mini-tokyo-3d VS ubahnchen

Not at all. I've been to NYC and have lived in Tokyo. NYC is typically seen as the best transit in the US, but it's trash compared to Tokyo's. Typical Tokyo commute is something like 30-50 minutes each way. With trains being so frequent and fast (and on time), you can get very far very quickly.

I know very little about Japan or Tokyo.

But watching the public transport animation on https://minitokyo3d.com/ is amazing.

They also have links to life railcams.

Two of my favorite ones are:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glw8cHPywtE exactly like the article describes, lots of bikes and some small cars. (It has several hours of buffer so you can scroll back if you happen to visit during Japanese night)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tet7qKMUncA this is the impatient train spotter's paradise. It never takes more than minute until the next train comes. As a bonus for hackers there is automatic detection of the rolling stock type. Not sure whether the code is open source, did not see a github link. (This camera is not 24 hours, so you need to visit during Japanese daytime.)

You can probably follow steps to what https://github.com/nagix/mini-tokyo-3d used to find the data.

See https://minitokyo3d.com/

These special trains are documented in the VBB data. Unfortunately my app is not smart enough to display them automatically, so I need to write down all the unusual itineraries in a file that's 3000 lines so far 😄 https://github.com/lzear/ubahnchen/blob/main/packages/ui/src/lib/lib/data/02-stops-for-route-names-alternatives.json