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While trains in Japan are revered for their reliability and punctuality, sometimes the inevitable happens, and services become delayed. If you are one of the hundreds of thousands in Japan who depend on the trains to get you to and from work each day, it can really put a damper on things to arrive at the station and find your platform crowded with other commuters, expecting a long wait.

If you had known about the delay beforehand, you could’ve planned a different route, or if that’s not an option, you could have stopped somewhere for some coffee to kill the time. It would be great if there was an app for that, you think.

Well, lucky for you there is!

The “Yahoo! Riaru taimu kensaku” (Yahoo! Real Time Search) application has added a new feature – “Chien Nau” (Delayed Now) – giving commuters up-to-date information on train delays.

What’s unique about this feature is that it picks up live tweets from Twitter giving information about delays or suspended services. Since the tweets are real-time, you’ll tend to get this information faster than official announcements. This application works in cooperation with “Yahoo! Norikae Annai,” a free trip-planning application, to release official announcements as well, so you can rest assured that the information you’re getting is reliable.

▼ Some Twitter users showing their displeasure about an accident on the Ooimachi Line.

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Another cool feature of this app is that you can register up to five different train lines that you frequent and choose to receive notifications if there are any delays on those lines.

And if that weren’t enough, you can even see how people are feeling about a particular delay:

▼ Three percent of these people must be happy to not be going anywheredelays3

The app (Yahoo!リアルタイム検索) is available to download for free on Google Play and iTunes. Fellow commuters, why not give it a try?

Reference: niconico news
Images: Wikipedia, RocketNews24