Overview

The Keio Line (KO) is Keio Corporation's trunk route west out of Shinjuku, and the game's second 大手私鉄 — major private railway — after the Den-en-toshi Line. Its 32 stations cover 37.9 km from Shinjuku to Keio-hachioji. The company opened in 1913 as the Keio Electric Tramway, running only Sasazuka to Chofu, and the tramway is still there in the track: the line rides on 1372 mm gauge, the old horsecar gauge, which in Tokyo it shares with just the Toei Shinjuku Line and the Tokyo Sakura Tram. That odd gauge is what lets Keio trains run through onto the Toei Shinjuku Line — but they leave from Sasazuka via the Keio New Line, not from Shinjuku, and that is why the numbering here jumps from KO01 straight to KO04. Hatsudai and Hatagaya hold KO02 and KO03, but their platforms were moved onto the New Line, and no Keio Line train stops at either — locals included.

Along the route

Out of its underground terminal at Shinjuku the line climbs to the viaducts at Sasazuka, where the New Line peels away, then runs west through Daitabashi and Meidaimae, the interchange with Keio's own Inokashira Line, into the Setagaya suburbs: Shimo-takaido, Sakurajosui, Kami-kitazawa, Hachimanyama, Roka-koen — named for the novelist Tokutomi Roka, whose garden is beside it — and Chitose-karasuyama. Sengawa and Tsutsujigaoka lead into Chofu, where Shibasaki, Kokuryo, Fuda and Chofu itself went underground in 2012 and took eighteen level crossings down with them; Chofu is also where the Sagamihara Line branches off. Then the Musashino plain: Nishi-chofu, Tobitakyu for Ajinomoto Stadium, Musashinodai, Tama-reien, Higashi-fuchu, Fuchu, and Bubaigawara, where the JR Nambu Line crosses and where Nitta Yoshisada broke the Kamakura shogunate's army in 1333. Nakagawara and Seiseki-sakuragaoka — the town Studio Ghibli drew for Whisper of the Heart — follow the Tama River, and then come Mogusaen with its plum garden, Takahatafudo with its temple, the Doubutsuen branch and the Tama Monorail, Minamidaira, Hirayamajoshi-koen, Naganuma, and Kitano, where the Takao Line splits off one stop short of Keio-hachioji.

Why play it

Keio makes you type long. Chofu, Nishi-chofu, Higashi-fuchu, Fuchu, Sakurajosui, Takahatafudo — ちょうふ, にしちょうふ, ひがしふちゅう, ふちゅう, さくらじょうすい, たかはたふどう — long vowels everywhere, and they arrive in pairs that are almost but not quite each other: Chofu, then Nishi-chofu two stops later; Higashi-fuchu, then Fuchu immediately after. The one place to breathe is Fuda, two kana, dropped between Kokuryo and Chofu like a rest bar. Tsutsujigaoka is written つつじヶ丘 and read つつじがおか, so kanji mode and kana mode want different things from your hands. Sasazuka hides a づ. And the longest name on the line, Hirayamajoshi-koen — ひらやまじょうしこうえん — lands at station 29, exactly when your fingers have started to ache, with the company signing its own terminus at Keio-hachioji still to come.