In reviewing the "Actually Full Train in 1991 (Why Flex-Time is a Good Idea)" video, and then contemplating the combined total of nearly 2,000,000 views (unfortunately 80% of those at sites that ripped off my video and posted it with idiotic titles and no information), and especially in reading the comments posted at the over-a-million rip-off site, the strange concept of safety through danger is coming to mind. Yes, it probably isn't the safest situation to have trains that heavily loaded (although the railways here maintain trains and rails very well and accidents are few and far between), but when the trains are that intensely packed, the people on the inside (speaking from many years of experience here!) are focused on just getting through the ride and very mindful of the futility of trying to do something wild, like, say... attempting to move. In these circumstances, things were - in one sense - peaceful in that people were not in a mood to argue with those around them. What's the point? When you can't move, it's not a good idea to deliberately do something to anger anyone - you can't get away from them, and you can't do much to them, since you can hardly move at all. Also, everyone realized that everyone is in the same boat.
Fast forward a couple of decades, and there are several new train lines, increased tracks on existing lines, new trains, and (very important) flextime. It's still crowded and there are still times when some pushing from the platform is necessary to get people on, but it's usually not quite like in the video clip, and not at most doors. So... people are beginning to forget how it used to be (plus the newest generation of train riders has never really had to go through much of the daily, high-intensity sardine run anyway), so there are increasing numbers of people who start to huff & puff when someone makes physical contact with them when the passenger density is high. Also, when the passenger density is very high, several people don't even attempt to force their way onto the train! Shocking! Where's their "fighting spirit"? (I'm sort of ashamed to admit here that I'm not entirely joking about this - I'll get on a train and find myself looking back at a group on the platform just before the doors close, and I see this look on their faces sometimes that seems to be saying "That's amazing - look how hard he pushed to get on... where is that masked man from?!".)
And so it was this morning - I was getting on a train in a spot that a lot of other people also liked, and the train car was probably at 90% capacity (on a scale with the train in "Actually Full Train in 1991" being 100% full), and as I forced my way on just as the doors were closing, I found someone fairly blatantly kicking my lower legs! Feeling both shocked that this was happening (it's never happened before, not quite so blatantly anyway) and angry (due to someone putting their bloody feet on my clothing), I raised up a foot and pushed back on the offending legs... or maybe I should say "what I thought were the offending legs", as in typing this out and calmly thinking about it, I suddenly realize that someone may have been kicking me from behind the person who was between us (on either side of or maybe even between that person's legs), but in any case, after the doors closed, I had this person behind me acting like being smashed between strangers was the most horrible thing that had ever happened to them. I ended up thinking - as I was being poked and elbowed - "If you can't stand the heat of the Yamanote Line, then just stay home! Or at least get on the train in a less popular spot! Or better yet, contribute to reducing crowding by moving out of Tokyo!"
So there we are, just one step away from an open confrontation & brawl, and we've gotten there with far less pressure than the people in the video had to put up with, who rode that ultra-high-pressure train to work every day.
And then there's the regular everyday deal where you've *almost* got enough space to stand without someone touching you, so when they do, you don't know whether to shrug it off as an accident or raise the hair on the back of your neck and bare your fangs in a "Grrrrr!! Get away from me, you!" snarl (done more with radio waves than actual fangs bared, to be more precise about it).
Another issue - Japan passed an anti-groping law a few years back, which is good, except in densely packed trains, you can't always accurately tell who has done something to you, and there have been cases where people have been wrongly accused and sent to jail. It's been in the news, there was a movie made about it, and now men on the trains are basically afraid of women. One "He grabbed me!" and their life could be ruined (sent to jail, fired from their jobs, divorced from their spouses, alienated from their friends, etc.). Mind you, if the guy is guilty of it, then screw him! He deserves it, but if a pervert reaches around a normal guy and grabs a woman, and the woman mistakenly thinks the normal guy right behind her did it, basically he's done for. So men try hard to keep their right arms up in the air (grabbing an overhead strap or bar, even when that means they're jabbing their elbows into someone (grrrr....), and when women are near the door or in a corner, often they get a no-touch zone, because a man standing next to them forces himself forcefully back into the people behind him and stays several centimeters away from the woman. I guess that's fine - I don't mind suffering a little more (I'll typically count around six people touching my body simultaneously at the same time a woman is standing by the door in a no-touch zone happily reading a book), but then some of these women get used to being in no-touch zones and they freak out a bit when they get into a car with a density high enough that everyone in the space is a sardine and no one could give any one a no-touch zone, even if their lives depended on it.
Trains-trains-trains... what can I say? over twenty-four years, I think I've averaged about two and a half hours per day on them, so that's... ah... (it's late) I don't feel like doing the math. In any case, it amounts to a huge part of my timeline of my life, so I end up talking about it more than I should.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Monday, May 19, 2008
"Gokai-darake (Rife with Misunderstanding)"
Not being an expert on YouTube and how people use and abuse it, I posted my video clip "Actually Full Train in 1991 (Why Flex-Time is a Good Idea)", to Google Video, without bothering to post it to YouTube (Huge Mistake!). I noted with interest how viewings climbed up to 200,000 on Google Video, and just when I was thinking everything was going well, I received a message from an e-pal who tipped me off that there were rip-off copies of my file on YouTube, with no attributes, just blatant theft. I figured some people might download the file and share it with friends, but I never thought people would just take it and post it as though they personally owned it. It's... so... shamelessly audacious/rude/wrong/etc!
And born of this theft, and helped along by bad titles like "Crazy Japanese Train Loaders" (over one million viewings!!), "Crowded Chinese Train"(!!), etc., there have arisen many questions, misunderstandings, heated arguments, and even one death threat (directed at an entire nation). And this is what makes me the most angry about the current situation of about one view of my posted material per 20 views of copies with bad titles and missing information. My title "Actually Full Train in 1991 (Why Flex-Time is a Good Idea)" alone would have eliminated something like 30% of the questions, maybe more. But since there is a sea of misunderstanding arisen over the theft (many times over) of my material, I'll do what I can to answer some of the questions I saw in the comments section at that over-a-million-viewings site.
They're Not Crazy!
The title of the over-a-million site - "Crazy Japanese Train Loaders" is wrong and dangerous. There were (correctly I feel) some complaints in the comments section over this. Nobody on the receiving end of the shoves was complaining - and I've been there myself. Notice the three people at the second door who were told to give it up by the man trying to help people aboard there. They look quite unhappy at not being able to get onto the train. Being shoved for no reason is one thing, but being given added force to get onto a train you really want to get onto (for time, not because there's anything pleasant about it) is another. There's nothing crazy about the men doing the shoving - what would be better? To stand around on the platform and do nothing while the passengers fight it out along and the train sits there for ten minutes or more because the doors won't close? Take a close look at the time - the video begins the moment the doors open (a little before that in my recent and belated post to YouTube), everyone is aboard with all the doors closed in 70 seconds (within 60 is probably the goal), and the train is on its way in 80 seconds. In spite of this, there were comments saying that the time spent getting people aboard would be better spent in getting the train on its way quickly and bringing in another train! Ha-ha! Idiocy! Time any train at any station, and 70 seconds is not exactly glacially slow - and they got everyone (save three) aboard! No, while I think the management of the Seibu Corporation leaves much to be desired, and they should have invested more in track and train expansion much sooner than they did (they are notorious feet draggers when it comes to spending money), the railway employs are doing a good job of keeping the trains running on time - even when grossly overcrowded.
People Want to get to Work on Time!
Basically covered above under "They're Not Crazy!", the people being shoved aboard are not being abused - they're being assisted in getting on the train. The train on the opposite side of the platform was going in the same direction, so anyone not up for the high pressure express train, could have walked across the platform and gotten on the lower pressure Junkyu (next fastest to the express that had just left), and if they're not up for that, they could wait for a local train.
There are options... (sort of)
There are options, and people who can't take the pressure of the sardine runs often escape the situation in one way or another. Number one on the list is moving within walking distance of school or work. At the company I'm at there is one guy there who moved specifically for that reason. He hates the sardine runs, so he moved within a ten minute walk of work. I get off of four trains (90 minutes), feeling like I've just come back from war, and I'll see him come ambling up to the company yawning - having gotten up fifteen minutes before.... My walking distance from the nearest station is further than his walking distance from home to the company! He automatically has an extra three hours per day (15 hours per week, 60 hours per month) to enjoy life in. Other options are coming to work very early (not allowed in my case as security is very tight and contract workers can't just come at any time), or take a local train (losing something like 30 minutes every morning - 150 minutes a week, etc.). The final option - and final in every sense - is to take the Express Checkout via the rails in front of a speeding train, but that route is definitely not recommended.
1991 Folks - It's Better Now... Mostly
The video was taken in 1991. Around 1986 or so, the private lines were all given permission to raise their fares in order to pay for rail expansion to cope with overcrowding. Some of them honestly and forthrightly set to work and improved their services - such as the Keio Line, which added more express stops (all the lines already had full-time double tracks, but having four tracks at more stations enables fast trains to stay fast, getting around more trains at more stations) and then lowered their fares after they had finished construction. The bloody Seibu Line, by contrast, did almost nothing at all for ten years. They just took the extra money people were paying. This fact still makes me angry when I remember riding trains like the one in the video every day - suffering for the greed of bad management. I used to be in one of those trains, smashed in there like a sardine, thinking "they should force the management of this railway to ride this train every day until something is done to increase capacity!". Finally they actually did invest in some construction and even that line was improved. It's better today (but still crowded of course).
Ten-Car Trains (Some are Fifteen...)
Many people said "Why don't they add more railway cars?" The trains are already ten-cars long and the platforms have to match the length of the trains - you can't just send people out on the rails and gravel and expect them to climb up into cars with ladders or something - that's insane. Some of JR's main routes have fifteen cars per train. Fifteen cars is a lot for a commuter train! The platforms for these lines are quite long already and it's not really practical to have more than fifteen cars I don't think....
People are Usually Considerate of People Getting Off
One of the most persistent questions was "How do people get off?". This is a simple matter in my mind because I've been living with & on the system for 24 years, but I realize it's sort of complicated when I have to explain it. Number one - when the density is very high at sardine-run times, you need to know which stations are main ones (large numbers of people get off and it's not too difficult to get off with them), and which are minor stations that will be difficult to get off at if you're too far into the train. If you have to get off at a minor station, you expend effort (sometimes a *lot* of effort) in making sure you're reasonably near a door. Generally this is done either by getting into the corner by the door and clinging to the bars there fiercely, or by getting off at one of the major stations before the one you need to get off at, and then getting behind the people getting on there - last on, first off. Often there's competition to be the last one on. Not only do you get a window... spot, but you only have people pressed up against you on only one side, instead of all sides. And best of all (aside from being able to get off whenever you want), you become the front-runner in the race for the platform stairs, so you can run and get on the next sardine run (I get on eight trains per day - four in each direction).
And I almost forgot - even when you're away from the doors, generally if you say "Orimasu! Orimasu! Orimasu!" ("I'm getting off! I'm getting off! I"m getting off!) and start pushing towards the door, people will either lean far enough in one direction or another, enabling you to squeeze past, or the group by the door will get off, enabling escape to the outside (after which they get back on). Sometimes it pays to get off at each and every station on the journey, just to keep yourself near the door. In the case of the train in the video, its next stop was Shakujikoen, where likely very few people could get on, and after that Ikebukuro, the last stop, where everyone gets off. One final detail being that the doors at Shakujikoen open on the other side, so anyone "lucky" enough to get on that express is guaranteed a ride all the way to Ikebukuro once they're on. The thing that's rough if you're the last one on, is the shoving procedure at Shakujikoen can be pretty intense. As you can see in the video, people really want to get on! I can remember being pushed up against the door with such force that I was afraid I would end up with cracked ribs, so I tensed up my muscles to help take pressure off of the bones.
No, That's not Fake! It's Real Dude!
One of the comments posters repeatedly posted a "It's Fake!" blurb. Many people who know the Tokyo train system repeatedly told the guy it was not fake, but he persisted. I am in the best position to know - since I was there and I rode on that line every day. Dude! It's real! It's very real! That's no movie set and those are not actors!
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
And born of this theft, and helped along by bad titles like "Crazy Japanese Train Loaders" (over one million viewings!!), "Crowded Chinese Train"(!!), etc., there have arisen many questions, misunderstandings, heated arguments, and even one death threat (directed at an entire nation). And this is what makes me the most angry about the current situation of about one view of my posted material per 20 views of copies with bad titles and missing information. My title "Actually Full Train in 1991 (Why Flex-Time is a Good Idea)" alone would have eliminated something like 30% of the questions, maybe more. But since there is a sea of misunderstanding arisen over the theft (many times over) of my material, I'll do what I can to answer some of the questions I saw in the comments section at that over-a-million-viewings site.
They're Not Crazy!
