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N T T ( Nipon Telegraph and Telephone )

Free Cards:

110-007 / 009 / 010

110 -011

110 -012 / 013 / 014

110 -015

IO-cards:

These are the most commonly used transportation in Japan, on JR trains in East Japan (Japan Railway). Theyallow you to you through the gate quickly (takes you less than a second): the machine deducts the fee automatically from the credit on the card. Hence the name IN-Out card. They are not the best source of rare cards although most images have nice thematic designs, lots of trains, animals and others: mast of these cards are rather common though exceptions do occur.

Orange cards:

The orange cards can be used to buy train tickets at the JR ticket vending machines; the machine will deduct the ticket price from the cards remaining value. The older cards have a large arrow (usually black) and the orange cards date back from years when the name JR did not exist; some of these cards are quite rare. There exist a huge number of different cards, and many of them have great thematic designs, some common, others very rare. There are many Japanese collectors who collect these cards and it is not easy to become an expert in these cards, but that's what makes them more interesting! These card are among the top of the prepaid cards and definitely worth looking into!

Metro cards:

These card can be recognized from the strangely shaped S logo. They can be used to buy metro tickets at the vending machines. Now they no longer exist (see Passnet below), which makes them more interesting for collecting. Some of them are very rare now, and a lot have very nice thematic designs.

SF (metro) cards:

These cards could be used to go through the metro's ticket gate and work in the same way as JR's IO-cards; the SF stands for "Stored Fare" system. They werw discontinued in the year 2000, and replaced by Passnet card (see below). A lot of these cards were made for special occasions (like art exhibitions at museums), and have a lot of great designs. Some are very rare, others will be rare one day and are overall, these cards are very interesting to collect.

Passnet card:

This really convenient system has replaced a stunning 20 metro and train card systems (metro, Tobu line, Keisei line, etc. but not JR in the east of Japan since 2000. To make things more convenient for users, who often used to have many different transportation cards  in their wallets to get Toyo and back, this system was developed so that people can just switch. Aiready a number of nice cards have appeared and since this system is just taking off, a lot more nice cards are expected and i believe Passnet cards to be among the future of Japanese cards along with Tosho.

There are still many cards that do not belong in the phone cards and among them are:

LeTrain cards (Keikyu);  J-through card;  Bus cards (Tokyo);  Nishitetsu cards;  Highway cards;  Large cards (Kansai);  Skip cards;  Marine cards;  Romance cards (Odakyu);   Disney resort line;   Leo cards (Seibu);    Bus cards (Hiroshima); Rainbow cards;   ....

. . . . . : : : : : RAILWAYS : : : : : . . . . .

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