Not sure if this was created with LLM help, but I suspect so? Not because the page is buggy (it is, though, crashed on my iPhone), but because they make data visualization so accessible. This type of presentation used to take days of work; now, if you find a unique piece of data, it's only a few hours of work to create a beautiful animated visualization.
I do think this would be more compelling with some additional context or data integration. Zoom, the ability to click and see the full details about each station, which company (my guess is that it's all JR?).
Ok final note: the intersection of Japan and trains is basically HN crack, and I love it.
I created pages with Claude before and it's very very obvious when you see one. From the font choice to the color palette, and the style of the boxes. In fact if anyone has an effective prompt that says "please don't make this look like the average Claude page" please post it!
I've had some luck giving either an example website to ape or listing out a particular era, monkey see monkey do seems to help a bunch.
I've done each of the 3 for side projects below to pretty good effects.
> This website will be run by IE6 and Windows Mobile 6, so use no dependencies, semantic HTML, a 3-pane layout, and only use JS (es3!) where absolutely necessary (and where necessary, put the script at the end of the body).
When I'm not specifically targeting support for retrocomputers I do something like this, then iterate until it looks right.
> Go look at Dokuwiki, django defaults, and common web 2.0 color schemes, use those for UI inspiration. Keep a 3-pane desktop-first layout, but enable mobile responsiveness with media queries. Use semantic html5 and prefer older boring solutions like surgical jquery or htmx-style islands of interactivity where needed, otherwise do not bring in dependencies without my say so.
And finally, if I'm doing a web app that I'm vibing out with the web stack because I want it one-shotted and not trying to do a good rust core with strong ports/adapters API surface for web or native client callers, I do something like this:
> This is a local web app, the frontend, backend, and desktop are all on the same machine. Use naive and simple development patterns that you document the style as you go, pick a boring web framework and use it idiomatically, but remember that some tricks that are intended to keep network round trips down are not as necessary because network penalties are not as bad as real traffic.
Granted, the above I don't like as much, but it does produce more 'modern' looking sites by default.
But what I find works best is to point Claude at a design system documentation website (your own company's or another public source) and tell it to use that design style. It usually does OK, and the results are usually much more in line with that style and not as Claude-y.
I get the sentiment. I don't love that different browsers have different behavior even on standards compliant code. But I've also done enough web development to know that if your page crashes safari in the main user flow (in this case, just hitting 'play'), the dev owns the bug.
Now we need a part two that shows how the rural parts of the same network are slowly being closed due to depopulation. As of 2025, Japan has lost 1366 km of track (about 5% of the total) since the 1990s.
To be fair, most countries have due to privatisation and people getting wealthier and buying cars. In my country a ton of lines have closed down too and ourv population only grows.
Yeah, I've noticed this as well. They not only slowly close old stations, but they almost stopped building new ones since about 2007.
I don't understand why people downvote your comment. It isn't like you're forcing them to have babies and do something about the world by stating the fact about Japan's decline
It would be interesting to see a negative bar with station closures as well. And some way to zoom the map would be nice.
As a point of interest, I'll mention Tōgeshita station. A station in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes, a station would exist purely because that's where trains needed to pass one another. Tōgeshita was one of those.
Whenever I passed the station, it was strange, almost a creepy feeling. I think it could have been a great plot for a Japanese horror movie, something in a "Blair Witch Project" style... the old one car train slows to a stop. The door opens, no one dares get off there. Except you, with your portable camera, a cavalier exit from the train. The conductor casts you a side eye with a dead pan 'arigato goziamasu.' The creaky diesel train car slowly pulls away and you're left there stranded for the next few hours until the return train comes around. I wonder what I'll find in the forest just beyond those trees....
Super cool but I did get this error while scrolling the timeline on safari/iOS
Application error: a client-side exception has occurred while loading jivx.com (see the browser console for more information).
Never seen this one before:
"[Error] SecurityError: Attempt to use history.replaceState() more than 100 times per 10 seconds"
I had a near-instant crash too, but different kind. Firefox iOS. The vibes are leaking
Cool idea!
Not sure if this was created with LLM help, but I suspect so? Not because the page is buggy (it is, though, crashed on my iPhone), but because they make data visualization so accessible. This type of presentation used to take days of work; now, if you find a unique piece of data, it's only a few hours of work to create a beautiful animated visualization.
