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改札口◇かいさつぐち (Ticket gate)
(lit.: entrance for examining tickets)
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A station is not an open public place, but rather a carefully designed area to wait and to board the train. Thus it is guarded by a ticket gate, where the right ticket will be examined before boarding, and then be collected prior to exiting the station at the destination.
A ticket gate is primarily managed by a number of large ticket-examining machines. A passenger is required to insert his/her ticket at one end of the machine, walk for a few steps through an automatic turnstile and take back the ticket at the other end to enter the station. Various types and shapes of tickets may be used, from a one-time ticket to a monthly ticket, a pre-paid multi-entry card. Recently, some of these machines have a sensor to examine a cellular phone which holds money in an electronic format, patterned after a "cash card"or "debit card. On the inside of such a gate, one often finds a machine designed to issue a ticket for people with a wrong ticket to pay for the different fare. There is always a small office or a booth beside a ticket gate so that human railway staff can collect the fare differences, or assist confused passengers. |
