Prática de Shadowing: Why Does Japan's Shortest Railway Go Nowhere? - Aprenda a falar inglês com o YouTube
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Higashinarita Train Station The Higashinarita Train Station
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Higashinarita Train Station The Higashinarita Train Station
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Oh hey, I didn't see you there.
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That's because you're not there and I'm actually talking to a camera in this haunted train station.
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join me today at Higashi Narita train station,
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which is underneath Narita Airport,
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the larger of Japan's two big international airports,
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to the east of the city out in Chiba Prefecture.
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There are plenty of odd things about Narita Airport.
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They have funny little quiet rooms,
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they have security robots, they have places to put your baby while you have a piss,
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and they have an ongoing legal battle with multiple farmers and other citizens that has led to a home,
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a shrine and a farm being trapped within the airport grounds.
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But we're not here to film any of that.
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Now in case you're worried about whether
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or not what I'm here to film is thrilling enough to live up to all of those things,
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never fear, for this is the terminus of the Shibayama Railway.
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Actually now that I'm saying it out loud that's not a very exciting reveal is it?
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Never fear, for this is the terminus of Japan's shortest railway.
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Yay!
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Due to an extremely complex privatisation process that mostly took place in the 1980s and 1990s,
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Japan has literally hundreds, potentially over 200 different railway companies and they're split into a number of tiers.
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At the top you have the JR Group East,
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West, Central, Shikoku, Kyushu, Hokkaido and Freight.
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These are the big boys of Japanese rail.
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They're the remnants of the dismantling of the state-run Japanese national railways in 1987.
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Collectively they own tens of thousands of miles of track and an ocean of rolling stock,
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from Shinkansen to luxury sleepers to regular old commuter trains.
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These four are privately owned,
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East, Central, West and Kyushu,
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and these three are government owned as they are far less profitable than the others,
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Shikoku, Hokkaido and Freight.
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Below them are the Ooteishitetsu,
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which literally means like big private railway and I think there are 16 of them.
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They're smaller than the JR boys though, they're still quite big.
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And they range from about 500km in length,
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in track length as per like the Kintetsu Railway to like maybe 14km on one of the smaller ones.
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Well, it's a good job I had to retake that because the smallest is actually 42 kilometres as per the Sagami Railway.
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Below them you have the mid-sized private railways which are the same thing but just smaller.
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They go down to about 7 kilometres in track length, I believe.
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But then below that we have the third sector railways,
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the most interesting tier.
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The ones below that are just subway and tram operators and aren't really relevant.
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Where the two private railway tiers are fully profitable and thus privately owned,
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Japan Japan is also covered in a mammoth web of quite unprofitable railway lines.
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But because Japan doesn't like sacrificing basic public needs for the sake of the profit motive,
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they didn't follow in the UK's footsteps in ripping up all these lines
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and instead turned them into joint private-public operations called third-sector railways.
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Because yes, Dr. Beeching, even people who live in rural communities deserve to have access to trains,
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whether or not those trains turn a profit for shareholders or not.
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Isn't that a radical thought?
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There are about 40 third-sector railways in the country.
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The longest, the San Riku Railway,
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is about 160km long with dozens and dozens of so-called train sets shuttling up and down the coast.
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And the shortest is right here,
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the Shibayama Railway, with one train set running between just two stops about 2.2km or 1.4 miles away from each other.
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Yes, that's an entire private-public partnership company set up for just one train.
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Now this might seem to make sense to some.
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Think of the Waterloo and City Line in London.
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That's a tiny line at just 2.37 kilometres,
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with just six trainsets in service at any one time.
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But it serves a very important purpose,
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directly connecting Waterloo with Bank,
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the centre of the UK's financial sector.
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The Shibayama railway, however, that's not quite so useful.
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At one end of the line is Higashi Narita,
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which is where I am now.
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If you're a fan of Jetlag the Game,
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you might have seen this station before.
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Or if you're a fan of the late Vocaloid Master Wawaka and his extremely underrated band Hitorie,
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they also filmed a music video here.
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But yeah, this station is not hugely useful,
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hence me being one of...
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I was going to say there were two people sat there before.