The title of the over-a-million site - "Crazy Japanese Train Loaders" is wrong and dangerous. There were (correctly I feel) some complaints in the comments section over this. Nobody on the receiving end of the shoves was complaining - and I've been there myself. Notice the three people at the second door who were told to give it up by the man trying to help people aboard there. They look quite unhappy at not being able to get onto the train. Being shoved for no reason is one thing, but being given added force to get onto a train you really want to get onto (for time, not because there's anything pleasant about it) is another. There's nothing crazy about the men doing the shoving - what would be better? To stand around on the platform and do nothing while the passengers fight it out along and the train sits there for ten minutes or more because the doors won't close? Take a close look at the time - the video begins the moment the doors open (a little before that in my recent and belated post to YouTube), everyone is aboard with all the doors closed in 70 seconds (within 60 is probably the goal), and the train is on its way in 80 seconds. In spite of this, there were comments saying that the time spent getting people aboard would be better spent in getting the train on its way quickly and bringing in another train! Ha-ha! Idiocy! Time any train at any station, and 70 seconds is not exactly glacially slow - and they got everyone (save three) aboard! No, while I think the management of the Seibu Corporation leaves much to be desired, and they should have invested more in track and train expansion much sooner than they did (they are notorious feet draggers when it comes to spending money), the railway employs are doing a good job of keeping the trains running on time - even when grossly overcrowded.
People Want to get to Work on Time!
Basically covered above under "They're Not Crazy!", the people being shoved aboard are not being abused - they're being assisted in getting on the train. The train on the opposite side of the platform was going in the same direction, so anyone not up for the high pressure express train, could have walked across the platform and gotten on the lower pressure Junkyu (next fastest to the express that had just left), and if they're not up for that, they could wait for a local train.
There are options... (sort of)
There are options, and people who can't take the pressure of the sardine runs often escape the situation in one way or another. Number one on the list is moving within walking distance of school or work. At the company I'm at there is one guy there who moved specifically for that reason. He hates the sardine runs, so he moved within a ten minute walk of work. I get off of four trains (90 minutes), feeling like I've just come back from war, and I'll see him come ambling up to the company yawning - having gotten up fifteen minutes before.... My walking distance from the nearest station is further than his walking distance from home to the company! He automatically has an extra three hours per day (15 hours per week, 60 hours per month) to enjoy life in. Other options are coming to work very early (not allowed in my case as security is very tight and contract workers can't just come at any time), or take a local train (losing something like 30 minutes every morning - 150 minutes a week, etc.). The final option - and final in every sense - is to take the Express Checkout via the rails in front of a speeding train, but that route is definitely not recommended.
1991 Folks - It's Better Now... Mostly
The video was taken in 1991. Around 1986 or so, the private lines were all given permission to raise their fares in order to pay for rail expansion to cope with overcrowding. Some of them honestly and forthrightly set to work and improved their services - such as the Keio Line, which added more express stops (all the lines already had full-time double tracks, but having four tracks at more stations enables fast trains to stay fast, getting around more trains at more stations) and then lowered their fares after they had finished construction. The bloody Seibu Line, by contrast, did almost nothing at all for ten years. They just took the extra money people were paying. This fact still makes me angry when I remember riding trains like the one in the video every day - suffering for the greed of bad management. I used to be in one of those trains, smashed in there like a sardine, thinking "they should force the management of this railway to ride this train every day until something is done to increase capacity!". Finally they actually did invest in some construction and even that line was improved. It's better today (but still crowded of course).
Ten-Car Trains (Some are Fifteen...)
Many people said "Why don't they add more railway cars?" The trains are already ten-cars long and the platforms have to match the length of the trains - you can't just send people out on the rails and gravel and expect them to climb up into cars with ladders or something - that's insane. Some of JR's main routes have fifteen cars per train. Fifteen cars is a lot for a commuter train! The platforms for these lines are quite long already and it's not really practical to have more than fifteen cars I don't think....
People are Usually Considerate of People Getting Off
One of the most persistent questions was "How do people get off?". This is a simple matter in my mind because I've been living with & on the system for 24 years, but I realize it's sort of complicated when I have to explain it. Number one - when the density is very high at sardine-run times, you need to know which stations are main ones (large numbers of people get off and it's not too difficult to get off with them), and which are minor stations that will be difficult to get off at if you're too far into the train. If you have to get off at a minor station, you expend effort (sometimes a *lot* of effort) in making sure you're reasonably near a door. Generally this is done either by getting into the corner by the door and clinging to the bars there fiercely, or by getting off at one of the major stations before the one you need to get off at, and then getting behind the people getting on there - last on, first off. Often there's competition to be the last one on. Not only do you get a window... spot, but you only have people pressed up against you on only one side, instead of all sides. And best of all (aside from being able to get off whenever you want), you become the front-runner in the race for the platform stairs, so you can run and get on the next sardine run (I get on eight trains per day - four in each direction).
And I almost forgot - even when you're away from the doors, generally if you say "Orimasu! Orimasu! Orimasu!" ("I'm getting off! I'm getting off! I"m getting off!) and start pushing towards the door, people will either lean far enough in one direction or another, enabling you to squeeze past, or the group by the door will get off, enabling escape to the outside (after which they get back on). Sometimes it pays to get off at each and every station on the journey, just to keep yourself near the door. In the case of the train in the video, its next stop was Shakujikoen, where likely very few people could get on, and after that Ikebukuro, the last stop, where everyone gets off. One final detail being that the doors at Shakujikoen open on the other side, so anyone "lucky" enough to get on that express is guaranteed a ride all the way to Ikebukuro once they're on. The thing that's rough if you're the last one on, is the shoving procedure at Shakujikoen can be pretty intense. As you can see in the video, people really want to get on! I can remember being pushed up against the door with such force that I was afraid I would end up with cracked ribs, so I tensed up my muscles to help take pressure off of the bones.
No, That's not Fake! It's Real Dude!
One of the comments posters repeatedly posted a "It's Fake!" blurb. Many people who know the Tokyo train system repeatedly told the guy it was not fake, but he persisted. I am in the best position to know - since I was there and I rode on that line every day. Dude! It's real! It's very real! That's no movie set and those are not actors!
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Umbrella City
Approaching a Tokyo train station in the rain - in a sea of umbrellas. This was taken in 1991, so there are more colorful umbrellas and fewer of the clear plastic ones.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Shakujikoen Sardine Run
More morning crush-rush commuter train fun from 1991 (it's a little less crowded now, thanks to flextime). Both this one and "Actually Full Train in 1991" were taken by me. "Actually Full Train in 1991" has been relentlessly copied and even labeled as being from China! It's not! It's from the Seibu-Ikebukuro Line in Tokyo. This is from Shakujikoen Station:
Lyle
Lyle
Actually Full Train in 1991 (Why Flex-Time is a Good Idea)
This is a view of the morning commuter crush-rush in Tokyo, taken in 1991. Pre-Flextime, everyone needed to get to work by 9:00 a.m. sharp. Now, in 2008, it's a little less crowded.
This video has been relentlessly copied from my Google posting. Some posts even say it's China! I really can't quite believe that some people still think that Japan and China are the same country!
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
This video has been relentlessly copied from my Google posting. Some posts even say it's China! I really can't quite believe that some people still think that Japan and China are the same country!
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
"Stolen Video"
Hmmm... some people are shameless it seems. My video "Actually Full Train in 1991 (Why Flextime is a Good Idea)" was stolen and posted here:
http://www.snotr.com/video/1051
- without even mentioning where it came from. This is dirty and foul behavior, as if they wanted to display it, they could have (and should have!) linked to the video's proper home, which is here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5127313249780524359&hl=en
Does anyone know anything about www.snotr.com? Is this typical behavior for them? I've just posted this comment there:
Reading the other comments - I can answer all the questions. Why am I able to do this? Because I took the video! It was stolen and posted here without my permission, name or website. Check out "Actually Full Train" to see where it was stolen from.
Nevertheless - a couple of answers:
The video was taken in 1991, as its original title makes very clear: "Actually Full Train in 1991 (Why Flex Time is a Good Idea)".
No, it was not an unusual situation - it was like that every day! I know because I was usually one of those sardines myself! (Some spots of the train tended to be slightly less crowded but you still had to force your way on).
To whoever posted the video. Please don't steal other people's material! You're welcome to post it by using the code provided, which directs viewers to the site with the proper title, my name, and my website. Just stealing it and posting it this way is wrong.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
To add insult to injury, there is this bit of fiction posted at the site (under the inane title "Crowded Japanese train"):
"So you think your train or subway is often crowded? In Japan it's even worse, check out this video of a train departing during rush hour (6:30 AM)."
It wasn't taken at 6:30 - it was taken about an hour later than that, around 7:30 a.m. The 6:30 trains were not nearly that crowded. Remember, the *reason* it was so crowded is that it was before flex time and everyone *needed* to get to work by 9:00 a.m. Of the course the thief wasn't there that day, or any other day, and doesn't care about accuracy....
And it gets worse - after stealing it from me, they have the gall to embed their bloody logo in it! And then that stolen version is posted at this site:
http://www.lesmotsontunsens.com/sncf-fin-de-la-carte-famille-nombreuse-c-est-tant-mieux-video
I also e-mailed them this message:
To: copyright@snotr.com
Subject: Stolen Video "Actually Full Train"
Date: Friday, May 16, 2008
My video was stolen from this exact site:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5127313249780524359&hl=en
- and is now being displayed with no mention of where it came from at this site:
http://www.snotr.com/video/1051
I would like it either removed or linked to the proper site.
Thank you!
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
Images Through Glass
Tokyo
Mattaku!!! Have you seen my material popping up in other places without being attributed to me? I'd appreciate any info.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
llletters@gmail.com
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
"B&W to Color Imaging Transition"
I recently ordered some historical DVD's of material from the 1930-1955 time frame, and the color material is fascinating to watch. The type of material I grew up seeing from that era tended to be (nearly always was) in black & white, and so the border between what looked like the "black & white era" and color seemed to fall right between my generation and the generation proceeding mine. But switch that older material to color, and add in the new factor that a lot of it was taken with privately owned small cameras loaded with color film (that had been sleeping in closets for decades - only recently becoming publicly available), and the double... not punch... the doubly strong effect of a more personal viewpoint combined with color, suddenly brought those black & white people from the past into the color world of the present. I felt I could probably step through a time machine and get along with the individuals with no problem at all. (Many black & white newsreels taken by professionals from previous eras seem otherworldly and out of reach in time & viewpoint, and... factor-X!)
This makes me wonder if there would have been less of a generation gap in the sixties if those children of Technicolor realized that their parents hadn't inhabited a black & white world in the past, but had actually lived among color as vibrant as at any time. Naturally there were far larger causes for the rift of the day, but the pictures representing the young period of those who came before me being mostly black & white didn't help. They had the effect of making the past look boring and - figuratively and literally - gray. With my own pictures, when I've taken things in black & white and I know what the scene looked like in color, still it's hard to imagine the scene in color when looking at the black & white print - even though it is something I saw in color with my own eyes. "Seeing is believing" even if it's an illusion?
Speaking of black & white film. My first several years of photography were mainly with black and white film for financial reasons. Color film was a bit more expensive than B&W and processing was a lot more expensive, so color was saved for special occasions. In San Francisco I also liked the effect of black & white, but still there was that financial thing hanging over me. If color had been the same cost, I'm sure I would have done some things at least in color.
The other thing that was a constant barrier to just doing what I would have liked to do, was the limitation of typically going out with three rolls of 36-exposure film, so once my 111 pictures (I always got 37 pictures per 36-exposure roll of film) were taken, I had to stop for the day. I drooled when I read about 300-exposure film packs, and then, when I finally got my mitts on a digital camera with a large memory card, it was as though I'd found a genie in a bottle who had granted me unlimited photo-taking ability. It's great to be able to get going in the morning on a photo-acquisition day, and be able to take around 1,500 pictures in a single day.
And so now - when I see people who have never experienced the day when black & white was the cheap film and almost no-one used it instead of color because they wanted to; and film is seen as artistic, instead of a limitation to free image making... I half shake my head and half reassess the advantages of black and white film taken with an old camera. The main advantage is just that you try harder with each individual image with film and then place a higher value on any given image (double exposures and some other technical things can also be nice). But if I assign a percentage to which I prefer - analog photography or digital photography, I would say 99 for digital and 1 for film (if that). For the film enthusiasts, I would say do whatever you like, but I have a difficult time sharing your enthusiasm for chemical photography. To use an expression I generally despise - "Been there - done that".
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
This makes me wonder if there would have been less of a generation gap in the sixties if those children of Technicolor realized that their parents hadn't inhabited a black & white world in the past, but had actually lived among color as vibrant as at any time. Naturally there were far larger causes for the rift of the day, but the pictures representing the young period of those who came before me being mostly black & white didn't help. They had the effect of making the past look boring and - figuratively and literally - gray. With my own pictures, when I've taken things in black & white and I know what the scene looked like in color, still it's hard to imagine the scene in color when looking at the black & white print - even though it is something I saw in color with my own eyes. "Seeing is believing" even if it's an illusion?
Speaking of black & white film. My first several years of photography were mainly with black and white film for financial reasons. Color film was a bit more expensive than B&W and processing was a lot more expensive, so color was saved for special occasions. In San Francisco I also liked the effect of black & white, but still there was that financial thing hanging over me. If color had been the same cost, I'm sure I would have done some things at least in color.
