Underground Coffee Shop (in the subway)

(2019/07/23 (火) 7:50 a.m.) - Central Tokyo.  Underground coffee shop (within the subway system).  Looking around on this Tuesday morning, I note the new (from my perspective anyway) and typical arrangement for 21st century coffee shops and fast food restaurants:  Electrical outlets in front (or to the side) of every seat power and/or charge the micro-computers nearly everyone has in front of them - with all users looking down at their devices and poking the small touch screens with one finger (except one soul using a laptop computer, who has an actual keyboard to use)....

- Probably 70-80% of the men are wearing stark-white shirts, which I'm wondering about... are they a throwback to the pre-bubble years?  Certainly when I came to Japan in 1984, it seemed like nearly all the men were wearing stark-white shirts... or is it just because it's summer and stark-white is cooler out in the sun?  Whatever... what I can say about stark-white shirts is that I began to see more people wearing shirts with strips and color during the bubble economy years - along with interesting and colorful ties, the design of which has gone back to 1950's style standard stripes (which is not necessarily a complaint... simple designs are often good).

- What really is different now is how people never seem to be where they are but instead concentrate on distant people and events via their micro-computers.  Since text entry is cumbersome and slow via the touch screens, people seem to write less and less.  (I'm writing this now via pen and paper... writing into a small notebook.  To use the text, I'll have to type it into a computer later.)

- Speaking of writing, what I'd really like to do now is walk around the room recording video and sound... and you could see and hear the space for yourselves, but the arrangement of the seats is such that there's no way I could meaningfully record it without also disturbing/irritating the people here, so all I can do is pull out pen and paper and write.
- To the current young generation... well, to those in the current young generation who do not see a need for writing things by hand - this is an example of why writing is still important. Aside from being a way to record things when you can't use a camera, you can mix in your impressions with the description of the space you are in and writing by hand via pen and paper is light years faster than touch screen entry of text.... Light years? Well... it's way faster! And there's a fluidity to writing by hand that computer text entry interferes with.
- 8:14 a.m. - I enjoy writing by hand, but it does consume time!  (Compared to typing on a proper keyboard that is!)  A few people at the entrance to the coffee shop are looking around at the full coffee shop - willing some people to leave so they'll have somewhere to sit.  I and the person sitting to my right have been here about 25 minutes.  at least 70% of the people here were here when I arrived and they are poking away at the screens of their micro-computers.  They look like they've been here for a while and will probably stay here until just before 9:00 a.m. when they'll head off to work.
- Ah!  It suddenly occurs to me that maybe that should have been my first observation.  Flex-time has largely disappeared, so the only way to escape the pressure of the crush-rush peak commuter hours is to leave a couple of hours (or more) early and then find a way to kill time on the other end of the journey (until the entrance to the workplace opens).  Actually, that's precisely why I'm here myself.  The earliest trains are full of (mostly) men in their fifties, and then as 9:00 a.m. nears, you see more and more young people - including a tiny percentage of dangerous young males too eager to engage in physical confrontation... it is due to them that "Violence is Illegal!" posters have been periodically put up on train station walls.

- 8:25 a.m. - No one waiting at the door and people are suddenly heading for the exit one-by-one.  Time for me to join them and head off to work.
- 7:20 p.m. - Ginza, Akihabara, Shinjuku - Foreign couple on Ginza side street... descent into Kyobashi Station... sparklingly renovated Kyobashi Station via old narrow atmospheric stairs from street level.  Akihabara - more old things gone, empty lots, new construction, used computer street with small army of Kissaten (メード喫茶) Women handing out fliers, used equipment with decent CPU's but not very much memory.  Walk up hill to Ochanomizu Station, hamburger for dinner, Chuo Line to Shinjuku, interesting crowds, difficult/problematic to record, so... no video, a place to sit, a little time to think.  Thoughts of a locked door to a roof in a burning building... memories of three decades ago when roof access was typical... open fire escape stairs, unlocked roof access doors....

Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
youtube.com/lylehsaxon
lylehsaxon.blogspot.jp/
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