I do think this would be more compelling with some additional context or data integration. Zoom, the ability to click and see the full details about each station, which company (my guess is that it's all JR?).
Ok final note: the intersection of Japan and trains is basically HN crack, and I love it.
I created pages with Claude before and it's very very obvious when you see one. From the font choice to the color palette, and the style of the boxes. In fact if anyone has an effective prompt that says "please don't make this look like the average Claude page" please post it!
Not sure that's necessarily any bigger a deal than when every Web site had the "Bootstrap look."
I've had some luck giving either an example website to ape or listing out a particular era, monkey see monkey do seems to help a bunch.
I've done each of the 3 for side projects below to pretty good effects.
> This website will be run by IE6 and Windows Mobile 6, so use no dependencies, semantic HTML, a 3-pane layout, and only use JS (es3!) where absolutely necessary (and where necessary, put the script at the end of the body).
When I'm not specifically targeting support for retrocomputers I do something like this, then iterate until it looks right.
> Go look at Dokuwiki, django defaults, and common web 2.0 color schemes, use those for UI inspiration. Keep a 3-pane desktop-first layout, but enable mobile responsiveness with media queries. Use semantic html5 and prefer older boring solutions like surgical jquery or htmx-style islands of interactivity where needed, otherwise do not bring in dependencies without my say so.
And finally, if I'm doing a web app that I'm vibing out with the web stack because I want it one-shotted and not trying to do a good rust core with strong ports/adapters API surface for web or native client callers, I do something like this:
> This is a local web app, the frontend, backend, and desktop are all on the same machine. Use naive and simple development patterns that you document the style as you go, pick a boring web framework and use it idiomatically, but remember that some tricks that are intended to keep network round trips down are not as necessary because network penalties are not as bad as real traffic.
Granted, the above I don't like as much, but it does produce more 'modern' looking sites by default.
Anthropic's own frontend-design skill attempts to do that. You can install it in Claude Code, or you can tweak it to be closer to your own style:
https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/blob/main/plugins/...
But what I find works best is to point Claude at a design system documentation website (your own company's or another public source) and tell it to use that design style. It usually does OK, and the results are usually much more in line with that style and not as Claude-y.
The Claude style (colors/fonts) give it right away. The website did also crash for me too with the famous nextjs death screen.
> Not because the page is buggy (it is, though, crashed on my iPhone),
Maybe you meant Safari is buggy and crashed? I can easily get Safari to crash by zooming in and out a bit. Reports to Apple go ignored...
I get the sentiment. I don't love that different browsers have different behavior even on standards compliant code. But I've also done enough web development to know that if your page crashes safari in the main user flow (in this case, just hitting 'play'), the dev owns the bug.
Very cool. I am a sucker for good design and this site was beautiful to look at.
I noticed that most of the track was laid down in the 1920s and 1930s. Any ideas why?
That whole website is just beautiful. I'd love to see more work by the designer.
Good/bad news: you will definitely see more work by them -- this style of website is clearly the output of a coding agent, maybe Claude Code.
Now we need a part two that shows how the rural parts of the same network are slowly being closed due to depopulation. As of 2025, Japan has lost 1366 km of track (about 5% of the total) since the 1990s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_closed_railway_lines_i...
To be fair, most countries have due to privatisation and people getting wealthier and buying cars. In my country a ton of lines have closed down too and ourv population only grows.
Yeah, I've noticed this as well. They not only slowly close old stations, but they almost stopped building new ones since about 2007.
I don't understand why people downvote your comment. It isn't like you're forcing them to have babies and do something about the world by stating the fact about Japan's decline
It would be interesting to see a negative bar with station closures as well. And some way to zoom the map would be nice.
As a point of interest, I'll mention Tōgeshita station. A station in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes, a station would exist purely because that's where trains needed to pass one another. Tōgeshita was one of those.
Whenever I passed the station, it was strange, almost a creepy feeling. I think it could have been a great plot for a Japanese horror movie, something in a "Blair Witch Project" style... the old one car train slows to a stop. The door opens, no one dares get off there. Except you, with your portable camera, a cavalier exit from the train. The conductor casts you a side eye with a dead pan 'arigato goziamasu.' The creaky diesel train car slowly pulls away and you're left there stranded for the next few hours until the return train comes around. I wonder what I'll find in the forest just beyond those trees....
This is a station which exists solely for transfer between two lines. It has no entrance. Idea always made me a bit nervous: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manulla_Junction_railway_stati...