The other thing that was a constant barrier to just doing what I would have liked to do, was the limitation of typically going out with three rolls of 36-exposure film, so once my 111 pictures (I always got 37 pictures per 36-exposure roll of film) were taken, I had to stop for the day. I drooled when I read about 300-exposure film packs, and then, when I finally got my mitts on a digital camera with a large memory card, it was as though I'd found a genie in a bottle who had granted me unlimited photo-taking ability. It's great to be able to get going in the morning on a photo-acquisition day, and be able to take around 1,500 pictures in a single day.
And so now - when I see people who have never experienced the day when black & white was the cheap film and almost no-one used it instead of color because they wanted to; and film is seen as artistic, instead of a limitation to free image making... I half shake my head and half reassess the advantages of black and white film taken with an old camera. The main advantage is just that you try harder with each individual image with film and then place a higher value on any given image (double exposures and some other technical things can also be nice). But if I assign a percentage to which I prefer - analog photography or digital photography, I would say 99 for digital and 1 for film (if that). For the film enthusiasts, I would say do whatever you like, but I have a difficult time sharing your enthusiasm for chemical photography. To use an expression I generally despise - "Been there - done that".
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
"Larger TVs & Smaller Movie Screens..."
I was given a free ticket to see "I'm Not There", the bizarre movie about Bob Dylan, and I went out to see it yesterday evening. I didn't know much about Bob Dylan (except that I liked some of his music), until I read about him on the Internet following seeing the movie. I would say to anyone thinking of seeing the movie, that it will likely only be interesting if you are thoroughly familiar with Bob Dylan. If you're not, it's probably not going to make much sense. Personally, I like autobiographic and documentary material, and tend to despise biographies and docu-dramas. So, for me, the movie wasn't one I was happy to have invested my time on, particularly when there is a lot of documentary material available on the man. I did enjoy the soundtrack however.
Next issue. The movie theater! It was one of those new ones where they pack 8-16 theaters into a spiffy new building, and in the case of the theater I went to last night, they double up movies in the same space (making sure to kick everyone out after each showing, so you can't see two movies), with one movie playing around noon, another movie playing once or twice after that, and the noon movie showing again in the evening. So with 10 theaters, you can pack in 20 movies. Just the sort of thing that would look great in a suit-driven PowerPoint presentation, but the genba result is pretty bad. At the same time home TV's and sound systems are getting larger and better, movie theater screens are getting smaller and sound quality is getting worse.
Details of the theater I went to last night:
- The theater had a nearly flat floor, and to help people see, they had very uncomfortable seats that force you to slouch (tall people no longer get in the way - they just ruin their backs while suffering through the movie in an uncomfortable position) - although there was enough leg room (there had to be - otherwise the forced slouch wouldn't work).
-The smallish screen wasn't so small as to call it tiny, but as I looked at it from the pain of the uncomfortable seat I was in, I thought "This isn't vastly different than watching a large screen high-definition television hooked up to a decent sound system - what's the point in going to a movie theater to suffer in bad seats when you could actually enjoy the movie at home from a rented DVD?"
- There was no surround sound, but at least the from-the-front-only sound quality wasn't bad. It should have been much louder for that movie though, but they have to keep the volume down in order not to disturb the other theaters packed onto the same floor.
So I'm left with my thought originally generated by the badly designed seats and the small screen - what's the point in going to a movie theater? I certainly never again want to visit that one I went to last night! I'm willing to go to some expense, time and trouble to see a movie from a comfortable seat, with a huge screen, and surround quality sound played at the proper volume, but otherwise, I'd just as soon they shut down movie theaters altogether.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Next issue. The movie theater! It was one of those new ones where they pack 8-16 theaters into a spiffy new building, and in the case of the theater I went to last night, they double up movies in the same space (making sure to kick everyone out after each showing, so you can't see two movies), with one movie playing around noon, another movie playing once or twice after that, and the noon movie showing again in the evening. So with 10 theaters, you can pack in 20 movies. Just the sort of thing that would look great in a suit-driven PowerPoint presentation, but the genba result is pretty bad. At the same time home TV's and sound systems are getting larger and better, movie theater screens are getting smaller and sound quality is getting worse.
Details of the theater I went to last night:
- The theater had a nearly flat floor, and to help people see, they had very uncomfortable seats that force you to slouch (tall people no longer get in the way - they just ruin their backs while suffering through the movie in an uncomfortable position) - although there was enough leg room (there had to be - otherwise the forced slouch wouldn't work).
-The smallish screen wasn't so small as to call it tiny, but as I looked at it from the pain of the uncomfortable seat I was in, I thought "This isn't vastly different than watching a large screen high-definition television hooked up to a decent sound system - what's the point in going to a movie theater to suffer in bad seats when you could actually enjoy the movie at home from a rented DVD?"
- There was no surround sound, but at least the from-the-front-only sound quality wasn't bad. It should have been much louder for that movie though, but they have to keep the volume down in order not to disturb the other theaters packed onto the same floor.
So I'm left with my thought originally generated by the badly designed seats and the small screen - what's the point in going to a movie theater? I certainly never again want to visit that one I went to last night! I'm willing to go to some expense, time and trouble to see a movie from a comfortable seat, with a huge screen, and surround quality sound played at the proper volume, but otherwise, I'd just as soon they shut down movie theaters altogether.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Saturday, May 03, 2008
"Banana Song in Colombian Bar" (Tokyo-1991)
I used to go out for a beer or two from time to time (here and there in Tokyo, but mostly in Shibuya) with a friend from LA, and one evening he took me and a few other people to this Columbian bar run by a Columbian man he knew (who later appeared in a bit part in a very bad movie here that I can't remember the name of). Visiting a place like that isn't as big of a deal now, but in 1991, bars run by foreigners were rarer, so it was interesting to go there on novelty value alone. We had a good time it seems - judging from the 10-15 minutes of video I took there (typically, I can remember standing with my video camera, focusing on the guy as he performed behind the counter, but I can't remember much of anything other than my time behind the camera. The conversations must not have been too interesting...) The video clip starts out on the street, then goes up the stairs, and once inside there's some... some... not "footage"... there are a couple of clips of the guy singing and playing a keyboard behind the counter:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0rlW457R-o
My friend had shown up late that evening (he was pretty habitually late, come to think of it), and then we ended up staying past the last train, so we walked over to his place (he lived nearby, fortunately) and I slept there for a few hours and then I took the first train (5:00 a.m.) towards home in the morning.
How can I remember those details after seventeen years? I can't! Or more precisely, I couldn't, until I saw those parts again - in the video. There is a scene looking across a train station platform. My arm appears in the frame as I and the camera look at the time on my wristwatch as my friend walks up late & apologizing. Later on, there are video clips of going to a convenience store on the way to my friend's place; me looking very tired there before catching a few hours of sleep on the tatami; me half-asleep in the morning when I got up (I actually went to the trouble in the morning of setting the camera on a bookshelf, aiming it at myself, and videotaping myself sitting sitting on the tatami, half-nodding off to sleep for a minute before finally getting up); the early morning streets; the trains back... I used to videotape everything. While watching the tapes, the memories are roused.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0rlW457R-o
My friend had shown up late that evening (he was pretty habitually late, come to think of it), and then we ended up staying past the last train, so we walked over to his place (he lived nearby, fortunately) and I slept there for a few hours and then I took the first train (5:00 a.m.) towards home in the morning.
How can I remember those details after seventeen years? I can't! Or more precisely, I couldn't, until I saw those parts again - in the video. There is a scene looking across a train station platform. My arm appears in the frame as I and the camera look at the time on my wristwatch as my friend walks up late & apologizing. Later on, there are video clips of going to a convenience store on the way to my friend's place; me looking very tired there before catching a few hours of sleep on the tatami; me half-asleep in the morning when I got up (I actually went to the trouble in the morning of setting the camera on a bookshelf, aiming it at myself, and videotaping myself sitting sitting on the tatami, half-nodding off to sleep for a minute before finally getting up); the early morning streets; the trains back... I used to videotape everything. While watching the tapes, the memories are roused.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Monday, April 28, 2008
"Kubuntu v8.04"
Another weekend working for the computer. Typical deal - you figure you're going to spend a couple of hours upgrading an OS, and that couple of hours turns into a couple of days. There's always something. In this case I stupidly thought I'd do the lazy and quick [sarcastic and hysterical laughter] thing, and do an upgrade install from v7.10 to v8.04. I knew better than to do such a thing (I'd tweaked the system too much for that to work, and it's not a good idea in general to do upgrade installs that (attempt to) take the OS across a major generational line anyway).
The result? It could have been worse. When the upgrade install failed (as I should have known it would), the system was a bit mucked up, but still functioning. I (belatedly) thought "Okay - no prob! I'll plug in an external USB hard drive, drop the files into that, and then do a clean install" - reformatting the hard drive and putting in v8.04 on a squeaky clean slate.
One problem though... the system no longer detected USB devices! "Uuuu......." I think, while looking at my computer - knowing the files are sitting in the steel box, but not knowing how to get them out. I fleetingly considered abandoning everything and just going ahead and wiping the hard drive, but irrational/impatient passion subsided and I decided to put the stuff I really wanted (needed?) to keep onto dual-layer DVD's in 8GB chunks and dump about 90GB of the 100GB of data (stuff that was already backed up - .tif images from Hubble, etc.).
If I hadn't put that DVD drive into the box after bringing it home from the used computer shop, I'm not sure what I would have done (learned command line stuff no doubt), but all's mostly happy that ends mostly happy I guess.
Next multi-hour batch of fun involved a glitch with the Adept Package Manager, which wasn't pulling in the list of available application software like it's supposed to. It just unhelpfully showed the things already installed. To make a too-long story a little bit longer, I finally figured out that was due to it's trying to pull in the file list from a bad source (or maybe not trying at all due to garbled text?).
After that was sorted out (it took me much longer than it should have to figure that one out), I had some setup problems with some applications I use, etc. etc. Now I'm up and running, but there are still a number of things that I want to get set up and so the machine will continue to burn up time over the next week or so I imagine.
So how is Kubuntu v8.04? Seems good so far. I need to spend more time with it to know exactly what's what though.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
The result? It could have been worse. When the upgrade install failed (as I should have known it would), the system was a bit mucked up, but still functioning. I (belatedly) thought "Okay - no prob! I'll plug in an external USB hard drive, drop the files into that, and then do a clean install" - reformatting the hard drive and putting in v8.04 on a squeaky clean slate.
One problem though... the system no longer detected USB devices! "Uuuu......." I think, while looking at my computer - knowing the files are sitting in the steel box, but not knowing how to get them out. I fleetingly considered abandoning everything and just going ahead and wiping the hard drive, but irrational/impatient passion subsided and I decided to put the stuff I really wanted (needed?) to keep onto dual-layer DVD's in 8GB chunks and dump about 90GB of the 100GB of data (stuff that was already backed up - .tif images from Hubble, etc.).
If I hadn't put that DVD drive into the box after bringing it home from the used computer shop, I'm not sure what I would have done (learned command line stuff no doubt), but all's mostly happy that ends mostly happy I guess.
Next multi-hour batch of fun involved a glitch with the Adept Package Manager, which wasn't pulling in the list of available application software like it's supposed to. It just unhelpfully showed the things already installed. To make a too-long story a little bit longer, I finally figured out that was due to it's trying to pull in the file list from a bad source (or maybe not trying at all due to garbled text?).
After that was sorted out (it took me much longer than it should have to figure that one out), I had some setup problems with some applications I use, etc. etc. Now I'm up and running, but there are still a number of things that I want to get set up and so the machine will continue to burn up time over the next week or so I imagine.
So how is Kubuntu v8.04? Seems good so far. I need to spend more time with it to know exactly what's what though.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Friday, April 25, 2008
"Lining-up Progress"
Continuing to look around in 2008 Japan and compare it to 1984-1992 Japan, another issue that comes to mind is standing in lines. When I arrived, I was shocked and dismayed to discover that at banks and fast-food places, there were several parallel lines, rather than one central line that fed to the next open teller or order taker. So you'd go to the bank in a hurry and pick a short line, and if you were lucky, you'd get out before people who had been waiting longer. If you were unlucky, you'd get in a line and - noticing that it wasn't moving - you'd take a closer look up the line and there would be a time-machine visitor from the deep dark ages who didn't know how to interact with machines, or someone who brought in a stack of bank books to update (for colleagues?), or some such thing, and you'd be standing there in frustration watching people who had come in after you, smoothly gliding up to another machine, completing their banking, and leaving while you stood there.
What to do... getting out of line at that stage would mean getting in the back of a line twice as long, which might contain its own glacially slow biped... etc. etc. So I imagine that you can imagine my happiness spike when they finally got around to setting it up so there was only one line, and people at the front of the line just went to whichever machine was open first.
Same thing with escalators - they would immediately jam up and they were good only for the effort saved in not walking. If you were in any kind of a hurry, the only way to zoom ahead was to use the stairs. Don't believe me that people jammed them up? Have a look at this video from 1991:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8051505496472137396
And um... yeah, that's it. I need to get some sleep now!
