御堂筋線

Overview

The Midosuji Line (M), opened in 1933, was Japan's first municipally run subway and is still Osaka's north-south backbone — 20 stations from Esaka to Nakamozu over roughly 24.5 km. Its red trains borrow their colour from the tree-lined boulevard overhead, and it carries more passengers than any other Osaka Metro line.

It was built with a confidence that looks almost absurd in hindsight. The 1933 line opened with a single one-car train, but the stations were dug wide enough for twelve-car formations, with vaulted ceilings and chandeliers, because the mayor insisted the city plan for a century ahead rather than for the traffic it then had. Ninety years later the platforms are still long enough, and the vaults at Shinsaibashi are still there.

Along the route

From the Shinkansen interchange at Shin-Osaka the line plunges into Umeda, the city's largest hub, then runs south under Midosuji through Yodoyabashi, Hommachi, Shinsaibashi and Namba — all of Kita and Minami on a single line — before Tennoji beneath the Abeno Harukas tower, and out to Nakamozu in Sakai.

The Kita-to-Minami run is the whole of Osaka's public life in about fifteen minutes: department stores and offices at the north end, the Dotonbori canal and its neon at the south, then Shinsekai and the older working-class districts around Dobutsuemmae. Almost every first-time visitor to Osaka ends up riding this line whether they planned to or not.

Where the typing gets hard

Twenty stations, 193 keystrokes, an average of 9.7 per stop — and, as on the Chuo and Tozai lines, no sokuon at all. Only two station names contain a small ゃ/ゅ/ょ. On paper, this should be one of the easiest lines in the game.

It is not, because of one station. Nishinakajima-minamigata (nishinakajimaminamigata) is 23 keystrokes — the longest name on the line, and one of the longest anywhere in the game. It arrives at stop 4, before you have settled into anything, and it is more than four times the length of the station before it.

Nothing else comes close. The next longest are Higashi-mikuni (higashimikuni, 13) and Dobutsuemmae (doubutsuenmae, 13). After Namba the line gets steadily shorter and easier all the way to Nakamozu.

Two names are written in kana rather than kanji — Namba and Nakamozu — which changes nothing in romaji mode but is worth knowing in kanji mode, where there is no conversion to make.

How to practise it

Learn nishinakajimaminamigata on its own before you attempt a serious run. Twenty-three keystrokes is long enough that reading it off the screen mid-run costs you real seconds; typing it from memory costs you none. Break it as nishi-nakajima-minami-gata and it stops being intimidating.

Run Esaka toward Nakamozu. The monster comes early, and everything after it is downhill — which makes for a strangely satisfying run, since the hardest moment is over before you have had time to get nervous about it.

For Osaka Metro beginners, this is the right first line: the names are the ones you already know from guidebooks, so recognition costs nothing and you can concentrate on typing.

Why play it

Twenty stops of names you already half-know, so recognition is easy — but the rhythm is anything but even, alternating short bursts like Nakatsu with the marathon of Nishinakajima-minamigata.