大阪環状線

Overview

The Osaka Loop Line (O) is JR West's ring around central Osaka: roughly 21.7 km, 19 stations, and unmistakably red. The circle was only closed in 1961, joining the 1895 Joto Line to the 1898 Nishinari Line — and on paper it isn't a ring at all, since the last kilometre back into Tennoji legally belongs to the Kansai Main Line.

It also behaves less purely than the Yamanote. Many trains do not go round and round at all: they run part of the loop and then peel off toward Nara, Wakayama or Kansai Airport, which is why the platform displays here are busier than on any other loop line in Japan. Getting on the wrong red train can take you to a different prefecture.

Along the route

From Tennoji the ring swings through Tsuruhashi, Osakajokoen beneath Osaka Castle, and the Kyobashi interchange up to Osaka Station in Umeda, then back down via Fukushima, Nishikujo (change here for Universal Studios), Bentencho and Taisho to Shin-Imamiya, gateway to Shinsekai. Every station has its own symbol flower on its platform signs.

Each station also has its own departure melody, chosen to match the neighbourhood: a song about the castle at Osakajokoen, a Universal-themed tune at Nishikujo, and at Tsuruhashi a melody nodding to the Korean quarter that has stood beside the station since before the war. Riding the full loop is about twelve minutes of local pop-cultural in-jokes if you know what you are listening for.

Where the typing gets hard

Nineteen stations, 177 keystrokes, an average of 9.3 per stop. Like the Midosuji Line, it has no sokuon at all — but six of its 19 names carry a small ゃ/ゅ/ょ, the highest proportion of any loop line in the game.

The longest is Osakajo-koen (oosakajoukouenn, 15), and it is a genuinely awkward word: a long oo at the start, a long jou in the middle, a long kouen at the end, and a final ん. Four separate places to lose a vowel in one station name. Ashiharabashi (ashiharabashi, 13) and Sakuranomiya (sakuranomiya, 12) follow.

The trap most players hit is Imamiya and Shin-Imamiya, the last two stops on the ring. imamiya then shinnimamiya — note the double n where the ん of shin meets the い. Two nearly identical names, back to back, at the exact point in the run where you are trying to finish fast.

Noda (4 keystrokes), Tenma, Osaka and Momodani are the fast ones, and the northern arc from Kyobashi to Nishikujo moves quickly.

How to practise it

At 19 stations this loop is a third shorter than the Yamanote, which makes it the better ring for repeated attempts — you can run it several times in the space of one Yamanote lap and actually feel a technique change take effect.

Start at Osaka rather than Tennoji. That puts Osakajo-koen in the middle of the run instead of near either end, and leaves the Imamiya pair somewhere you are still concentrating.

Then run it in the other direction. As with the Yamanote, a loop always returns to its start, so both directions produce comparable times — and reversing a ring you have memorised is the fastest way to find out whether you learned the stations or just the sequence.

Why play it

A tighter, faster ring than the Yamanote, with names that swing from short to sprawling — tennoji one moment, osakajokoen the next. The Kansai way to drill inner- and outer-loop direction sense.