Sore dewa, mata,
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
What to do... getting out of line at that stage would mean getting in the back of a line twice as long, which might contain its own glacially slow biped... etc. etc. So I imagine that you can imagine my happiness spike when they finally got around to setting it up so there was only one line, and people at the front of the line just went to whichever machine was open first.
Same thing with escalators - they would immediately jam up and they were good only for the effort saved in not walking. If you were in any kind of a hurry, the only way to zoom ahead was to use the stairs. Don't believe me that people jammed them up? Have a look at this video from 1991:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8051505496472137396
And um... yeah, that's it. I need to get some sleep now!
Sore dewa, mata,
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
"Spontaneous Dual Lines"
For about twenty years I lined up on one platform after another and another-n'-another-n'-another, and the lines were always three people across. I remember hearing recorded announcements early on at some stations asking people to line up three across, and it occurred to me that it hadn't always been that way, hence the announcement. After that, though, I don't remember hearing that announcement. Either it was one of those things that is always in the background, so you just automatically tune it out, or they stopped making the announcements since everyone was dutifully lining up three across?
The only problem with standing three across, is that when the train comes, and the three-across line has to split to let people off the train, that middle row of people have to get in one or the other new line on the right or left of the opening doors, so the process ends up interfering with equal access to the train (on some lines, at some stations, the first people in can actually - gasp!- sit down!!) - this doesn't, on the other hand, interfere whatsoever when people are getting onto an empty train at the first station.
Jump through the years from 1984 to around 2005 or so, and one day I saw two people standing at one of the door marks (where the doors will be is usually marked on the platform, and the train operators pride themselves on stopping at precisely the same spot at the station every time), so I walked up and parked my standing bipedal form next to them, forming the third person. They looked over at me and I felt disapproval/irritation radio waves... "What?...." I thought, as I assessed the situation.... Reconfirming that I was the third person; not the fourth or fifth, I looked off into the distance and broadcast anti-disapproval waves and thought "Hey! I'm not being pushy! I'm just doing the regular thing! What's with you?" (Naturally no words were exchanged.)
Since then, I've seen people standing in pairs more and more until it's gotten to the point lately, that it almost seems official to stand two across. Equal access to the inside, etc. is great, but what's not great is when it's overcrowded (like every bloody day on a couple of the trains I line up for), and then you have a handful of people leisurely standing at the front edge of the platform, and - by the time the train is about to arrive - a huge mob of people unable to be in any kind of line at all at the back, and in danger of dropping off the edge of the other side of the platform, which becomes a real mess when a second train arrives on that side. Adding to the fun, there are actually people trying to walk along the platform (which they must - lest there be disaster at the junction of the stairs and the platform), and they have to physically force themselves through the mob.
Then - earlier in the evening, as I'm waiting for a train in Shinjuku, I notice the recorded announcement is asking people to line up three across.... Either it's new or I've been missing it all these years... I think it's new. What I'm wondering now is whether the urge to line up in pairs instead of triangles is a natural phenomenon?
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
The only problem with standing three across, is that when the train comes, and the three-across line has to split to let people off the train, that middle row of people have to get in one or the other new line on the right or left of the opening doors, so the process ends up interfering with equal access to the train (on some lines, at some stations, the first people in can actually - gasp!- sit down!!) - this doesn't, on the other hand, interfere whatsoever when people are getting onto an empty train at the first station.
Jump through the years from 1984 to around 2005 or so, and one day I saw two people standing at one of the door marks (where the doors will be is usually marked on the platform, and the train operators pride themselves on stopping at precisely the same spot at the station every time), so I walked up and parked my standing bipedal form next to them, forming the third person. They looked over at me and I felt disapproval/irritation radio waves... "What?...." I thought, as I assessed the situation.... Reconfirming that I was the third person; not the fourth or fifth, I looked off into the distance and broadcast anti-disapproval waves and thought "Hey! I'm not being pushy! I'm just doing the regular thing! What's with you?" (Naturally no words were exchanged.)
Since then, I've seen people standing in pairs more and more until it's gotten to the point lately, that it almost seems official to stand two across. Equal access to the inside, etc. is great, but what's not great is when it's overcrowded (like every bloody day on a couple of the trains I line up for), and then you have a handful of people leisurely standing at the front edge of the platform, and - by the time the train is about to arrive - a huge mob of people unable to be in any kind of line at all at the back, and in danger of dropping off the edge of the other side of the platform, which becomes a real mess when a second train arrives on that side. Adding to the fun, there are actually people trying to walk along the platform (which they must - lest there be disaster at the junction of the stairs and the platform), and they have to physically force themselves through the mob.
Then - earlier in the evening, as I'm waiting for a train in Shinjuku, I notice the recorded announcement is asking people to line up three across.... Either it's new or I've been missing it all these years... I think it's new. What I'm wondering now is whether the urge to line up in pairs instead of triangles is a natural phenomenon?
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Sunday, April 20, 2008
"Old Style Y500 Coffee Shop"
On the way home over the past couple of years, I've periodically looked out the train window (when I'm standing at a door that is - the seats face the inside of the train) and noticed an old style (previously ubiquitous) coffee shop, and idly thought I'd like to go in for an over-priced cup of coffee for old-time's sake.
And here I am sitting in said shop writing this by hand (enjoying the experience of writing by hand, but also realizing that each word will have to be reproduced on the keyboard before I can get this through the wires to the screen).
Okay, this is getting in the way - I'll just make short notes from here out and fill in the text later directly on the machine:
These old style coffee shops are fast disappearing, to the point where the only remaining ones will exist on nostalgia alone, rather than their original reason for existing. For quite a while, Japan's coffee shops were famous for their overpriced (compared to prices for coffee in other countries anyway) coffee, but I'm not sure people understand what was being bought with Y500 for a cup of coffee.
The deal is, not only are free places to sit down in Tokyo few and far between, but most of the year, the weather tends not to be ideal for sitting outside. The winter is cold, the spring is wet, the summer is hot & humid, and although autumn tends to be nice, it's also often visited with typhoons. Then you're back to cold winter. So, if you want to meet someone and sit and talk, where do you go? Coffee shops used to be the best option, since you could sit in one talking with a friend for a few hours, after which the Y500 didn't seem so expensive, since it amounted to seat & table rental time out of the weather and in a cozy atmosphere (assuming smoke didn't cause you grief).
Then cheap coffee shop chains caught on, and the expensive places lost customers to them and began to disappear. The cheap places are convenient and cheap, but - like fast-food restaurants - generally soulless.
Observations of the Y500 place in which I now sit - which fit for most of the similar-style coffee shops I've been in over the past 24 years:
You sit down, and either exchange a few words with the person you've come with, or else look around the coffee shop or out the window. (Before cell phones, they were also good places to wait for someone when you had to prearrange a place to meet.) Often the menu is already at the table, but sometimes it's brought, and water and hot wet towels are brought. You ponder the menu for awhile, and order, and then talk (or look out the window, or read, etc.) while waiting for the coffee to arrive.
Coffee is brought in style. Like in a classy restaurant, the delivery of the coffee is considered an important element. The person who brings you the coffee sets it carefully in front of you in a nice cup (never a paper cup), with the handle facing to your left at 90-degrees. I never bothered to find out the exact proper procedure for turning it 180 degrees before beginning to drink, but (sort-of) enjoyed the ritual of turning it anyway (shades of the tea ceremony here), and then pouring in a little cream & sugar and stirring it with the small spoon.
One time, I went with an acquaintance who was really into the correct rituals, etc., and was told that you're not supposed to stir it right away, but rather watch in fascination (said mostly in seriousness, with a little bit of sarcasm in the background) the patterns formed with the cream in the coffee. Immediately stirring it into a uniform mud color is considered very uncultured. (I've forgotten, but I think the ideal thing is to stir the black coffee, and carefully drop the cream into the still swirling coffee after the spoon is out of the way - in any case it looks pretty interesting & artistic when you do it that way.)
There are always two kinds of sugar on the table - in glass containers with wooden lids, and metal spoons with small wooden knobs on the end (the spoons rest in the sugar, with the handle passing through a cutout in the lid). One is regular white sugar, and the other is a brown sugar in large crystals. I don't remember what the deal is with the large brown-crystal sugar. Either it's a taste thing, or one or the other is more suited to ice-coffee? (They would bring a liquid syrup for the ice-coffee, come to think of it.) I have no idea. Personally, I always used the large brown crystal sugar in hot coffee.
There was (is) an ashtray on each table, as leaf-fire burning and inhalation for nicotine drug addicts is/was allowed. StarBucks was the first place that didn't allow smoking anywhere in the entire store, and it was instantly popular with non-smokers who weren't happy about being forced to smoke with the smokers in smoke/coffee shops. (Probably not a great time or place to visit this issue, but for those who bring up alcohol and people who drink as an argument against banning leaf-fire smoke - the comparison only holds if you physically grab someone and force alcohol down their throats - otherwise the comparison is just sophistic inanity. The air is common to all in the same space - what people drink is not.)
Back to the specific coffee shop I'm in:
- Between myself and the window are cake... ads? (they're not menus exactly, but perform that function) sitting on a wooden rail. One for "Milk Crepe", one for "Chocolate Cake Cake Set" and one for "Cheesecake".
- Old style wooden chairs.
- Wood-pattern linoleum floor.
- Two small square wooden tables pushed together to form the rectangle of each four-seat table. (Easily adjusted for an extra person here or there.)
- Small tables mostly, one larger table (with eight chairs) in the middle of the room. A sort of bar-style counter, although at the same height as the tables, where people can sit in regular-height chairs.
- Daily (coffee) special on A4 card tacked to wall.
- Unobtrusive background music.
- Incandescent lights (no florescent tubes anywhere that I can see - unusual in most spaces in Japan, although classy restaurants have been trending towards warmer, more subdued lighting).
- Exhaust fan in the wall (for leaf-fire smoke).
- Magazines and comic books in smallish bookcase.
- People talking in Y500 coffee shop style. Is that sound due to the acoustics; the background music; or do people actually speak in a different way in these places? From past experience, I would say it's a way of speaking. It's not a library, but the concept is similar. (Note: That last sentence began as Japanese and is basically a translated sentence - does it fly smoothly in English, or does it feel like an oddly translated string of words that doesn't quite come together in a cohesive meaning? It's common in Japanese to say that something "isn't something, but...".
I look out the window and ponder the people coming and going from the station. There is the muffled sound of trains coming into and leaving the station, and the "kong-kong-kong" of crossing bell sounds generated by speakers.
Time to leave - I pick up the bill on the table and note that its height is A6, with a narrower width.
As I leave, I think I would like to return before long, but the first thing I think of when contemplating doing so, is the time it costs. Perhaps this is what has really killed off most of these types of shops - the fact that people can communicate with anyone via e-mail now (with cell phones), and don't need to arrange a physical meeting to talk.
So saying, a scene comes to mind. Later in the say, as I walked past a StarBucks in Shinjuku, I looked in the window and saw a woman sitting alone at a table for two (not four, as would be the case in the old-style shops), talking on her cell phone while she was doing something with her laptop at the same time. Multitasking - why waste time meeting someone in a settled atmosphere and having a leisurely talk when you can do three or four things at once? Quantity is more important than quality? For everything gained, something is lost?
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
And here I am sitting in said shop writing this by hand (enjoying the experience of writing by hand, but also realizing that each word will have to be reproduced on the keyboard before I can get this through the wires to the screen).
Okay, this is getting in the way - I'll just make short notes from here out and fill in the text later directly on the machine:
These old style coffee shops are fast disappearing, to the point where the only remaining ones will exist on nostalgia alone, rather than their original reason for existing. For quite a while, Japan's coffee shops were famous for their overpriced (compared to prices for coffee in other countries anyway) coffee, but I'm not sure people understand what was being bought with Y500 for a cup of coffee.
The deal is, not only are free places to sit down in Tokyo few and far between, but most of the year, the weather tends not to be ideal for sitting outside. The winter is cold, the spring is wet, the summer is hot & humid, and although autumn tends to be nice, it's also often visited with typhoons. Then you're back to cold winter. So, if you want to meet someone and sit and talk, where do you go? Coffee shops used to be the best option, since you could sit in one talking with a friend for a few hours, after which the Y500 didn't seem so expensive, since it amounted to seat & table rental time out of the weather and in a cozy atmosphere (assuming smoke didn't cause you grief).
Then cheap coffee shop chains caught on, and the expensive places lost customers to them and began to disappear. The cheap places are convenient and cheap, but - like fast-food restaurants - generally soulless.
Observations of the Y500 place in which I now sit - which fit for most of the similar-style coffee shops I've been in over the past 24 years:
You sit down, and either exchange a few words with the person you've come with, or else look around the coffee shop or out the window. (Before cell phones, they were also good places to wait for someone when you had to prearrange a place to meet.) Often the menu is already at the table, but sometimes it's brought, and water and hot wet towels are brought. You ponder the menu for awhile, and order, and then talk (or look out the window, or read, etc.) while waiting for the coffee to arrive.
