世田谷線

Overview

The Tokyu Setagaya Line (SG) runs 5.0 km from Sangen-jaya to Shimo-takaido in 10 stations, every one of them in Setagaya ward and none of them a full kilometre from the next. Legally it is not a railway but a tramway, run under the Tramway Act with a 40 km/h limit, and it behaves like one: two-car low-floor trams, one flat fare paid as you board, and a crew of a driver and an attendant on most trips. With the Toden Arakawa Line, it is one of Tokyo's last two tram lines.

It is the surviving piece of the Tamagawa Electric Railway, the 玉電 (Tamaden), whose trams once ran along the main road from Shibuya to Futako-tamagawa. The Setagaya stretch opened in 1925 as the Tamaden's branch to Shimo-takaido: Sangen-jaya to Setagaya in January, on to Shimo-takaido in May. When the main line closed in 1969 — its job taken over eight years later by the Shin-Tamagawa subway — the branch was kept, reportedly because nearly all of it ran on its own right-of-way rather than in the street, and it was renamed the Setagaya Line. Its fleet is ten two-car sets of the 300 series, introduced from 1999, and each set wears a different colour.

Along the route

Sangen-jaya's tram platforms are on the ground floor of the Carrot Tower; the Den-en-toshi Line's station is underground nearby, reached by leaving the ticket gates. The line heads west through close-packed houses to Nishi-taishido, and between there and Wakabayashi it crosses Kannana-dori. There are no crossing gates here: this is the one spot where the tram is treated as road traffic, and it waits at the traffic light along with the cars. Shoin-jinja-mae is the stop for the shrine to Yoshida Shoin, the late-Edo teacher whose students helped bring about the Meiji Restoration, with a small shopping street leading up to it.

Setagaya and Kamimachi are the stations for the Setagaya Boro-ichi, a street market held every year on 15 and 16 December and again on 15 and 16 January, when the line runs extra trams. The depot is at Kamimachi, and the Setagaya Daikan Yashiki, the Edo-period magistrate's residence, is close by. Then the line turns north. Miyanosaka is the nearest stop to Gotoku-ji, one of the temples said to be the birthplace of the maneki-neko beckoning cat. At Yamashita the Odakyu Line's Gotokuji station is right next door, and the game joins the two as an interchange. After Matsubara the tram pulls into Shimo-takaido, beside the Keio Line. Of all Tokyu's rail lines, this is the one that never meets JR.

Why play it

Ten short stations are over quickly, and the names are more careful than they look. 三軒茶屋 is spelled さんげんぢゃや, with a ぢゃ you will rarely meet anywhere else; ja and dya both type it. 西太子堂 ends in どう, a long vowel that is easy to drop, and 松陰神社前 (しょういんじんじゃまえ), the longest name on the line, reads 陰 as いん rather than かげ.

Voiced sounds do the rest. 若林 is わかばやし and 松原 is まつばら, both voicing their second half, while 世田谷 is せたがや with 谷 read や. 上町 is かみまち, not うえまち, and 宮の坂 takes a hiragana の in Kanji mode. The last trap is a single character: 山下 and 下高井戸 are two stops apart, and one reads its 下 as した while the other reads it as しも.