小田急
Odakyû is
Tokyo's oldest private
commuter railway: its name is a
contraction of
Odawara Kyûkô, or "
Odawara Express."
The main Odakyu line, completed in 1927, runs from Shinjuku Station in central Tokyo to Hakone in Kanagawa Prefecture, stopping in Yoyogi, Kitazawa, Noborito, Mukogaoka, Yurigaoka, Machida, Sagami-Ono, Atsugi, and Odawara along the way. There are two spurs off of this line, one connecting Yurigaoka to the Tama area, and one connecting Sagami-Ono to Fujisawa and Enoshima. Limited express travel time from Shinjuku to Odawara is just over 90 minutes. Odakyu trains also connect to the Tokyo Subway's Chiyoda line, serving Ochanomizu, Otemachi, Hibiya, Kasumigaseki, Nagatacho, and Akasaka. On an average weekday, Odakyu boards half a million passengers at Shinjuku, and a quarter of a million at Machida.
In addition to its trains, Odakyu is also a real estate powerhouse, owning multi-billion-dollar office buildings throughout the Tokyo area. They also run a large bus network that feeds the railway line.
The company reported gross income of $160 billion in 2001, which works out to about $1,000 for every person in Japan and over $5,000 for every person in the Tokyo metropolitan area. Scary, isn't it?
Odakyu is also one of the trains that comes with Microsoft Train Simulator. Thanks to morven for reminding me.