Coffee is brought in style. Like in a classy restaurant, the delivery of the coffee is considered an important element. The person who brings you the coffee sets it carefully in front of you in a nice cup (never a paper cup), with the handle facing to your left at 90-degrees. I never bothered to find out the exact proper procedure for turning it 180 degrees before beginning to drink, but (sort-of) enjoyed the ritual of turning it anyway (shades of the tea ceremony here), and then pouring in a little cream & sugar and stirring it with the small spoon.
One time, I went with an acquaintance who was really into the correct rituals, etc., and was told that you're not supposed to stir it right away, but rather watch in fascination (said mostly in seriousness, with a little bit of sarcasm in the background) the patterns formed with the cream in the coffee. Immediately stirring it into a uniform mud color is considered very uncultured. (I've forgotten, but I think the ideal thing is to stir the black coffee, and carefully drop the cream into the still swirling coffee after the spoon is out of the way - in any case it looks pretty interesting & artistic when you do it that way.)
There are always two kinds of sugar on the table - in glass containers with wooden lids, and metal spoons with small wooden knobs on the end (the spoons rest in the sugar, with the handle passing through a cutout in the lid). One is regular white sugar, and the other is a brown sugar in large crystals. I don't remember what the deal is with the large brown-crystal sugar. Either it's a taste thing, or one or the other is more suited to ice-coffee? (They would bring a liquid syrup for the ice-coffee, come to think of it.) I have no idea. Personally, I always used the large brown crystal sugar in hot coffee.
There was (is) an ashtray on each table, as leaf-fire burning and inhalation for nicotine drug addicts is/was allowed. StarBucks was the first place that didn't allow smoking anywhere in the entire store, and it was instantly popular with non-smokers who weren't happy about being forced to smoke with the smokers in smoke/coffee shops. (Probably not a great time or place to visit this issue, but for those who bring up alcohol and people who drink as an argument against banning leaf-fire smoke - the comparison only holds if you physically grab someone and force alcohol down their throats - otherwise the comparison is just sophistic inanity. The air is common to all in the same space - what people drink is not.)
Back to the specific coffee shop I'm in:
- Between myself and the window are cake... ads? (they're not menus exactly, but perform that function) sitting on a wooden rail. One for "Milk Crepe", one for "Chocolate Cake Cake Set" and one for "Cheesecake".
- Old style wooden chairs.
- Wood-pattern linoleum floor.
- Two small square wooden tables pushed together to form the rectangle of each four-seat table. (Easily adjusted for an extra person here or there.)
- Small tables mostly, one larger table (with eight chairs) in the middle of the room. A sort of bar-style counter, although at the same height as the tables, where people can sit in regular-height chairs.
- Daily (coffee) special on A4 card tacked to wall.
- Unobtrusive background music.
- Incandescent lights (no florescent tubes anywhere that I can see - unusual in most spaces in Japan, although classy restaurants have been trending towards warmer, more subdued lighting).
- Exhaust fan in the wall (for leaf-fire smoke).
- Magazines and comic books in smallish bookcase.
- People talking in Y500 coffee shop style. Is that sound due to the acoustics; the background music; or do people actually speak in a different way in these places? From past experience, I would say it's a way of speaking. It's not a library, but the concept is similar. (Note: That last sentence began as Japanese and is basically a translated sentence - does it fly smoothly in English, or does it feel like an oddly translated string of words that doesn't quite come together in a cohesive meaning? It's common in Japanese to say that something "isn't something, but...".
I look out the window and ponder the people coming and going from the station. There is the muffled sound of trains coming into and leaving the station, and the "kong-kong-kong" of crossing bell sounds generated by speakers.
Time to leave - I pick up the bill on the table and note that its height is A6, with a narrower width.
As I leave, I think I would like to return before long, but the first thing I think of when contemplating doing so, is the time it costs. Perhaps this is what has really killed off most of these types of shops - the fact that people can communicate with anyone via e-mail now (with cell phones), and don't need to arrange a physical meeting to talk.
So saying, a scene comes to mind. Later in the say, as I walked past a StarBucks in Shinjuku, I looked in the window and saw a woman sitting alone at a table for two (not four, as would be the case in the old-style shops), talking on her cell phone while she was doing something with her laptop at the same time. Multitasking - why waste time meeting someone in a settled atmosphere and having a leisurely talk when you can do three or four things at once? Quantity is more important than quality? For everything gained, something is lost?
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
"Cherry Blossoms Mostly Gone"
I might just as well have titled this "Finally it's Getting Warm". The cherry blossoms always come out when there is no trace of new leaves on other trees (or the cherry blossom trees - the leaves come out after the flowers), which is their attraction, but it's always really cold when everyone goes out for the hanami drinking parties under the trees. By the time the weather is feeling a little comfortable, the petals are all gone. It's a good scam those trees have going! Just a week or so of flowers and they're given pride of place all over the country. Not so lucky fruit trees, which are considered bad outside of commercial farms, since they include the possibility of attracting (gasp!) insects!
Watching one of my video tapes from August 1990, I was surprised to see myself pointing out a security camera that had been installed over the train station platform. Trying to think of something in the news that prompted a stepped up security diligence, I looked up the gas attack on the subway (I was here, but had forgotten when it happened exactly), which turns out to have been in 1995, so it was either something else, or just the flow of time towards the odd age we live in now.
And in the video department - a view of the famous (or maybe infamous) Shibuya crossing near the Hachiko Plaza. Wait a minute.... Hmm? In the upload, the aspect ratio was destroyed and it looks extraordinarily horrible now! I should delete it, but I'll leave it up as an example of what happens when the aspect ratio is ruined:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2652041080428925137
Also (aspect ratio okay):
"In the Shibuya Hachiko Crowd" (2008):
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8922230731899878598
And:
"Shibuya - Waiting in Hachiko Square" (2008)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5996966598135971503
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Watching one of my video tapes from August 1990, I was surprised to see myself pointing out a security camera that had been installed over the train station platform. Trying to think of something in the news that prompted a stepped up security diligence, I looked up the gas attack on the subway (I was here, but had forgotten when it happened exactly), which turns out to have been in 1995, so it was either something else, or just the flow of time towards the odd age we live in now.
And in the video department - a view of the famous (or maybe infamous) Shibuya crossing near the Hachiko Plaza. Wait a minute.... Hmm? In the upload, the aspect ratio was destroyed and it looks extraordinarily horrible now! I should delete it, but I'll leave it up as an example of what happens when the aspect ratio is ruined:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2652041080428925137
Also (aspect ratio okay):
"In the Shibuya Hachiko Crowd" (2008):
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8922230731899878598
And:
"Shibuya - Waiting in Hachiko Square" (2008)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5996966598135971503
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Sunday, April 13, 2008
"Manga on the Way Down?"
There was a special on a weekly news program last night about how sales of manga magazines (typically weekly publications with ongoing bits of several different manga) have been falling. Apparently books sales of specific manga - like the long-running "Conan the Detective" - are still selling well, but people seem to be losing interest in the formerly hugely successful weekly magazines (printed on very cheap paper and looking almost like small phone books).
Maybe this ties in with dismal book sales in general - people are getting used to getting reading material off the Internet, and many don't buy any books at all. Whatever - I just felt sort of vindicated when I saw the report though, as I've been thinking that newer manga have gotten worse, so maybe others agree....
Somewhat related in how time relentlessly flows on, for both good and otherwise - here is a video showing both the modern face of Gotanda and a narrow backstreet from the past:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1223182558781752766
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Maybe this ties in with dismal book sales in general - people are getting used to getting reading material off the Internet, and many don't buy any books at all. Whatever - I just felt sort of vindicated when I saw the report though, as I've been thinking that newer manga have gotten worse, so maybe others agree....
Somewhat related in how time relentlessly flows on, for both good and otherwise - here is a video showing both the modern face of Gotanda and a narrow backstreet from the past:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1223182558781752766
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
"The Curse of Audio Recordings"
As someone who is kept from going stark raving mad on the sardine run commute to-and-from work by audio recordings (usually there's no space for a book, so listening to something is all I can do), I look at my title sitting up there on the screen and feel as though I probably shouldn't say that about something I use and appreciate on a daily basis, but the flip side of listening to a favorite song or book, is listening to something that sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard, and hearing the exact same irritating sound again-and-again-and-again-and-again.... and again-and-again-and-again-and-again-and-again-and... Aggggghhhhh!! Stop already!!!
What do you do when you've got a vast and complex train system with an incredible number of stations, and you want to have a recording telling people what the next station is? A coupe of options might be:
a) Have someone read through a list of stations, reading "The next stop is Tokyo Station"; "The next stop is "Yurakucho Station"; "The next stop is Shinbashi Station". The resulting recordings would differ slightly from one station to another - a shocking concept - almost like real speech!
b) Have someone make a single recording saying "The next station is....." and then give them a list of stations to read "Tokyo"; "Yurakucho"; "Shinbashi". Use the single recording for all stations; just dropping in the relevant station name at the end. A "benefit" of this is that all the recordings will be uniform. The disadvantage is that it sounds unreal, because... well... it *is* unreal! And then this Frankenstein creation gets worse; 'Frankenstein monster, meet Dr. Clone!'
The "B" route seems to be what JR has done with its English announcements, although that single template sentence may be different for different lines... (the recordings that torment me on a regular basis are the ones on the Yamanote Line and the Chuo Line).
What prompts this rant? I took a video clip of the station display screen (there's also one displaying ads, news & weather) over one of the doors (there are a pair of displays over every door), including the audio file that was playing at the time I made the clip. After ranting up a storm about the recordings, I played back the video clip, thinking "I wonder how this will sound to someone who hasn't yet been tortured with this recording..." as the clip began.
How did it sound with that mindset? Not so bad! But - and this a very large "but" - keep in mind that the announcement is likely played quite a bit more loudly on the train than you're hearing it on your computer, and also that (except for the station name part), as you ride the train and it stops at one station after another, you're forced to listen to that same recording over and over and over....
Anyway - here's a video clip (and recording) from the Yamanote Line:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4075315375439017139
And by way of contrast, here's a video clip of a Toyoko Line train, which very sensibly skips an English announcement and lets the clear bi-lingual display over the doors do the job:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4626557474586894517
It would have been nice if JR had done the same!
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
What do you do when you've got a vast and complex train system with an incredible number of stations, and you want to have a recording telling people what the next station is? A coupe of options might be:
a) Have someone read through a list of stations, reading "The next stop is Tokyo Station"; "The next stop is "Yurakucho Station"; "The next stop is Shinbashi Station". The resulting recordings would differ slightly from one station to another - a shocking concept - almost like real speech!
b) Have someone make a single recording saying "The next station is....." and then give them a list of stations to read "Tokyo"; "Yurakucho"; "Shinbashi". Use the single recording for all stations; just dropping in the relevant station name at the end. A "benefit" of this is that all the recordings will be uniform. The disadvantage is that it sounds unreal, because... well... it *is* unreal! And then this Frankenstein creation gets worse; 'Frankenstein monster, meet Dr. Clone!'
The "B" route seems to be what JR has done with its English announcements, although that single template sentence may be different for different lines... (the recordings that torment me on a regular basis are the ones on the Yamanote Line and the Chuo Line).
What prompts this rant? I took a video clip of the station display screen (there's also one displaying ads, news & weather) over one of the doors (there are a pair of displays over every door), including the audio file that was playing at the time I made the clip. After ranting up a storm about the recordings, I played back the video clip, thinking "I wonder how this will sound to someone who hasn't yet been tortured with this recording..." as the clip began.
How did it sound with that mindset? Not so bad! But - and this a very large "but" - keep in mind that the announcement is likely played quite a bit more loudly on the train than you're hearing it on your computer, and also that (except for the station name part), as you ride the train and it stops at one station after another, you're forced to listen to that same recording over and over and over....
Anyway - here's a video clip (and recording) from the Yamanote Line:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4075315375439017139
And by way of contrast, here's a video clip of a Toyoko Line train, which very sensibly skips an English announcement and lets the clear bi-lingual display over the doors do the job:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4626557474586894517
It would have been nice if JR had done the same!
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Sunday, April 06, 2008
"English Train Announcements (In Japan) - Why?"
In newer trains in Tokyo, they have bilingual (Japanese & English) displays over the doors on the inside of the train, as well as bilingual displays on the outside of the train (on the front, rear, and sides), not to mention bilingual signs on the station platforms. Great stuff - the long-term citizens of the country get to see their own language, and hapless tourists and businesspeople get an International language more widely recognized than Japanese.
What's not so great is the horrible audio; recorded announcements relentlessly assaulting everyone's ears before and after every station. What's wrong with English language announcements on Tokyo trains?
- First off, they are unneeded. "Shinjuku" in Japanese is also "Shinjuku" in English, "Nakano" in Japanese is "Nakano" in English... except when you get some mono-linguist who can't speak the local language to say it - like they have done for the JR announcements - and they pronounce it "NaKAno". Grrrrrr..!
- Bad education! When people ride a train every day, week-after-week, month-after-month, and year-after-year, and every time, their ears and minds are assaulted with the very same badly pronounced station names - I wouldn't be surprised if children here start calling Yotsuya "YoTSUya" like the bloody announcement on JR trains! And even if it's not bad education, it's disgusting to listen to! It's sound pollution! Yamete kudasai yo!