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I was going to say hence me being one of three people here
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but everyone else is just passing through now so it is just me really.
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But it wasn't always.
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The construction of Narita Airport was first announced in 1966 with an opening date of 1971 scheduled.
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But a genuinely frightening public backlash now known as the San Rizuka struggle
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which saw farmers and local residents violently oppose any attempts to break ground on the airport
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delayed the completion of the airport by seven years.
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So the airport eventually opened in 1978.
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And what does a new airport need? at least in functional countries,
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a nice new train link.
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Part of the plans for Narita Airport involved the construction of a new Shinkansen line,
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the Narita Shinkansen, which would zip riders from central Tokyo to the airport in no time.
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The line began construction in 1974
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but it was not remotely close to completion by the time
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the airport opened in 1978 due to a mix of construction costs and the Sanrizuka lads kicking off again.
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But into the 1980s the government persevered,
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trying to make the Narita Shinkansen a reality and clearing space for the new line.
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Meanwhile, since the 1930s, Keisei Electric Railway,
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one of the Ote-Shitetsu, or big private railways,
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had had a line that happened to head out east from Tokyo to very near where the airport was due to be.
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And so once the airport opened,
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Keisei asked to extend the line a little bit further to
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the airport to take advantage of the huge passenger transport that would follow.
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The airport authority said sure,
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but the new station needed to be away from the terminal buildings,
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as the Narita Shinkansen, once completed,
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would be given its own station at a prime spot in the heart of the airport.
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But until that was open,
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this little station had to do.
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It was opened along with the airport and was known as Narita Airport Station,
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and it was the airport's main terminus,
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despite the fact that you had to get a bus to the terminal once you actually got here.
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Oh well, it's better than nothing.
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The Sanrizuka lads reached their zenith of violence in the late 70s and early 80s,
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and while it failed in stopping the construction of the airport,
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it did actually succeed in derailing the Narita Shinkansen .
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The project was put on hold in 1983 and formally cancelled in 1987,
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leaving a bunch of half-finished track infrastructure and stations in its wake.
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Keisei took one look at the remnants of the failed Shinkansen project and said to the airport,
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please, can we use it?
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And the airport said, do whatever you want with it,
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as one solitary tear fell from its cheek.
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So in 1991, with the Shinkansen all but a memory at this point,
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Keisei completed works on what was supposed to be the fancy new Shinkansen station in the heart of the airport,
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and called that Narita Airport Station,
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renaming the old one that we've already seen to Higashi Narita.
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And just outside the airport grounds,
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they created a new little branch line that went into the new station.
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So what do you think happened to the old one?
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That's right, despite the fact that some Keisei trains still stop there,
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almost nobody bloody uses it anymore.
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But the story didn't stop there.
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In the early 1980s, at the height of the Sanrizuka lads losing their share,
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Narita Airport offered a compromise to local residents of the town of Shibayama.
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One of the main issues the residents had had was
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that the airport would cut off their access to Narita and massively increase their transport times if they headed west.
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And so the airport offered to build a tiny little railway line to appease the locals and lower their transport times,
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setting up the Shibayama Railway Company in 1981.
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But negotiations over how the line would be formed,
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along with the complications from the collapse of the Shinkansen line meant
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that it took 15 years for the plans to even be finalized
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and then the line didn't open until 2002 when we finally got the Shibayama railway.
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So as I said earlier,
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this is the shortest independent railway line in all of Japan.
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There are some shorter lines operating but they're like branch lines of larger lines
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or they're owned by companies that also own loads of track.
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This 2.2km stretch from Higashi Narita to Shibayama Chioda is the entire extent of the Shibayama railway.
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And this train is about to leave and if I don't get on it,
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I'm going to be stuck here for about 40 minutes.
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The line's one little 1970s train,
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leased from Keisei, leaves Higashi Narita every 40 minutes and snakes its way under the airport.
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One of the main reasons it took so long to finalise the line is
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that right in front of the exit of Higashi Narita station is a small house
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and farm stuck within the grounds of the airport.
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You might have actually heard about this man in the news.
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And when Narita Airport was under construction,
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they tried to relocate him,
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but the Sanrezuka boys kicked off and he was allowed to stay where he was.
