北総線

Overview

The Hokuso Line (HS) runs 32.3 km east from Keisei-Takasago, in Tokyo's Katsushika ward, over the Edo River and through Matsudo, Ichikawa and Kamagaya into Chiba New Town, ending at Imba Nihon-idai in Inzai — 15 stations. Most of its trains run through at Takasago onto Keisei, the Toei Asakusa Line and Keikyu, and it has not a single level crossing of its own.

It is a new-town railway that reached the new town before it reached Tokyo. The first 7.9 km, Kita-Hatsutomi to Komuro, opened on 9 March 1979, four days before Chiba New Town's first residents moved in, and ran its trains onto the Shin-Keisei Line to Matsudo because there was no other way out. The western section, Keisei-Takasago to Shin-Kamagaya, followed on 31 March 1991. East of Komuro the line was built by the national housing corporation — to Chiba Newtown Chuo in 1984, Inzai-Makinohara in 1995 and Imba Nihon-idai in 2000 — and that 12.5 km now belongs to Chiba New Town Railway, a Keisei subsidiary, with Hokuso running the trains. Since July 2010 the whole line has also carried Keisei's Narita Sky Access trains, which call at only four of the fourteen Hokuso stations; this line is the one with all of them.

Along the route

From Keisei-Takasago the line climbs onto a viaduct to Shin-Shibamata, a walk from the Shibamata Taishakuten temple of the Tora-san films — and since 2017 the station has sent trains off with the Tora-san theme. After the Edo River bridge it dives into the Kuriyama tunnel under the Shimosa plateau to reach Yagiri, an underground station whose departure melody is the song of the Yagiri ferry across the river.

Kita-Kokubun sits in the deepest cutting on the line, beside the Horinouchi shell mound, and Jomon pottery dug up nearby is on show in the station. Akiyama is underground, yet the next stop, Higashi-Matsudo, holds its platforms high in the air to clear the JR Musashino Line, which only opened a station of its own there in 1998. Matsuhidai takes the 飛, "flight", in its name from a training airfield whose runway lay on this plateau. Past it, pear orchards line the viaduct to Omachi, the station for Ichikawa's zoo.

Shin-Kamagaya is the hub, where the Sky Access, Keisei's Matsudo Line and Tobu's Urban Park Line all meet. Beyond it the tracks run through Chiba New Town in a broad cutting between the carriageways of the Hokuchiba Road. Nishi-Shiroi is where the new town's first residents moved in, and its sub-name — "the town that raises pears and jockeys" — nods to the JRA's horse-racing school nearby. Komuro, the end of the line until 1984, is the only Hokuso station in Funabashi and the last on Hokuso's own track. Beside Chiba Newtown Chuo, land was set aside for a Narita Shinkansen station that was never built; solar panels now cover part of it. Inzai-Makinohara, an arched station ringed by cosmos in autumn, and Imba Nihon-idai, whose station building has its own lookout tower, are both among the Kanto Station 100.

Why play it

Fifteen stops and 166 keystrokes, with a reading lesson at nearly every one. 矢切 is voiced — やぎり — though the district it is named for says やきり. 北国分 is きたこくぶん, the 国分 of an ancient provincial temple, and it ends on a ん that needs a second n: type "kitakokubun" and the name is still waiting. 松飛台 reads 飛 as ひ, "matsuhidai". 大町 is signed Omachi and typed "oomachi". 西白井 and 白井 come back to back and read しろい, not the しらい most people expect, so it is "shiroi" twice. 新鎌ヶ谷 is written with a small ヶ and read が; Tobu writes it 新鎌ケ谷, and Kanji mode treats the two alike, so either one your IME hands you will count.

The back half is where the length is. 千葉ニュータウン中央 is 19 keystrokes, the longest on the line: the board says Chiba Newtown Chuo, but you type the kana, "chibanyu-taunchuuou", with the hyphen key for the long vowel. In Kanji mode, 印西牧の原 wants its hiragana の — 牧ノ原 will not do. And 印旛日本医大, at the eastern end, sets two traps in one name: the board says Imba, but ん never takes an m, and the ん before い needs a double n — "inbanihonnidai".