みなとみらい線

Overview

The Minatomirai Line (MM) runs 4.1 km from Yokohama to Motomachi-Chukagai in six stations, all of them underground. It is the railway of Yokohama Minatomirai Railway (横浜高速鉄道), a company founded in 1989, and it opened on 1 February 2004. Its legal name is the Minatomirai 21 Line, after the waterfront district it was built to serve, but it has been signed simply as the Minatomirai Line from the start.

It was designed to be through-run. Trains carry on from Yokohama onto the Tokyu Toyoko Line towards Shibuya, and since 16 March 2013 through the Tokyo Metro Fukutoshin Line onto the Tobu and Seibu lines beyond. To make way for it, the Toyoko Line's own final stretch from Yokohama to Sakuragicho was abolished on 31 January 2004, the day before the new line opened. In the game the two stay separate lines that meet at Yokohama — TY21 on one, MM01 on the other. Unlike the Blue Line, which runs roughly parallel, it uses narrow-gauge track and overhead wires, the same as the Toyoko Line.

Along the route

From Yokohama the line swings south-east under the Minato Mirai 21 district. Shin-takashima was a late addition, approved in 1997, partly to make up for the Toyoko Line's Takashimacho station closing. Minatomirai station was designed around the image of a ship, its concourse a half-round hall 20 metres across that runs for 70 metres. Bashamichi recalls Meiji-era Yokohama in red-brick-style tiling and keeps a wall sculpture from the old Bank of Yokohama head office that once stood on the site; since 2020 its signs have added Yokohama City Hall, which moved nearby.

From Bashamichi the tunnel runs beneath Honcho-dori. Nihon-odori, signed with the Prefectural Office and Osanbashi Pier, is a short walk from both and from Yokohama Stadium. The line ends at Motomachi-Chukagai, signed with Yamashita Park, between the Motomachi shopping street and Chinatown, where the platform level is a single column-free hall designed by Toyo Ito's office. While the line was being built, these stations went by working names — Takashima, Minatomirai-chuo, Kitanaka, Kencho-mae and Motomachi — until the final names were fixed in December 2002.

Why play it

Six stations make this one of the shortest runs you can pick, so there is little room to win back a slip. 新高島 is しんたかしま, not the たかしまちょう of the Blue Line's 高島町 about half a kilometre away, and 馬車道 is ばしゃみち, not ばしゃどう. 日本大通り is にほんおおどおり: にほん rather than にっぽん, two long o's, and an ん before お that must be typed as a doubled n — nihonnoodoori, thirteen keys. The last station is the heaviest, 元町・中華街 at eighteen keystrokes, motomachichuukagai, with the う of ちゅう typed out.

Kanji mode moves the traps around. みなとみらい is written in hiragana, so the right input is to commit it as it is, without converting. 日本大通り keeps its okurigana り. And 元町・中華街 expects the middle dot ・ between its two halves, which Kana and Romaji modes skip because it has no sound.