Overview

The Chiyoda Line (C) links Yoyogi-uehara and Ayase over about 24 km and 19 stations. Its emerald-green livery suits the quiet, leafy character of the neighborhoods it serves, from Yoyogi Park to Nezu.

It is the line that most obviously connects two different Tokyos. The western half runs under some of the most expensive residential land in the country; the eastern half serves Sendagi, Nezu and Yushima — the low, walkable old-town district that survived both the 1923 earthquake and the 1945 firebombing largely intact, and which now draws visitors precisely because so little of it was rebuilt.

Along the route

The line passes Omotesando, Nogizaka, and Otemachi, through-running with the Odakyu Line at Yoyogi-uehara out toward Kanagawa. At the eastern end, a short branch off Ayase reaches Kita-ayase — one of the few Metro lines with a little spur of its own.

Two of its stations are named for what sits directly above them: Meiji-jingumae for the shrine's forest, and Nijubashimae for the double bridge at the entrance to the Imperial Palace. Nogizaka is the stop for the National Art Center; Yushima for the Confucian temple. For a commuter line, it makes an unusually good sightseeing route.

Where the typing gets hard

Nineteen stations, 186 keystrokes, an average of 9.8 per stop — moderate on paper, but the difficulty is unevenly distributed, and almost all of it is in the first half.

Kokkai-gijidomae (kokkaigijidoumae, 16) is the longest, and one of only two sokuon on the line. Shin-ochanomizu (shinnochanomizu, 15) is the other trap and a subtler one: the ん in shin needs its own n before the お, so you type shinn — the double n that catches people who learned to write it shin-ochanomizu. Meiji-jingumae (meijijinguumae, 14) is the third, with the long uu that the printed romaji hides.

The opening is genuinely hard: Yoyogi-uehara (12), Yoyogi-koen (12) and Meiji-jingumae (14) are the first three stops. Thirty-eight keystrokes before you have found your rhythm.

Then it relaxes completely. The eastern half — Yushima, Nezu (4 keystrokes), Sendagi, Machiya, Ayase — is among the shortest sustained stretches anywhere in this game.

How to practise it

Run Ayase toward Yoyogi-uehara. That puts the short old-town names first, lets you build speed for ten stops, and saves the three long western names for the end — a far better-shaped run than the default direction.

If you are working on the ん-plus-vowel problem specifically (shinn, sannn, monzennn), this line and the Ginza Line are the two best places to drill it, and Chiyoda's version arrives in the calmer middle of the run where you can actually think about it.

Second-line status is well earned: after the Yamanote, this is the natural next step, and the eastern half is forgiving enough that a bad start does not ruin the attempt.

Why play it

Generally gentle, moderate-length station names make this a natural second line for players graduating from Yamanote.