- The English parts of the announcements, although said with an irritatingly hard and twangy voice, are at least pronounced correctly (with an American accent). BUT - they are said at one-third speed, as though an over-eager kindergarten teacher is trying too hard to super-pronounce every single word, and to leave miles of space between each word for easy comprehension. I think even if English was my seventh and most poorly understood language, that way of "speaking" the language would still be highly irritating to listen to! Kanben shite kure yo!
- The audio assault English announcements (unneeded & unwanted) are played louder than the Japanese announcements!! Why??? Is it some kind of mental torture cleverly devised to ease crowding a little by getting people to walk or cycle to work, rather than face the horrible sound waves broadcast on the trains?
- In one of the announcements (about smoking, or babies or something), it sounds as though the woman badly needs to clear her throat... and you stand there on the train - involuntarily clearing your throat - and you think "Over time, millions - millions of people are going to hear the announcement and they couldn't be bothered to rerecord a bad spot?!? Incredible!! Astounding!! Outrageous!! Unforgivable!! And - oh so amazingly irritating!!! Grrrrrrrrrr!!!!!"
And... that's basically it. I realize the announcements are intended to be helpful, but they're really not needed (or wanted), and if they must be there, it sure would be nice if they could turn the volume down on them and rerecord them in a more natural sounding way. But really - they're not needed! They really aren't! Even tourists would rather take in the ambiance of a foreign country - enhanced by listening to cool Japanese announcements. Who is happy with those profoundly irritating English announcements? Maybe one person out of 333,333 - or less! Arigata-meiwaku desu!
Rant over....
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
What's not so great is the horrible audio; recorded announcements relentlessly assaulting everyone's ears before and after every station. What's wrong with English language announcements on Tokyo trains?
- First off, they are unneeded. "Shinjuku" in Japanese is also "Shinjuku" in English, "Nakano" in Japanese is "Nakano" in English... except when you get some mono-linguist who can't speak the local language to say it - like they have done for the JR announcements - and they pronounce it "NaKAno". Grrrrrr..!
- Bad education! When people ride a train every day, week-after-week, month-after-month, and year-after-year, and every time, their ears and minds are assaulted with the very same badly pronounced station names - I wouldn't be surprised if children here start calling Yotsuya "YoTSUya" like the bloody announcement on JR trains! And even if it's not bad education, it's disgusting to listen to! It's sound pollution! Yamete kudasai yo!
- The English parts of the announcements, although said with an irritatingly hard and twangy voice, are at least pronounced correctly (with an American accent). BUT - they are said at one-third speed, as though an over-eager kindergarten teacher is trying too hard to super-pronounce every single word, and to leave miles of space between each word for easy comprehension. I think even if English was my seventh and most poorly understood language, that way of "speaking" the language would still be highly irritating to listen to! Kanben shite kure yo!
- The audio assault English announcements (unneeded & unwanted) are played louder than the Japanese announcements!! Why??? Is it some kind of mental torture cleverly devised to ease crowding a little by getting people to walk or cycle to work, rather than face the horrible sound waves broadcast on the trains?
- In one of the announcements (about smoking, or babies or something), it sounds as though the woman badly needs to clear her throat... and you stand there on the train - involuntarily clearing your throat - and you think "Over time, millions - millions of people are going to hear the announcement and they couldn't be bothered to rerecord a bad spot?!? Incredible!! Astounding!! Outrageous!! Unforgivable!! And - oh so amazingly irritating!!! Grrrrrrrrrr!!!!!"
And... that's basically it. I realize the announcements are intended to be helpful, but they're really not needed (or wanted), and if they must be there, it sure would be nice if they could turn the volume down on them and rerecord them in a more natural sounding way. But really - they're not needed! They really aren't! Even tourists would rather take in the ambiance of a foreign country - enhanced by listening to cool Japanese announcements. Who is happy with those profoundly irritating English announcements? Maybe one person out of 333,333 - or less! Arigata-meiwaku desu!
Rant over....
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Monday, March 31, 2008
"Oh Yeah... That's How it Was..."
Being with someone over a period of years, you know they (and yourself) are changing, but it doesn't seem like so much - until you take a look at a picture taken fifteen years ago, and suddenly the contrast is quite stark. The first reaction is a kind of shock, and then as you stare at the photo, the previous time drifts back into present day consciousness and the huge change between then and now is inescapable, not to mention the way the forgotten ambiance of the old "present" time comes back to haunt you.
And so it is with the many videos I'm watching that I took from 1990-92. In the flow of time from 1990 to 2008, many momentous things have happened, but on a day-to-day basis, it was just time flowing forward, and major change is something I abstractly imagined for the future, but never perceived in the way a time machine blast to the future would have put the changes in stark contrast to what was (or "is" if it's the "future").
Not by way of illustration, but just because it happened to come up today - here's a video clip of a railway employee punching tickets by hand.
"Hand-Punched Ticket Gates in 1990 Tokyo at Shinjuku Station"
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-28511952765748213
I don't how soon (or late) other countries automated their ticket gates, but with the trains in Tokyo, automatic ticket gates started appearing at one station after another in 1991, and the only line I can think of off-hand that still does it by hand is the Chichibu Line in Saitama, although I'm sure there must be branch lines here and there away from the major city centers that still get by without modern machinery for taking and issuing tickets.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
And so it is with the many videos I'm watching that I took from 1990-92. In the flow of time from 1990 to 2008, many momentous things have happened, but on a day-to-day basis, it was just time flowing forward, and major change is something I abstractly imagined for the future, but never perceived in the way a time machine blast to the future would have put the changes in stark contrast to what was (or "is" if it's the "future").
Not by way of illustration, but just because it happened to come up today - here's a video clip of a railway employee punching tickets by hand.
"Hand-Punched Ticket Gates in 1990 Tokyo at Shinjuku Station"
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-28511952765748213
I don't how soon (or late) other countries automated their ticket gates, but with the trains in Tokyo, automatic ticket gates started appearing at one station after another in 1991, and the only line I can think of off-hand that still does it by hand is the Chichibu Line in Saitama, although I'm sure there must be branch lines here and there away from the major city centers that still get by without modern machinery for taking and issuing tickets.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Friday, March 28, 2008
"Dust & Pollen... Sniffle"
For the past few years, every spring the media cranks up the "the tree pollen this spring is worse than before..." reports, and - this year in particular - I do believe they're right. Pretty much non-stop for the past three weeks or so I've had itchy and/or sore eyes, runny nose, sneezing fits, etc. The story is that after the war, they planted a fast-growing type of pine tree ('sugi' in Japanese) forming near-mono cultures in the mountains, and now these trees dump massive amounts of pollen into the air every spring.
And something I hadn't picked up before, but hear isn't new - apparently, there is an increasing amount of dust blowing in from China's deserts - and one sand storm I even witnessed myself. I wouldn't have though that sand from deserts in China would ride the winds all the way to Japan, but the winds are strong, the sand particles are small....
And so it was that - on the way home - I dropped by a park to see the cherry trees in blossom, armed with a towel in one hand and a camera in the other. It was a typical experience for this time of year, except for one detail.
At the entrance to the back side of the park (where most of the cherry blossom trees are) , I noticed a sign saying that cherry blossom viewing ("hanami") was only allowed until 9:00 p.m., and it warned people not to sing karaoke (good, good) or play music, and - get this - not to talk too loudly! I looked over at the large pricey houses bordering the park and thought "What's this? Did one of you guys complain to city hall about the noise? Do you think this park is your personal property or something?".
An over-reaction I suppose, but I remembered an article I'd read about a park in Nishi-Tokyo-shi that had some sort of sprinklers for kids to run around in the summer. Great idea. But they shut them down. Why? One neighbor complained that they could hear the sound of children playing and it disturbed them.(!!) What blows my mind is that one deranged lunatic is listened to and the sentiments of thinking people are ignored. A person can't stand the sound of children playing in a park? They they should move to the Sahara Desert, or Mars, or something.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
And something I hadn't picked up before, but hear isn't new - apparently, there is an increasing amount of dust blowing in from China's deserts - and one sand storm I even witnessed myself. I wouldn't have though that sand from deserts in China would ride the winds all the way to Japan, but the winds are strong, the sand particles are small....
And so it was that - on the way home - I dropped by a park to see the cherry trees in blossom, armed with a towel in one hand and a camera in the other. It was a typical experience for this time of year, except for one detail.
At the entrance to the back side of the park (where most of the cherry blossom trees are) , I noticed a sign saying that cherry blossom viewing ("hanami") was only allowed until 9:00 p.m., and it warned people not to sing karaoke (good, good) or play music, and - get this - not to talk too loudly! I looked over at the large pricey houses bordering the park and thought "What's this? Did one of you guys complain to city hall about the noise? Do you think this park is your personal property or something?".
An over-reaction I suppose, but I remembered an article I'd read about a park in Nishi-Tokyo-shi that had some sort of sprinklers for kids to run around in the summer. Great idea. But they shut them down. Why? One neighbor complained that they could hear the sound of children playing and it disturbed them.(!!) What blows my mind is that one deranged lunatic is listened to and the sentiments of thinking people are ignored. A person can't stand the sound of children playing in a park? They they should move to the Sahara Desert, or Mars, or something.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Sunday, March 23, 2008
That Train Before? Half-Empty! Here's the Real Thing...
I accidentally sent a video of a half empty train before when I was trying to show how crowded it gets sometimes - here's the real thing:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5127313249780524359
2013/06/23 Update: Video Google was discontinued and so the above link no longer works. Here's the video on YouTube:
Actually Full Train in 1991 (Why Flex Time is a Good Idea)
http://youtu.be/Lf8Ig2M3Zq0
(As posted with the video):
I have nothing but the highest respect and admiration for the Tokyo train system - but even this fine system running like clockwork has its limits. This video was taken in 1991 and things have improved somewhat due to increased trains and (more importantly) flex-time being allowed at many companies, but even now, when something throws the trains a little off schedule (someone taking the express checkout from life by jumping in front of a train, etc.), then things can be as shown in the video. 30,000,000 people is a lot of work to move about!
This video has been relentlessly copied by a lot of people - none with my permission. It's my video and I retain all rights to it.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5127313249780524359
2013/06/23 Update: Video Google was discontinued and so the above link no longer works. Here's the video on YouTube:
Actually Full Train in 1991 (Why Flex Time is a Good Idea)
http://youtu.be/Lf8Ig2M3Zq0
(As posted with the video):
I have nothing but the highest respect and admiration for the Tokyo train system - but even this fine system running like clockwork has its limits. This video was taken in 1991 and things have improved somewhat due to increased trains and (more importantly) flex-time being allowed at many companies, but even now, when something throws the trains a little off schedule (someone taking the express checkout from life by jumping in front of a train, etc.), then things can be as shown in the video. 30,000,000 people is a lot of work to move about!
This video has been relentlessly copied by a lot of people - none with my permission. It's my video and I retain all rights to it.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Friday, March 21, 2008
"Iikagen-ni-shiro!"
Just when I'm trying to be careful and quietly get myself safely to work without incident, I get on the Yamanote Line and suddenly there's someone pushing against the right side of my back as I get on - and as the doors close, they're still pushing away. Meanwhile, there's a man to my left and the closed doors straight ahead - no where to go! The person keeps pushing in a strange way - the way someone might if they are from Mars and they're used to riding completely empty trains and don't understand what the Tokyo morning crush-rush consists of.
I tried to ignore it, but as the person kept pushing at me, I started thinking about it... it seemed less like someone really in a pinch and needing space than someone being weird, so I looked back and discovered a very mean looking woman in her fifties with one of those profoundly ugly brown bags from one of the "brand" bag sellers (good gig - I wish I was in on the money generated by those things - so long as I didn't have to look at them!), who has enough space for two people and has her bag arranged sideways so it pokes into my back, and is holding out a book to read with one hand and shoving at me with the other....
Gentle readers not intimately familiar with Tokyo's very high-density train system, you may even think that's normal behavior. No. It's not. Not in general, and certainly not during the morning crush-rush. As I took in that scene - 1) mean-spirited obatarian, 2) hideous brown bag being used not only as a visual eye-sore, but as a physical weapon, and 3) enough space for two people... something snapped and I spun around (knocking her off balance, since she was pushing on me with all her might) and told her "Iikagen-ni shiro!" (something like "That's enough!" or "Stop it already!"). (The expression is stronger in Japanese than that translation makes it seem). Her snarling expression changed to one of shocked surprise, and I turned around and faced the window again - getting off at the next station.
Agggghhhh.... I don't want to be be in conflict! This is what is typically (and relatively recently) called "kireru" (to snap, or lose control). Even in the cool of several-hours-later tonight, I still think that obatarian needed to have someone tell her that (she wasn't behaving like a civilized human being) - I just wish it was someone else and not me! I want to peacefully commute to work! I don't want to battle my way there! Mattaku!
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
I tried to ignore it, but as the person kept pushing at me, I started thinking about it... it seemed less like someone really in a pinch and needing space than someone being weird, so I looked back and discovered a very mean looking woman in her fifties with one of those profoundly ugly brown bags from one of the "brand" bag sellers (good gig - I wish I was in on the money generated by those things - so long as I didn't have to look at them!), who has enough space for two people and has her bag arranged sideways so it pokes into my back, and is holding out a book to read with one hand and shoving at me with the other....
