Absolute must for Japan residents
First of all, this app is in Japanese. If youre comfortable with the language and live in Japan, its an essential supplement to the native Maps app. While Maps is great for open-ended route searches, if I know my departure and arrival stations, I always use Norikae Annai.
Given two stations and an arrival/departure time, this app returns the fastest, cheapest and easiest routes. For each route, all stations and transfers are on one screen, along with transfer times, line names and cost. Once youre accustomed to the interface and have a decent station history, it takes literally seconds to find the best route. So far, I havent found any mistakes, but I live in Tokyo and mostly use well-traveled JR, Toei and Tokyo Metro lines.
To address some other reviewers comments, note that the app can now look up the nearest stations (経路検索 -> click a blue arrow -> 最寄り駅). Also, you can see results offline in the pay version. And lastly, in most cases you can enter the name of the station in Roman letters, although the results remain in Japanese.
In case youre wavering between this version and its Plus counterpart, these are the main extra features in the pay version ($20 per year):
* A trains platform number and the best car(s) to use for a transfer, both of which are very useful
* Offline route search and timetable history (up to 50 results for both)
* Interactive search results that show you the timetable, quick info on earlier/later departures, and arrival times for stations along the way
* A quicker way to search for trains departing x minutes from now
* Other stuff like commuter pass compatibility, city bus listings, no ads, etc.
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