池上線

Overview

The Tokyu Ikegami Line (IK) runs 10.9 km from Gotanda to Kamata in 15 stations, all of them inside Tokyo, through the residential inland parts of Shinagawa and Ota wards. It is a small, unhurried railway by Tokyu's standards: every train stops at every station, the trains are three cars long, and they have run without conductors since 1998.

It did not start out as a Tokyu line at all. The Ikegami Electric Railway built it to carry pilgrims to Ikegami Honmon-ji, the great Nichiren temple, and opened its first 1.8 km between Kamata and Ikegami on 6 October 1922 — the oldest stretch of any line Tokyu runs today. It pushed north to Gotanda by June 1928, and in 1934 it was absorbed by the Meguro-Kamata Electric Railway, the company that became Tokyu. The two had been rivals, which is why the Ikegami Line crossed the Oimachi Line for decades without a shared station; Hatanodai only became the interchange in 1951, when stations on each line were moved together. The line even had its own hit song: Mieko Nishijima's Ikegami-sen, released in 1976.

Along the route

Gotanda's platform is up on the fourth floor of a Tokyu building, looking down over the JR Yamanote Line, and trains leave it on a viaduct, cross the Meguro River and pass over Yamate-dori to reach Osakihirokoji. Then they drop into a cutting and come to Togoshi-ginza, the station for the Togoshi-ginza shopping street, which stretches for well over a kilometre. The station was rebuilt in 2016 with timber from the Tama area. It is also the link to Toei's Togoshi station on the Asakusa Line, a few minutes' walk down the street, and the game treats the two as one interchange.

Ebara-nakanobu is underground, and at Hatanodai the Oimachi Line crosses overhead. After Nagahara, another underground station, the line comes out at Senzoku-ike, beside a pond known for its cherry blossoms. Past Ishikawa-dai sits Yukigaya-otsuka with the line's depot, where some trains start and finish. Ontakesan takes its name from the Ontake shrine behind it, and just south of the platforms the line passes over the Tokaido Shinkansen. Kugahara and Chidoricho come quickly, then the line climbs over Route 1 and runs into Ikegami, the temple town below Honmon-ji, which fills with visitors for the Oeshiki festival every October. After Hasunuma the tracks curve beside the Tokyu Tamagawa Line and end together with it at Kamata.

Why play it

The Ikegami Line is a set of small reading puzzles, several of them doubled with a station somewhere else. 荏原中延 (えばらなかのぶ) is not 中延 on the Oimachi Line, and 洗足池 is not 洗足 on the Meguro Line. 御嶽山 is おんたけさん, while the Ome Line's 御嶽 is みたけ. 千鳥町 reads its 町 as ちょう, but 荏原町 on the Oimachi Line reads it as まち.

Two names hide their が in plain sight: 雪が谷大塚 (ゆきがやおおつか), where 谷 is や and the double お of おおつか follows, and 久が原 (くがはら). 蓮沼 is はすぬま, and 大崎広小路 (おおさきひろこうじ) is the longest name on the line — nine kana, and Tokyu writes its English as a single word, Osakihirokoji, with no hyphen to catch your breath on. It comes second, before you have found a rhythm.