Japan is a country known for its excellent railway infrastructure and its crowded stations.<\/p>\n
However, not all of its stations are like this. A good example of the opposite case can be found in the city of Minakami, in Gunma prefecture<\/strong>, 149 kilometers northwest of Tokyo. Minakami is a very small city if we compare it to the capital of Japan: it only has about 18,000 inhabitants, but it is famous for having the deepest railway station in the country: Doai station.<\/strong><\/p>\n Operated by the East Japan Railway Company, Doai is a rather lonely station. Due to its low number of travelers, today it operates without staff.<\/strong> You can't even buy train tickets there. There is an automatic ticket dispenser and you pay once on board the train. On the other hand, Doai has two platforms: one is on the surface and the other is underground<\/strong>, in the Shin-Shimizu tunnel, built in 1931 and 9.7 kilometers long. The station is in a hilly area and few trains pass through there.<\/p>\n The Doai underground platform is 70 meters underground.<\/strong> To give you an idea, the deepest station of the Madrid Metro, Cuatro Caminos, is 45 meters away; the deepest in London, Hampstead, is at 58.5 metres; and the deepest in New York, the one on 191st Street, is 55 meters away. The problem with the Doai underground platform is that there are no elevators or escalators<\/strong>, due to the age of the station (it was built in 1931): you have to walk up the 486 stairs your ladder, which takes about 10 minutes<\/strong>.<\/p>\n A few days ago, the Japanese channel It's Time to Travel<\/a> published an interesting video touring this station<\/strong>. The video does not have a voice but it has subtitles in Spanish, in which it explains each place; you can activate them in the bottom bar of the player:<\/p>\n
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