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As a result, it took ages to negotiate how the line should be laid out in order to avoid his property,
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so the lines got this slightly wobbly shape.
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Initially the Shibayama Railway was supposed to be a tiny little narrow gauge line with small people mover type trains.
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But can you guess what happened?
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That's right, the Sanrezuka boys absolutely lost their shit again and the train got upgraded to a proper standard gauge line.
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of Higashi Narita station, it races out of the tunnel
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and reaches a surprisingly high top speed of like 53 miles an hour or about 85 kilometres an hour.
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And about two thirds of the way down it leaves the tunnel
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and becomes an elevated railway that ends at Shibayama Chiyoda station just up here.
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But why was this chosen as the site of the other terminus of the line?
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Shibayama, the actual town is all the way down here,
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and this station is still within the airport grounds.
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So why here?
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Well, it's because the railway was never really a compromise to help the people of Shibayama,
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it's just the minimum the airport could do to appease the
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citizens nearby without having to buy up loads more land and encounter further legal issues with the San Rizuka boys.
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So rather than running down to Shibayama proper,
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it just stops here at the edge of the airport in what is sort of a big industrial estate,
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full of cargo facilities.
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So it's used a lot by airport staff and maintenance staff rather than,
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well I say it's used a lot by them,
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but I mean, the video you're seeing begs to differ.
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So, what's it like?
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Oh my God, if you ever come down here, remember to bring cash.
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It's down an incredibly long corridor.
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You can still access it,
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but it's down this very long corridor.
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And they don't accept card.
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I should have known, and there's no ATM near here.
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I had to run all the way back to the terminal and get cash.
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Oh my God, that was exhausting.
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So occasionally you do still see people here.
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Case in point, because the Kesei train still stops here,
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but the Shibayama train often arrives with literally nobody on it.
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So yeah, I'm gonna go take it now, I guess.
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Please touch the button of your choice.
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Thank you.
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The next step is to get to the next step.
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It's a short little ride,
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it's quite comfortable, it's a bit rickety,
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really annoyingly I was trying to film the Shibayama train,
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its own train service, but I happened to catch a Keisei line train that was passing through Higashinarita to Shibayama Choda.
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So I'm on that instead,
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which means it's hard to film.
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But I guess we should go and see what the station's like.
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Editing Gabe here.
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I'm not 100% sure what I meant by that,
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by saying it was hard to film, because it wasn't.
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It's the same as a normal train.
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But yes, this is Shibayama Chiodo Station.
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I didn't have very long there because the train went back almost immediately,
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so I guess we're also going to head back and instead take a look at Higashi Narita Station,
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which is the more interesting of the two anyway.
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One thing that I would say is pretty surprising,
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apart from just how dead this station is,
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is that there are other platforms that look like they haven't been used in probably decades.
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There also are advertisements over there that I think must be from the early 2000s.
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Yeah, it's very creepy, this place.
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And it's not helped by the birdsong that they keep playing.
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I assume they probably meant for it to be like,
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oh, it's a nice calming sound that reminds you of the outdoors and that you're not stuck in this liminal space.
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But no, it just makes it more creepy.
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There's also a sink here.
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What's that doing?
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It works.
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There's definitely a lot of stuff left over from the 70s here,
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obviously with this being a 1978 station and airport.
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Yeah, it's very surreal and I don't like it.
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Maybe I do like it and I'm just not being honest with myself.
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Set 3540 of the EMU 3500 series,
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dating from 1973, is the only train set that runs on the line,
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trundling back
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and forth from Higashi Narita to Shibayama Chiyoda every 40 minutes from just before 6am to about half past 11 at night.
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All day, every day.
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Sometimes when the Shibayama Railway is inoperational,
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set 3540 has a little holiday over to the adjacent Keisei electric line,
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where you can tell it apart from the others due to its red-green colour scheme
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and the little Shibayama Railway logo in the top corner.
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So in the end we're left with a tiny,
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slightly wonky railway line that cost a fortune,
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took two decades to negotiate,
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was only built to pacify furious farmers
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and now mostly shuttles airport staff from a ghost station to an industrial park about 2km away.