Gentle readers not intimately familiar with Tokyo's very high-density train system, you may even think that's normal behavior. No. It's not. Not in general, and certainly not during the morning crush-rush. As I took in that scene - 1) mean-spirited obatarian, 2) hideous brown bag being used not only as a visual eye-sore, but as a physical weapon, and 3) enough space for two people... something snapped and I spun around (knocking her off balance, since she was pushing on me with all her might) and told her "Iikagen-ni shiro!" (something like "That's enough!" or "Stop it already!"). (The expression is stronger in Japanese than that translation makes it seem). Her snarling expression changed to one of shocked surprise, and I turned around and faced the window again - getting off at the next station.
Agggghhhh.... I don't want to be be in conflict! This is what is typically (and relatively recently) called "kireru" (to snap, or lose control). Even in the cool of several-hours-later tonight, I still think that obatarian needed to have someone tell her that (she wasn't behaving like a civilized human being) - I just wish it was someone else and not me! I want to peacefully commute to work! I don't want to battle my way there! Mattaku!
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Thursday, March 20, 2008
"Anti-Mobile Phone Fanatics"
When mobile phones first got small and cheap, it was pretty common to hear a new user talking on one on the train - typically saying something like "Guess where I am right now? - On the Yamanote Line!! I just got my own mobile phone!", or just talking loudly & proudly - suddenly having the freedom to talk on the phone anywhere!
The next step - after cell phones were becoming commonplace - was to encourage people not to talk on the phone on the train unless they really needed to, as the noise could disturb other passengers. About this time, cell phone e-mail kicked in, so was well and good.
Then... they reported that there was a possibility of someone with a cell phone causing interference with a pacemaker and killing someone dead. I don't think there has been so much as a single incidence of this actually happening at any time or any place in the country , but this gave some anti-mobile phone nut cases ammunition to go around verbally attacking people for having a cell phone in their hand. There are even two individuals that I've run into several times (the chances of this happening in a mega-city of 30,000,000 people are not so strong!), who are really wacky.
One is this woman in her late forties or maybe early fifties who - each time she sees someone with a cell phone in their hand - goes over to them and says with a life-or-death urgency "Yamete! Yamete! Yamete!" ("Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!). This might even be okay (sort of... if said in a more human-like manner) if it were in the priority seat area, which is the official area to turn the power of your mobile phone off, lest people start falling over dead left and right, but this attack-creature strikes all and sundry in any part of the train she's in (I've seen her two or three times on one line and once on a different line).
The other attack-biped I've seen several times, is this short, thin man in his twenties, who verbally attacks anyone he sees with a cell phone out in their hand ("What are you doing?! You could poke someone with that!"). Certainly there are some people who will jam their cell phones into people's backs while they're text-messaging on an overly crowded train, but every time I've seen this guy, the train hasn't been especially crowded, so I don't think there was any issue that a normal biped would feel driven to loudly complain about.
What prompts me to bring this up? On the Sardine Run home this evening, an argument broke out half-way down the train car. One (older-sounding) man loudly accused a (younger-sounding) man of poking him with his cell phone. The younger man less loudly denied the accusation, to which the older man accused him of it again in a still louder voice.
I had gotten on the train at its first station, so I was able to wait for an empty train and thus grab a seat. Sitting in my seat comfortably reading a magazine, I and my seat-mates (and nearby standing passengers) looked towards the direction from where the sounds were coming (we couldn't see anything from the seats - maybe the standing people could) with just a very slight sense of minor alarm. Even if things became more heated, the train was crowded enough that the two warriors wouldn't be able to move down the train car.
So how did that turn out? After the heated exchange, presumably the younger man backed down, as there were no more battle noises over mobile phones for the rest of the trip.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
The next step - after cell phones were becoming commonplace - was to encourage people not to talk on the phone on the train unless they really needed to, as the noise could disturb other passengers. About this time, cell phone e-mail kicked in, so was well and good.
Then... they reported that there was a possibility of someone with a cell phone causing interference with a pacemaker and killing someone dead. I don't think there has been so much as a single incidence of this actually happening at any time or any place in the country , but this gave some anti-mobile phone nut cases ammunition to go around verbally attacking people for having a cell phone in their hand. There are even two individuals that I've run into several times (the chances of this happening in a mega-city of 30,000,000 people are not so strong!), who are really wacky.
One is this woman in her late forties or maybe early fifties who - each time she sees someone with a cell phone in their hand - goes over to them and says with a life-or-death urgency "Yamete! Yamete! Yamete!" ("Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!). This might even be okay (sort of... if said in a more human-like manner) if it were in the priority seat area, which is the official area to turn the power of your mobile phone off, lest people start falling over dead left and right, but this attack-creature strikes all and sundry in any part of the train she's in (I've seen her two or three times on one line and once on a different line).
The other attack-biped I've seen several times, is this short, thin man in his twenties, who verbally attacks anyone he sees with a cell phone out in their hand ("What are you doing?! You could poke someone with that!"). Certainly there are some people who will jam their cell phones into people's backs while they're text-messaging on an overly crowded train, but every time I've seen this guy, the train hasn't been especially crowded, so I don't think there was any issue that a normal biped would feel driven to loudly complain about.
What prompts me to bring this up? On the Sardine Run home this evening, an argument broke out half-way down the train car. One (older-sounding) man loudly accused a (younger-sounding) man of poking him with his cell phone. The younger man less loudly denied the accusation, to which the older man accused him of it again in a still louder voice.
I had gotten on the train at its first station, so I was able to wait for an empty train and thus grab a seat. Sitting in my seat comfortably reading a magazine, I and my seat-mates (and nearby standing passengers) looked towards the direction from where the sounds were coming (we couldn't see anything from the seats - maybe the standing people could) with just a very slight sense of minor alarm. Even if things became more heated, the train was crowded enough that the two warriors wouldn't be able to move down the train car.
So how did that turn out? After the heated exchange, presumably the younger man backed down, as there were no more battle noises over mobile phones for the rest of the trip.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
"Memory Corruption"
I've been looking at several hours of video tape I took (from 1990-92) that has been sleeping in one closet or another unwatched over the past 16-18 years. Somewhat expected has been the sensation of coming face to face with several of my own personal experiences that I had forgotten happened. While watching these experiences again, most of them come back, but some seem strangely missing.
That's not too big of a deal, but what was almost completely unexpected and a bit dismaying are some experiences I have often remembered over the years, that - now that I'm watching them exactly as they happened, enshrined on the tape - I'm shocked to discover that the version in my memory, which I had believed to be spot-on accurate, is often slightly different than the version on the videotape, which I must believe - especially since I took it myself! But more on that aspect later....
Back to forgotten memories. One example is three hours of tape I took in and around Tokyo Station on a single day in 1991. I had obviously decided to focus on Tokyo Station and I spent an entire day and evening there walking the platforms, diving into trains for a few minutes before they began a new journey (Tokyo is a terminal stop for some lines, so there's enough of a lag between arrival and the next departure in the opposite direction, to have a quick look inside), walking in the hallways of the Tokyo Station Hotel (now defunct), and walking around the surrounding station area a little.
A bit of time and effort went into that, and yet I can't remember making a decision to do it... well... wait... after thinking about it for the past 36 hours or so, I seem to remember deciding to focus on something in detail instead of doing my usual deal where I would get off at one station, walk around all day in one direction or another, and then, late in the evening, look for a train line - any train line - to begin the journey home on. But it's a faint memory and I can't quite remember myself doing what I see myself doing in the video images taken that day. Obviously, spending a day exploring Tokyo Station wasn't interesting enough to me to warrant thinking about again after I had done it. And so the memory was lost, and I find myself looking at myself (I used to periodically record myself at arm's length making commentary) and the very things I saw from my own vantage point, and it almost seems like it's another person doing what I'm watching. (In one sense it was - 17 years have wrought a different man in some ways.)
Now... for the really disturbing aspect to looking again at my life recorded on videotape in 1991. In watching the things I have remembered and thought about over the years, I kept wondering why my memory didn't hold on to a precisely accurate recording of what happened. It was fairly accurate, but why not spot-on 100% accurate? In the middle of reviewing the tapes, I listened to a radio interview with a researcher who has been studying how people's brains work, and there was a fascinating thing that came up in the discussion about how memory works. Apparently the researchers discovered that, rather than the brain re-accessing a static recording of an event, when it is recalled and thought about, it is overwrite re-recorded! So just recalling it, thinking about it, and remembering it, alters it! Revelation! Shock! Dismay! No wonder PR and advertising work only too well! Hammer away at people and give them an altered, inaccurate version of the truth (otherwise known as lies) and the brain will have a tendency to believe the story as fact after a while.
Groan! We're doomed! Well... wait. There is recording! Writing, cameras, video.... By way of (frivolous) example, thanks to my videotape, I can now give you a far more accurate view of 1991 than I could have before revisiting 1991 via the tapes (and there are a lot of them - 20 hours for June alone). Modern TV shows and movies here in Japan now portray the "bubble economy" years as a time of living it up, but that was only true for a very tiny percentage of the population. When I see kids playing on a shitamachi street in my 1991 video, it brings to mind how inaccurate modern portrayals of the time are. And I was there! Even though I was in Japan for every single day of the bubble years, the modern movies still influenced my memories of the times! History from previous generations? I have to wonder how accurate it can be if very recent history is already distorted!
The conclusion must be that recording things (by writing them down, taking photos, etc.) is absolutely vital to maintaining some kind of accuracy in history.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
That's not too big of a deal, but what was almost completely unexpected and a bit dismaying are some experiences I have often remembered over the years, that - now that I'm watching them exactly as they happened, enshrined on the tape - I'm shocked to discover that the version in my memory, which I had believed to be spot-on accurate, is often slightly different than the version on the videotape, which I must believe - especially since I took it myself! But more on that aspect later....
Back to forgotten memories. One example is three hours of tape I took in and around Tokyo Station on a single day in 1991. I had obviously decided to focus on Tokyo Station and I spent an entire day and evening there walking the platforms, diving into trains for a few minutes before they began a new journey (Tokyo is a terminal stop for some lines, so there's enough of a lag between arrival and the next departure in the opposite direction, to have a quick look inside), walking in the hallways of the Tokyo Station Hotel (now defunct), and walking around the surrounding station area a little.
A bit of time and effort went into that, and yet I can't remember making a decision to do it... well... wait... after thinking about it for the past 36 hours or so, I seem to remember deciding to focus on something in detail instead of doing my usual deal where I would get off at one station, walk around all day in one direction or another, and then, late in the evening, look for a train line - any train line - to begin the journey home on. But it's a faint memory and I can't quite remember myself doing what I see myself doing in the video images taken that day. Obviously, spending a day exploring Tokyo Station wasn't interesting enough to me to warrant thinking about again after I had done it. And so the memory was lost, and I find myself looking at myself (I used to periodically record myself at arm's length making commentary) and the very things I saw from my own vantage point, and it almost seems like it's another person doing what I'm watching. (In one sense it was - 17 years have wrought a different man in some ways.)
Now... for the really disturbing aspect to looking again at my life recorded on videotape in 1991. In watching the things I have remembered and thought about over the years, I kept wondering why my memory didn't hold on to a precisely accurate recording of what happened. It was fairly accurate, but why not spot-on 100% accurate? In the middle of reviewing the tapes, I listened to a radio interview with a researcher who has been studying how people's brains work, and there was a fascinating thing that came up in the discussion about how memory works. Apparently the researchers discovered that, rather than the brain re-accessing a static recording of an event, when it is recalled and thought about, it is overwrite re-recorded! So just recalling it, thinking about it, and remembering it, alters it! Revelation! Shock! Dismay! No wonder PR and advertising work only too well! Hammer away at people and give them an altered, inaccurate version of the truth (otherwise known as lies) and the brain will have a tendency to believe the story as fact after a while.
Groan! We're doomed! Well... wait. There is recording! Writing, cameras, video.... By way of (frivolous) example, thanks to my videotape, I can now give you a far more accurate view of 1991 than I could have before revisiting 1991 via the tapes (and there are a lot of them - 20 hours for June alone). Modern TV shows and movies here in Japan now portray the "bubble economy" years as a time of living it up, but that was only true for a very tiny percentage of the population. When I see kids playing on a shitamachi street in my 1991 video, it brings to mind how inaccurate modern portrayals of the time are. And I was there! Even though I was in Japan for every single day of the bubble years, the modern movies still influenced my memories of the times! History from previous generations? I have to wonder how accurate it can be if very recent history is already distorted!
The conclusion must be that recording things (by writing them down, taking photos, etc.) is absolutely vital to maintaining some kind of accuracy in history.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Saturday, March 15, 2008
"Air Flow & Oxygen"
Yesterday at work, I was feeling like it was as hot as the Sahara Desert, so I checked my thermometer and confirmed the sensation with the scientific information that it was 28 degrees (28C - 82.4F). Being a modern building, none of the windows are openable; and being the era in which we are currently living, all doors are security lock protected, so the doors to the emergency stairwells (which do have openable windows) must be kept shut at all times (other than momentarily being opened for entry and exit).
