monday 26th: — hours in the city between the two Nozomis, one tram out to the Atomic Bomb Dome, the Peace Memorial Museum, an afternoon in Kamiyacho and Hondori, and a bus back. — local rides for — each.
| # | From | To | Kind | What | Detail |
|---|
| # | Dep | Arr | Type | From | To | km | Min | Fare | Notes |
|---|