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It's not only Japan's shortest independent railway line,
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but also possibly its most useless.
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And yet it still runs like clockwork every 40 minutes,
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because in Japan, even if a railway line or station serves one person,
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it gets kept open.
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Because that's what trains are for, serving people.
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The Shibayama Railway is a monument to stubbornness and protest and compromise,
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and it's an interesting slice of Japanese history and culture in
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that it shows that they really do believe that Everyone deserves a train,
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even if it's not financially viable to do so.
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But also, it gave me something fun to film.
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But the Shibayama Railway, I had to email them in advance to ask
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if it was okay to film at the station and on the train.
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And they were like, yeah,
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go for it, as long as you're not getting in anyone's way.
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Which I don't think I am.
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So thumbs up to the Shibayama Railway.
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I've got to get off here,
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or else I'm going to miss my flight now, actually.
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I've waited around in this creepy ass railway station for ages to see
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if I can actually see one of the Shibayama railway trains rather than a Keisei one
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And I think this should be one Yes,
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it is it's got the logo Ohayou gozaimasu This is it this is the train
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I started filming it
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and then I thought I didn't really get a very clear shot of the logo
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so I should probably go down to the front and do that.
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So I started running but then the train started leaving
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and I didn't quite make it to the front
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so I gave up and the video is going to end on me saying...
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Thank you.
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Contexto & Antecedentes
No vídeo "Por que a menor ferrovia do Japão não vai a lugar nenhum?", o apresentador explora a curiosa estação de trem Higashi Narita, localizada sob o Aeroporto de Narita. Ele menciona diversas peculiaridades desse aeroporto, como salas silenciosas, robôs de segurança e até batalhas legais inusitadas. No entanto, o foco principal é a ferrovia Shibayama, notória por ser a menor do Japão. O apresentador aborda o complexo sistema ferroviário japonês, que é composto por uma miríade de empresas, destacando a importância do transporte público acessível, mesmo em áreas menos lucrativas.
As 5 Principais Frases para Comunicação Diário
- “Nunca tema!” - Uma expressão reconfortante que incentiva a calma diante de novidades.
- “Vamos dar uma olhada.” - Um convite à exploração ou à investigação de um assunto.
- “Isso não é uma revelação emocionante.” - Uma maneira de comentar sobre a falta de emoção em uma situação.
- “A ferrovia está situada em Chiba.” - Uma frase que pode ser usada para falar sobre localização geográfica.
- “Isso é um pensamento radical.” - Uma expressão para comentar sobre ideias inovadoras ou surpreendentes.
Guia Passo a Passo para Shadowing
Para aproveitar ao máximo o vídeo e melhorar sua pronúncia em inglês, siga este guia de shadowing:
- Assista ao vídeo uma vez sem legendas. - Familiarize-se com o conteúdo e o tom do apresentador.
- Ative as legendas em inglês. - Isso ajudará a conectar as palavras faladas com sua forma escrita, facilitando o entendimento.
- Escolha pequenas partes do vídeo. - Foque em trechos de 10 a 30 segundos para repetir, o que tornará o processo mais gerenciável.
- Pratique o shadowing. - Tente repetir a fala do apresentador imediatamente após ouvi-la. Imite a entonação e ritmo dele.
- Reveja seu desempenho. - Use o seu smartphone ou gravador para registrar sua prática. Ouça e compare com o original, ajustando as diferenças.
Ao seguir este guia e integrar a prática de conversação em inglês em sua rotina, você não só melhora sua fluência, como também se aprofunda na cultura japonesa e na complexidade do sistema ferroviário do país. O shadow speak é uma excelente técnica, e a prática constante contribuirá significativamente para sua evolução no idioma.
O que é a Técnica de Shadowing?
Shadowing é uma técnica de aprendizado de idiomas com base científica, originalmente desenvolvida para o treinamento de intérpretes profissionais. O método é simples, mas poderoso: você ouve áudio em inglês nativo e repete imediatamente em voz alta — como uma sombra seguindo o falante com 1-2 segundos de atraso. Pesquisas mostram melhora significativa na precisão da pronúncia, entonação, ritmo, sons conectados, compreensão auditiva e fluência na fala.
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