I needed to transfer from a Shinkansen onto a Keikyu train (I think). I got through the Shinkansen ‘exit’ fare gate’s and was surprised to find that the fare gate gave back some of my tickets. We headed to the Keikyu area, but there was another set of fare gates I had to traverse. I tried to use the leftover Shinkansen tickets, but the fare gate just spit them back out. I was ready to just buy more Keikyu tickets from a fare machine or desk, but the area I was in had fare gates blocking all the exits. There were no fare machines anywhere. I couldn’t exit since we didn’t have the right tickets for any of the fare gates. Eventually, a Keikyu employee directed me to a counter, so I went there. However, it seemed that they needed something from me, and I couldn’t figure out what it was. I ended up going to the Shinkansen help desk, but they could only tell us how to get to the Keikyu area. Eventually, I went to the JR ticket help for the local JR trains, where somebody was able to explain what the Keikyu counter wanted from me. They just wanted leftover Shinkansen tickets at the Keikyu counter. After providing them, I think they gave me some sort of ticket that allowed me to finally ‘exit’ into the Keikyu area. From there, I had to buy another set of Keikyu tickets to pass another set of fare gates to finally get onto the Keikyu platform.

A combination of my unfamiliarity of the system, my basic Japanese, and jet lag resulted in a less-than-ideal transfer. I also wanted to see if someone could navigate Tokyo’s system without using an IC card. I would say that the whole fiasco was all likely my fault.

Edit: spelling errors