Slopecars: Japan’s Genius Way of Climbing Hills

Slopecars: Japan’s Genius Way of Climbing Hills

[Music] What on earth is this? [Music] Hello there. Remember two weeks ago when I released a video all about the funny ways that the Dutch traverse small bodies of water? Well, we’re going in for round two. This time talking about the funny ways that the Japanese climb hills. Say you’re walking through a city in Japan and there’s a steep hill in front of you. You don’t know how to get up it or frankly you can’t be bothered. In the US, you might find an elevator. In Switzerland, probably a cable car engineered to within an inch of its life. In the UK, a sad inclined lift that got privatized in the 1980s and smells of piss. But if you’re in Japan, you may well see one of these. A slope car surroka. It’s not racist. That’s literally how they say it. That’s what they call it. So, slope cars, what are they? Uh well, it’s technically a tiny people mover that can be used in all sorts of different scenarios from accessing hotel rooms to uh steps at temple sites to soorbing to like everything. You can use them all over the place. Um uh they’re also used by businesses like dams and uh and mines. They are absolutely everywhere in Japan. It’s hard to pin down the exact numbers as many are privately constructed and owned, but just Kho, the major manufacturer of them, has installed at least 140 around the country on their own. Other manufacturers include Chigusa, who make the Rex car or Rakus car, Watabango, who makes the monor rider or monor rider, and Seenor Kyo, who makes the mountain liner or mountain riner, but they’re all generally the same sort of design. And CJO is by far the largest producer of them. And they also came up with the name slope car which is now used to mean all installations of this type. So suck it all other companies. But what exactly are they? They sit in a sort of twilight zone where they defy classification a bit. Um well actually that’s not entirely true. They sort of sit in the ven diagram section where lift Montreal and a few other things overlap. Wikipedia describes them as a fusion between Montreal, people mover, inclined elevator, and rack railway, which is sort of right. Let’s go one at a time. Right. So, let’s start with Montreals. Slope cars take the single beam and third rail power system from Montreals, but tend to use a steel rack and pinion drive system rather than the normal monorail system of using tires or similar wheels. Now, on to people movers. Slope cars use automated driverless controls like people movers, but they aren’t really designed for highfrequency transit and are usually manually operated. Now, inclined lifts. Slope cars are self-service like inclined lifts, but instead of being cablepulled, again, they use a steel rack and pinion system. And finally, rack railways. As we’ve said, slope cars borrow the track and drive system from rack railways, but rack trains tend to be public or tourist transport systems, while slope cars are more like sort of automated accessibility tools. If I were to say which one I think it’s closest to, it would probably be a rack railway based on the components. And the one that it’s least like is a lift because surely a key component of a lift is a counterbalanced carriage. Like you know, a weight coming down and the lift going up. That’s what makes a lift a lift. You know, you want to know something weird? Japan disagrees. Under the law of the land, these are legally designated as inclined elevators. All of them. They’re effectively rack and pinion people movers that run on a single rail. Yet, Japan chose to classify them under the umbrella term of a completely different sort of transport to which they don’t bear all that much similarity. So, cool, I guess. Either way, slope cars take a little bit of inspiration from each of the above modes of transport, combining them to make something that’s actually pretty clever. In a way, they do operate a bit like a lift in that they’re free to use and they have buttons that look just like any old elevator. And this is convenient and great for people who are less able to walk upstairs. And the rack system they use keeps them nice and secure on the track. Furthermore, the KO website notes that apart from insane tilting finiculars like the Schnosban, cable cars and finiculars are fixed and don’t rotate or tilt, meaning that if the track gradient gets steeper or shallower, the train moves along with it, tilting the carriage and making for a less comfortable ride. But because slope cars use a third rail system that gives the carriage constant power, they can build in systems where, for instance, the carriage rotates as the gradient of the incline changes. uh which obviously keeps the carriage level and also they can be completely bespoke. Just ask Kho Manufacturing to make you one and they’ll put in like curves and stuff. Look at that. That one bends around to the side. So, how did these things end up flooding Japan? Well, in the 1960s, Kho, the the big manufacturer, started making small rack and pinion railways for vineyards and farms to traverse very very steep hills. They weren’t used uh by the public. and um uh they occasionally had like crazy gradients and didn’t like tilt. So that was a sort of early prototype of this whole system. Then local authorities and private businesses started realizing that these were an innovative and relatively cheap way to help people get up and down steep terrain like in parks and on streets. And there was an explosion of them in the following decades, especially in the 1990s. And because they’re legally classified as lifts and not railways, they have far fewer regulations and have there are fewer bureaucratic hurdles that get in the way of constructing them. So they’re very popular for private residences and tourist sites like this. [Music] The first one we’re coming to see is at the Matsuchiama Temple in Asaka in the northeast of the center of Tokyo. This one is called the Sakura Rail. And I think I feel