The fare adjustment machine: what to do when the gate closes on you

Sooner or later a Japanese ticket gate closes on you. You touch your card at an exit of Shibuya Station (渋谷駅), the reader answers with a flat double chime, two paddles swing shut at knee height, and a red light comes on. The people behind you step into the next lane without a word. Nothing has happened that the station did not plan for, and the fix is a short walk away, set into the wall.

What the closed gate is telling you

A gate refuses you for a small number of reasons. The balance on an IC card is short of the fare, which the display calls 残額不足 (zangaku busoku). A paper ticket was bought for less than the distance travelled. The card did not register where you entered, or the trip has crossed a boundary the card is not meant to cross. At large stations the small screen on top of the gate names the reason in Japanese and English; at smaller ones you may get only the chime.

The response is the same each time. Step back out of the lane rather than tapping again, and look up for a sign reading 精算 (seisan), usually glossed as Fare Adjustment. The machines stand inside the paid area, along the wall beside the exit gates, so you reach them without passing through anything. The idea behind them has a name, 乗り越し (norikoshi), literally riding past, and on an ordinary ticket it is treated as a sum to be completed rather than an offence.

きっぷの運賃が足りないときは、改札の手前にある精算機で差額を支払います。

How the machine works, slot by slot

The full name on the housing is のりこし精算機 (norikoshi seisanki). With a paper ticket, you feed the ticket into the slot, the screen shows the difference between what you paid and what the journey cost, and you pay it in coins or notes. The machine keeps the old ticket and prints a 精算券 (seisanken), a small adjustment slip. That slip is what goes through the gate, and the gate keeps it.

With an IC card the routine is a top-up. Set the card in the tray or slide it into the slot, choose チャージ (chāji), pick an amount, and feed in cash; card payment at these machines is the exception rather than the rule. Top-ups come in round steps, so the card usually leaves with more on it than the shortfall, though some machines also offer to settle only the missing amount. A phone cannot go into a slot. Where the machine has a flat reader pad you can rest the phone on it, and where it does not, charge inside the wallet app or walk to the staffed window.

An underpaid fare in a Japanese station is arithmetic left unfinished, and the building keeps a machine for finishing it.

The cheapest-ticket habit, and where it stops

Above a row of ticket machines hangs the 運賃表 (unchinhyō), the fare board: a network diagram with a number beside each station. In central Tokyo it is bilingual. At a country station it may be kanji only, and the name you want may sit on a branch line you cannot read. The local habit in that situation is to buy the lowest fare on the board, ride, and adjust at the far end.

The habit matters most on through services, where one train runs over two companies' tracks. The Toei Asakusa Line (都営浅草線) continues onto the Keikyū Line (京急線) toward Haneda Airport without anyone changing trains, and a paper ticket bought for the subway portion alone comes up short at the airport gates. The adjustment machine there works out the fare across both operators. Pass holders meet the same thing. A Tokyo Metro day ticket carries you along the Hanzōmon Line (半蔵門線) as far as Shibuya; stay on the same train to Futako-Tamagawa (二子玉川) on the Tōkyū Den-en-toshi Line (東急田園都市線) and you owe Tōkyū for the stretch beyond, payable at the machine or the window.

There are limits. Limited express supplements, reserved seats, Shinkansen tickets and discounted ticket types follow their own rules, and if the machine returns your ticket with a message asking you to see staff, believe it.

When the machine sends you to the window

The staffed gate is the 有人改札 (yūjin kaisatsu), a window or open counter at one end of the gate row. At quieter exits it may be an intercom panel with a camera and a small tray, where a clerk in another station asks you to hold up your ticket. The phrase that opens the conversation is 精算お願いします (seisan onegaishimasu). The first question back is likely to be どちらから (dochira kara), where from, and a station name is a complete answer.

Three problems belong here rather than at the machine. The first is a card still holding an 入場記録 (nyūjō kiroku), an entry record from a trip that was not closed; staff clear it and charge the fare owed. The second is a lost ticket, for which you should expect to pay again from the station you name.

The third is the IC area boundary. Cards from different regions are broadly interchangeable, but a single journey generally has to start and finish inside one operator's area. The familiar trap is the Tōkaidō Main Line (東海道本線) west of Atami (熱海), where JR East hands over to JR Central: tap in with a Suica in Tokyo, ride local trains through to Mishima (三島) or Numazu (沼津), and the exit gate will not take the card. Staff there settle the fare in cash and either clear the card or give you a slip to show at a station back in the area where you started.

Before you reach the gate

Most of this can be avoided on the walk from the platform. Each tap at an entry gate flashes the remaining balance on the reader, and ticket machines will show a card's 履歴 (rireki), its recent history, if you want to see where the money went. Carry a few small notes and some coins, since machines at minor stations may decline the largest note and the window may be shut late in the evening.

Timing is a courtesy as much as a convenience. At Shinjuku (新宿) in the morning peak, a second attempt at a closed gate stops a lane with a queue behind it, so adjust first and approach the gate once. Fares, through-service arrangements and current IC area maps are published by the operators themselves, among them JR East, JR Central, Tokyo Metro and Toei. The boundaries are redrawn from time to time, so check before a long local-train day rather than trusting an older guide.

The mistake to avoid happens far from the city. At an unstaffed rural platform there may be no gate at all, only two reader posts, one marked 入場 (nyūjō, entry) and one marked 出場 (shutsujō, exit). Walk past them, or touch the wrong one, and the card carries an open journey back to Tokyo, where the first gate of the next morning closes on it. Find the exit post, wait for the beep, and the next gate you meet has nothing to say.