I’m not sure if I’ve ever been so completely, madly and totally in love with a transit map as I am with this. A giant, sprawling, isometric representation of much of Japan showing JR Group railway lines. The map is produced by the JR West company, and its operating area is shown in full detail within the green area (apart from the heavily urbanised areas around Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe, where – wisely – not all stations are shown). Connecting services and routes operated outside the JR West area are also shown, but in less detail – only major stations along the routes are indicated. Shinkansen lines are light blue, JR West main line routes are dark blue (main line routes outside their operating area match the company that operates in that area – red for JR Kyushu, for example), while urban routes seem to follow their established colour-coding.

As can be seen from the two detail images from the area around Osaka, there’s both an English and Japanese version of the map. The Japanese version is arguably more effective because of the in-built ability to set the text vertically, but the English version isn’t half bad either. I particularly like the way the line names have been set to conform to the isometric grid – a very nice design touch.

Our rating: I like to imagine that this is the world map from some incredible railroad-building computer game. 5 stars!

Source: Official JR West website