Thursday 1 November 2018

A Shift of Business: Fujikyu Railway

EMU Fujikyu 6000 series arrives at Tsuru-shi station

Subsequent to my last post, I am going to continue to show you the recent topic of Fujikyu Railway.

When I took Fujikyu last month, I found many foreign tourists on the local train, the EMU 6000 series. They were speaking English, French, Chinese, Thai and so on. In accordance with this situation, Fujikyu clearly shifted their business from Japanese tourists to both Japanese and foreign tourists. For instance, the on-board announcement was conducted both in Japanese and English. Needless to say, the on-board display was also multilingual. It is common in Tokyo, but still new on local railways. And what was more surprising, all of the advertisement posters hanging in the trains were written in foreign languages; one train was in English and the other train was in Chinese. Except for the railway vehicle itself, I couldn't realize that I was taking Japanese railway.

Fujikyu was also providing foreign tourists with direct trains from New Tokyo International Airport (Narita) to Mt. Fuji to improve passenger services. It is Narita Express (NEX) jointly operating with JR East. It takes 2 hour 22 minutes from Narita to Fuji-san, which is a gateway station to Mt. Fuji. At the moment, it operates only one round trip on every weekend, but the train looked full. NEX train (EMU JR East E259 series) with two tone of red and white is fresh and very vivid backed by the green forests at the foot of Mt. Fuji.

Fujikyu appears to be shifting their business.

EMU JR East E259 series, Narita Express (NEX), passes by Tahara-no-taki waterfall