Tōkai region in the context of "Shinagawa Station"

The Central Japan Railway Company is the main railway company operating in the Chūbu (Nagoya) region of central Japan. It is officially abbreviated in English as JR Central and occasionally as JR Tokai (Japanese: JR東海). The term Tōkai refers to the Tōkai region (the southern portion of Central Japan), in which the company chiefly operates.

JR Central's operational hub is Nagoya Station, and the company's administrative headquarters are located in the JR Central Towers above the building. The busiest and longest railway line operated by JR Central is the Tōkaidō Main Line between Atami and Maibara; this largely parallels the company's high-speed rail service, the Tōkaidō Shinkansen, which runs between Tokyo and Shin-Ōsaka. JR Central is additionally responsible for the Chūō Shinkansen – an under-construction maglev service between Tokyo and Osaka, which is due to start operation between Tokyo and Nagoya in 2034.

Chūkyō (中京圏, Chūkyō-ken), or the Chūkyō region (中京地方, Chūkyō-chihō), is a major metropolitan area in Japan that is centered on the city of Nagoya (the "Chūkyō", i.e., the "capital in the middle") in Aichi Prefecture. The area makes up the most urbanized part of the Tōkai region. The population is 9,439,000 in 3,704 square kilometers of built-up land area.Nevertheless, like most of Japan's major metro areas, the core of it lies on a fertile alluvial plain, in this case, the Nōbi Plain.

It is among the 50 most populous metropolitan areas in the world, and is the third most populous metropolitan area in Japan (after Greater Tokyo and Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto), containing roughly 7% of Japan's population. Historically, this region has taken a back seat to the other two power centers, both politically and economically; however, the agglomeration of Nagoya is the world's 22nd-largest metro area economy, in terms of gross metropolitan product at purchasing power parity in 2014, according to a study by the Brookings Institution. The GDP of Greater Nagoya, Nagoya Metropolitan Employment Area, was US$256.3 billion in 2010.