Travelling - public transport

When I first had to use the public transport system in Japan, i had a kind of "lost in translation" feeling. For illustration, this is the metro system in Tokyo:
Impressive isn't it?
and in most cases, we had to find our way in a map like this - full of Japanese characters:
first hesitation:

Train in Japan
From Hiroshima to Osaka we have traveled with the famous Shinkansen trains at the speed of 210 km/h. Since the initial Tōkaidō Shinkansen opened in 1964 running at 210 km/h, the network (2,459 km) has expanded to link most major cities on the islands of Honshū and Kyūshū with running speeds of up to 300 km/h (188 mph), in an earthquake- and typhoon-prone environment. Test run speeds have been 443 km/h (275 mph) for conventional rail in 1996, and up to a world record of 581 km/h (361 mph) for maglev trainsets in 2003. The famous suicides happened with the driver of these trains who committed suicide after a few minutes of delay...
The train was extremely convenient, did not feel the speed at all (in particularly because we have been using all of our free time - especially the traveling times for sleeping :)).
We had 2 minutes to get on the train and take or seats.