like they missed a trick cuz Sakura obviously is cherry blossom and rail is rail. But they could have like made a port manto where it’s saku rail making it cuz saku was also the word for bloom, isn’t it? I think. So that would be Bloom railway. That would also work. Oh, it’s gone now. Right. Well, it’s time to use it, I suppose. Right. So, I’ve called it up. Let’s get in. Oh my god, it’s a much lower ceiling than I was anticipating. It also is incredibly wobbly. Right, I can’t read any of those signs, so I’m going to assume it’s that way. Well, there you go. Door is closed and somebody’s phoning. There you go. Down we go. It’s a slightly rougher ride than I was expecting. It’s quite jiggly as you can probably see from how much my camera is shaking. Oh, I see. So, oh, I see. So, maybe the bottom there was for the middle station which we’re just passing now. And then we’re coming down to the autumn here. Isn’t that nice? One big problem is that it’s about 31° outside or I don’t know, probably in the low 90s, high 80s for you Fahrenheit people. And this thing is not air conditioned and also is acting like a greenhouse. So I am sweating quite a lot. Oh my god. Get me out of here. There you go. [Music] So, the second one we’re looking at today is in Asuka Park, uh, directly opposite OG station, which is right there behind us or behind you. And, uh, this is called the, for some reason, Ascargo, like the French word escargo for snail, but with an a instead. It’s bigger than the last one. So, it carries, I think, six people. seated and then probably about 10 or so standing up. So, let’s have a look. [Music] So, it’s taken me so long to get this one on my own. I’ve had to go up and down so many times until it was empty cuz there’s no way I was doing this in front of other people in this small enclosed space. Uh, so a couple of things about this one. One, it’s much smoother than the other one. Two, it’s airond conditioned, which is glorious in this weather. And, uh, three, on the way up, it plays quite a jaunty little jingle that’s very pleasant. And it times itself, so it finishes just as you get to the top station. [Music] And on the way down, you probably can’t hear it, but it’s playing quite a sort of mournful song. I suppose that sort of works with coming down the hill, but yeah, it’s it’s it’s a bit sad really. Also, there’s a man at the bottom who uh bows every time the slope car leaves. I love it. [Music] So, the last slope car of the day is at Okurayin Temple, Okurin Shrine in Hatioji, which has taken me about an hour and a half to get to because it’s way out west. And I have spoken to the people here and asked if I’m can film and they said yes. But I had to come out and see this one. And you probably now understand why. [Music] Oh, that was very abrupt. So yes, this is a suspended model and you can really clearly see the uh the lovely rack and pinion system uh on this one. It’s it’s very clear. Um it runs over four floors. up this shrine. Uh, and yeah, it’s pretty cool, right? Well, as with the others, it’s operated by a button system similar to a lift. This one is also made by our boys Kho. Um, I can’t be too noisy as there are now people in the shrine paying respects to the dead. Uh, which is why I was kind of surprised when they said yes to me filming here. But yeah, here it is. You see the lovely rack and pinion up top. And yes, it plays this tune every time. And I’ve had to do lots of takes of it moving around to get lots of B-roll footage. So, this song is very firmly stuck in my head now. [Music] Oh, again. It’s just I thought it would time it so that it stopped at the top station and uh be right. Okay. So, we open this up. We get in here. It swings more than I expected. Right. And then you press third floor. I’m going to go down to the third floor. Of course, the music starts again. There we go. It’s quite um again it’s quite rocky. It’s probably because of the rack rackindian system. Um yeah, it’s nice though. These things are great. We need them in England. It swings a lot as well. both back and forth and side to side. And that’s about it for slope cars. Really, they’re a fun little solution to the age-old problem of I can’t be bothered to climb up this hill and are obviously good for accessibility, too. But you can’t help but feel that Japan is one of the very few countries where these things would be viable. I can’t speak for everyone, but as a dual UK US citizen, I reckon if those two countries built a ton of these and left them free to use, there’s a high chance they’d just get trashed and vandalized, or probably just break down and never get fixed. Oh well. See you next time. [Music] All right. Well, uh that’s it for the slope car video. We’ve seen a few good ones. Um this is my favorite, I think. Uh yeah, and it’s fun. Well, well done, Japan. This is very good for mobility and having a bit of fun as well. So, okay. So, um yeah, I’ll see you in the next video, I suppose, which I think will also be from Japan if the upload schedule is as I currently have it. Right, let’s get out of here. My god, it’s so hot. Why is it so hot in May in this country?

Oh so a 20 minute video of me using a hand-pulled ferry incorrectly wasn’t punishment enough? You’re really coming back for more? Well suit yourself.

We’re back in Japan for a deep-dive into slopecars – amazing little modes of transport that I had no idea about before I went to Japan. I had to hurriedly write this script on the go when I first started seeing them everywhere.

Are they a monorail? Are they a train? Are they a lift? Yes and no is the answer to all three of those. I hope this helps.

Either way, they’re all over Japan and today we’re going to look at what they are, how they operate, and what they’re like to use.

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CHAPTERS:
00:05 Intro
01:10 Slopecars
02:18 How to define them?
04:02 How do they work?
05:55 SakuraRail, Asakusa
07:53 “Ascargot” Monorail, Kita
09:40 Unnamed slopecar, Hachioji
11:58 Outro
12:30 Encore