東武アーバンパークライン

Overview

The TOBU URBAN PARK Line (TD) is Tobu Railway's Noda Line, still its registered name; the nickname, coined from "urban" and "park", arrived on 1 April 2014. It runs 62.7 km through 35 stations from Omiya to Funabashi, a half-ring about 30 km out that never enters Tokyo at all: east across Saitama to Kasukabe, over the Edo River into Chiba, south at Noda past the Tone Canal to Kashiwa, then down through Kamagaya to Funabashi. It is the only Tobu line that reaches Chiba Prefecture.

It was built from the middle outwards, and the middle was soy sauce. Noda's brewers, tired of relying on river boats, pressed Chiba Prefecture for a railway, and it opened Noda-machi (now Noda-shi) to Kashiwa in 1911 — on the national 1,067 mm gauge, at the brewers' insistence, so their wagons could run straight onto the Joban Line. The first Hokuso Railway, no relation to today's Hokuso Line, bought it in 1923 and opened its own Funabashi–Kashiwa line that December. It reached Omiya from Kasukabe in 1929, renamed itself the Sobu Railway, and closed the gap by bridging the Edo River on 1 October 1930. Tobu absorbed it in 1944.

That history is why Kashiwa is a switchback. The two lines first had separate stations on opposite sides of the Joban Line; in 1930 the Funabashi line was moved across into the Noda line's, so both halves arrive at dead-end platforms from the same side, and a train running through has to reverse. On the game's map the line comes into Kashiwa heading east and leaves heading south.

Along the route

Out of Omiya, a major JR junction, the line passes Kita-omiya and Omiya-koen with Omiya Park spread between them, laid out in 1885 on part of Hikawa Shrine's grounds. Nanasato is named for the seven villages merged to form it. Iwatsuki is a doll town, its station ringed by doll makers and shops. After Toyoharu and Yagisaki the line meets the SKYTREE Line at Kasukabe, the city where Crayon Shin-chan is set.

Fujino-ushijima is named after the Ushijima wisteria, a Special Natural Monument said to have been planted by Kobo Daishi. Past Minami-sakurai the line crosses the Edo River into Chiba. Kawama, the prefecture's northernmost station, is named for an old village that lay between (間) two rivers (川), the Edo and the Tone. Nanakodai opened in 1968 along with the depot the line's trains are still based at. After Shimizu-koen, a viaduct opened in 2021 carries the line through Atago to Noda-shi, the 1911 terminus, where Kikkoman's soy-sauce works stands beside the station.

Unga simply means "canal". Just north of its platforms the line crosses the Tone Canal, 8.5 km linking the Tone and Edo rivers, completed in 1890 under the Dutch engineer Mulder as Japan's first Western-style canal. Nagareyama-otakanomori opened in 2005 as the interchange with the Tsukuba Express, named for the goshawks (オオタカ) of the woods nearby. Toyoshiki was the fourth of thirteen settlements cut from the old Shimosa horse pastures after the Meiji Restoration, numbered in the order they were begun. Then comes Kashiwa, and the change of direction.

South of Kashiwa, Sakasai opened in 1933 as an unstaffed halt; told it would close when the line was electrified, its passengers lobbied until it returned as a full station in 1947. Mutsumi was the sixth settlement. Shin-kamagaya, opened in 1999, is a three-operator junction with the Hokuso Line and Keisei, Tobu's platforms in a cutting beside the others' viaduct. Magomezawa recalls the wooden gates, magome, once used to round up the pastures' half-wild horses. Past Tsukada and Shin-funabashi the line ends at Funabashi beside JR's Sobu lines.

Why play it

Thirty-five stops come to 324 romaji keystrokes, and every run covers the line terminal to terminal; of Tobu's lines here, only the Tojo has more stations. The number kanji are the first trap: 七里 is ななさと and 七光台 ななこうだい, never しち, while 豊四季 is とよしき, 六実 むつみ and 八木崎 やぎさき. 大和田 is おおわだ, not やまとだ. 逆井 is さかさい, with an extra さ the kanji don't warn you about. 藤の牛島 reads its の, 馬込沢 is まごめざわ like the Asakusa Line's 馬込, and 運河 is just うんが, four keys.

The game's English names flatten the long vowels, but you type the kana: Omiya is oomiya, Nanakodai nanakoudai, and 大宮公園 oomiyakouenn, since a name-final ん needs nn. Each of the first four names carries a double お. The longest name on the line, 流山おおたかの森, is 22 keystrokes: nagareyamaootakanomori. Pairs crowd in late: 柏 and 新柏, 新鎌ケ谷 and 鎌ケ谷, 新船橋 and 船橋.

Tobu writes 鎌ケ谷 with a full-size ケ where Hokuso and Keisei write 新鎌ヶ谷; both read が, and kanji mode treats ヶ and ケ alike, so either IME output counts. The hiragana is what catches kanji mode: an IME that turns おおたか into 大鷹 won't match 流山おおたかの森, and 藤の牛島 wants the kana の, not 野.