The result is that not only is it very uncomfortably hot (something that could be adjusted, except there are several sickly people on the floor who act as though they will drop over dead from frostbite if the temperature drops below about 25C), but the air is very stale and so the combination of hot and stuffy makes it feel even hotter still. Add to this the fact that the approximately 120 people sharing the same space are all consuming oxygen, and you have a fairly hellish workspace air-quality wise. It's a shame too, because otherwise, it's a good group of people and it should be a pleasant place to work. If only I didn't have to work while fighting off the sensation of approaching death from heat and lack of oxygen.
This is something I really envy past generations - who were able to work in buildings with openable windows. ISO energy savings are a good thing, but the amount of oxygen in the air and the general quality of the air should also be taken into consideration - if there are to be oxygen-fueled bipeds working in the space that is. Fill it up with machinery and keep the bipeds out, and there's no need for oxygen, but if people are working there... please give us some more live-giving oxygen!
It's the same thing with new trains - they've done away with the roof vents, and made half the windows are unopenable. Even the openable ones people seem to be afraid to open. Here's the other thing - not only is new design putting us into sealed boxes, but too many people seem to think that's just fine. I guess they have special low-oxygen demand bodies? Or... they're getting sicker and sicker and don't even know it? When I see someone sitting in 27-degree heat with a blanket on because they feel cold, I can't believe that they're healthy.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
The result is that not only is it very uncomfortably hot (something that could be adjusted, except there are several sickly people on the floor who act as though they will drop over dead from frostbite if the temperature drops below about 25C), but the air is very stale and so the combination of hot and stuffy makes it feel even hotter still. Add to this the fact that the approximately 120 people sharing the same space are all consuming oxygen, and you have a fairly hellish workspace air-quality wise. It's a shame too, because otherwise, it's a good group of people and it should be a pleasant place to work. If only I didn't have to work while fighting off the sensation of approaching death from heat and lack of oxygen.
This is something I really envy past generations - who were able to work in buildings with openable windows. ISO energy savings are a good thing, but the amount of oxygen in the air and the general quality of the air should also be taken into consideration - if there are to be oxygen-fueled bipeds working in the space that is. Fill it up with machinery and keep the bipeds out, and there's no need for oxygen, but if people are working there... please give us some more live-giving oxygen!
It's the same thing with new trains - they've done away with the roof vents, and made half the windows are unopenable. Even the openable ones people seem to be afraid to open. Here's the other thing - not only is new design putting us into sealed boxes, but too many people seem to think that's just fine. I guess they have special low-oxygen demand bodies? Or... they're getting sicker and sicker and don't even know it? When I see someone sitting in 27-degree heat with a blanket on because they feel cold, I can't believe that they're healthy.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Friday, March 14, 2008
"White Day"
March 14th, "White Day" in a Japan. A holiday reportedly begun by confectionery companies wanting to cash in on more chocolate sales following Valentine's Day. On Valentine's Day, women give men chocolate, and on "White Day", men give women chocolate. Westerner's living here don't necessarily go along with this however, so on Valentine's Day, you'll see a long line of women buying chocolate with a lone western man in line. On "White Day", the stores are pushing chocolate, but I never see lines (of any kind of biped) the way there are on Valentine's Day.
The idea seems to be that a woman will give a man she's interested in a Valentine's Day chocolate, and if the man is interested, he will follow up by giving her a "White Day" chocolate. I'd always heard that the "white" in that came from white chocolate, but a quick look at a Wikipedia entry says that it may have started with a marshmallow manufacturer and then spread to chocolate from there. Seems sort of plausible, although certainly not widely known! I'm a little skeptical, come to think of it. Why would you want to give someone marshmallows?)
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
The idea seems to be that a woman will give a man she's interested in a Valentine's Day chocolate, and if the man is interested, he will follow up by giving her a "White Day" chocolate. I'd always heard that the "white" in that came from white chocolate, but a quick look at a Wikipedia entry says that it may have started with a marshmallow manufacturer and then spread to chocolate from there. Seems sort of plausible, although certainly not widely known! I'm a little skeptical, come to think of it. Why would you want to give someone marshmallows?)
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
"You Don't Get Used To It"
I was nearly knocked over by this man while getting off one of the four trains I take to work every morning. Feeling that it wasn't necessary, and in an anger flash that bypassed reasonable thinking, I reached out my fist, placed it against the very top left corner of his chest (his shoulder really), and pushed with a "Hey you!" intent. It wasn't a punch, and it wasn't a strong push. Certainly it's a good thing I didn't go stark-raving-mad and actually punch him, which would be considered assault. What's bad though, is that if he decides to lie and say that I punched him, and he gets someone to say that I used my fist, he could make a lot of trouble for me.
I was depressed all day about this, thinking that I can't let myself lose control of absolute reason when in a situation like that. I mentioned it to a guy at work and he said "I would think you'd be used to that sort of thing by now".
Yeah... you might think so, but generally that's not how it works. The more bad experiences you have, the more hypersensitive you become to them. Twenty, ten, or five years ago, I would never have done that. But the unpleasant things that have happened to me over the past 24 years of being out on the public transportation system have built up to the point where I think I'm either going to have to arrange to come in earlier to work (to get myself into a lower pressure commuting time zone), or else move within walking distance of the company.
Tomorrow morning... I probably should get on a completely different part of the train. An obvious solution? It's not that simple. Losing around thirty seconds at the disembarkation transfer point of that train could make me miss the next express, and then end up being fifteen minutes late for work. I need to be near the exit.
Something needs to change. Punching people is no answer. But then neither is laying down and being trampled on. How to remain civil and still retain a tiny bit of dignity and self esteem.....
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
I was depressed all day about this, thinking that I can't let myself lose control of absolute reason when in a situation like that. I mentioned it to a guy at work and he said "I would think you'd be used to that sort of thing by now".
Yeah... you might think so, but generally that's not how it works. The more bad experiences you have, the more hypersensitive you become to them. Twenty, ten, or five years ago, I would never have done that. But the unpleasant things that have happened to me over the past 24 years of being out on the public transportation system have built up to the point where I think I'm either going to have to arrange to come in earlier to work (to get myself into a lower pressure commuting time zone), or else move within walking distance of the company.
Tomorrow morning... I probably should get on a completely different part of the train. An obvious solution? It's not that simple. Losing around thirty seconds at the disembarkation transfer point of that train could make me miss the next express, and then end up being fifteen minutes late for work. I need to be near the exit.
Something needs to change. Punching people is no answer. But then neither is laying down and being trampled on. How to remain civil and still retain a tiny bit of dignity and self esteem.....
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Sunday, March 09, 2008
"The Sardine Run (Tokyo-1991)"
The Tokyo train system is a fantastic system, and it's constantly being improved upon. Nevertheless, moving 30,000,000 people about, leads to some crowding on some lines at some times..... This video was taken in 1991, but when a train is really packed, the situation is the same today.
So, to my Japanese friends, please believe me when I say that I have nothing but the greatest respect for for the Tokyo Train system. I think it's the best in the world. The reason I'm posting this, is that when I say to my foreign friends that I'm tired from the trains, and that the morning trains are so crowded... I don't think they believe me! So I want to show them what I'm talking about!
The video is of the Seibu Ikebukuro Line, which has implemented some track and train improvements since the video was taken. The system in fact, has never stopped growing for about six decades now. It just grows and grows! Still, I am nearly always (to one degree or another) basically in the same position today as the commuters in the 1991 video.
Well - here it is:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2611001367661571054
Let me know how that seems to you and how it compares to your own city's train system.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
So, to my Japanese friends, please believe me when I say that I have nothing but the greatest respect for for the Tokyo Train system. I think it's the best in the world. The reason I'm posting this, is that when I say to my foreign friends that I'm tired from the trains, and that the morning trains are so crowded... I don't think they believe me! So I want to show them what I'm talking about!
The video is of the Seibu Ikebukuro Line, which has implemented some track and train improvements since the video was taken. The system in fact, has never stopped growing for about six decades now. It just grows and grows! Still, I am nearly always (to one degree or another) basically in the same position today as the commuters in the 1991 video.
Well - here it is:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2611001367661571054
Let me know how that seems to you and how it compares to your own city's train system.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Friday, March 07, 2008
"Closer to the Process"
Part of what it takes to run an efficient train system is the constant replacement of older trains with newer ones. All well and good, but there are some drawbacks to the newest class of railway car - chief among them being less ventilation than the older ones (they've done away with the roof vents in the newest ones), and then there are things like motor noise....
A quieter train should be a good thing, but quieter is only good if you can relax. When you're packed in as a vertical sardine with a few hundred other sardines in the same train car, then distractions like wind noise and motor noise can be quite welcome as a distraction and indication of speed.
And... something else. The old type trains are manually run, with a throttle lever and a brake lever. The train is taken up to speed with the throttle, and then the throttle is cut back to zero and the train just coasts for a while, until it's lost enough speed that the throttle is thrown back on to get the speed back up. For braking, there's motor braking where the motors are basically turned into generators and some power is pumped back into the lines, and then the regular brakes are used towards the end of the stop.
I bring this up, because I go out to Mitaka from time to time on the Chuo Line and they've been phasing out the 1982 trains over the past year, to the point where there are only a few of the old trains left and soon those will be gone. Last week, I got on one of the old ones, and since it was running just about ten minutes in front of an express, the operator was racing between stations as fast as the train would go so as not to hold up the express (which passes the slower train at Mitaka). I was standing looking out a door window, listening to my MP3 player (Creative), and I could perceive how the operator was running the machinery (motor noise heard over the voice recording I was listening to). They got full on the throttle right out of each station, and left the throttle on full until the train was up to near its maximum speed (about 100km/h I think), at which time they cut the throttle and let the train coast for just ten seconds or so before starting fairly heavy braking for the next station.
So - big deal I guess... but there really is something to be said for sensing the speed of the train through the motor noise, wind leaking through the rattly windows a little, the sound of the metal doors rattling back and forth in their old worn tracks, etc. The more isolated we are from understanding how machinery works, the more numb & ignorant we become. Or not? I hope not.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
A quieter train should be a good thing, but quieter is only good if you can relax. When you're packed in as a vertical sardine with a few hundred other sardines in the same train car, then distractions like wind noise and motor noise can be quite welcome as a distraction and indication of speed.
And... something else. The old type trains are manually run, with a throttle lever and a brake lever. The train is taken up to speed with the throttle, and then the throttle is cut back to zero and the train just coasts for a while, until it's lost enough speed that the throttle is thrown back on to get the speed back up. For braking, there's motor braking where the motors are basically turned into generators and some power is pumped back into the lines, and then the regular brakes are used towards the end of the stop.
I bring this up, because I go out to Mitaka from time to time on the Chuo Line and they've been phasing out the 1982 trains over the past year, to the point where there are only a few of the old trains left and soon those will be gone. Last week, I got on one of the old ones, and since it was running just about ten minutes in front of an express, the operator was racing between stations as fast as the train would go so as not to hold up the express (which passes the slower train at Mitaka). I was standing looking out a door window, listening to my MP3 player (Creative), and I could perceive how the operator was running the machinery (motor noise heard over the voice recording I was listening to). They got full on the throttle right out of each station, and left the throttle on full until the train was up to near its maximum speed (about 100km/h I think), at which time they cut the throttle and let the train coast for just ten seconds or so before starting fairly heavy braking for the next station.
So - big deal I guess... but there really is something to be said for sensing the speed of the train through the motor noise, wind leaking through the rattly windows a little, the sound of the metal doors rattling back and forth in their old worn tracks, etc. The more isolated we are from understanding how machinery works, the more numb & ignorant we become. Or not? I hope not.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
"1991 Tokyo - Expensive Umbrellas & Long Hair"
In the day-to-day chain of living one day to the next, the world changing is not often striking, and so it has been with a bit of a shock that I've started watching my old videos taken in 1991. I didn't realize just how much things have changed since that time. It's not in the details so much as the feeling between the frames, but the details are connected in an obvious way, so that's what I'll focus on until I can come up with some sort of (hopefully) coherent bit of text that will at least hint at what it felt like to be walking the streets of Tokyo in 1991.
Why focus on 1991? Because I have about 200 hours of video from 1991! At the time, I nearly always carried a video camera with me wherever I went, and I had the thing fired up most of the time, taking a stream of pictures every minute or so. (I always carried several batteries, an extra two-hour tape, and in heavy usage from 1990 to 1992, I burned out four cameras.)
So - on to a few obvious detail differences in 1991:
- Many young women had long straight hair that reached halfway down their backs. This was most common among single women in their early twenties, but some high school girls also had it. Now it's practically unheard of.
- Y100 clear plastic umbrellas had yet to make an appearance, so umbrellas were more varied and more interesting when any crowd opened up a sea of them.
- It was right around this time that schoolgirl uniforms first began appearing as mini-skirts, but it was still unusual. In fact, this is something that was shocking at the time! You got used to school uniforms for girls always being long, and so the first time you saw a group of schoolgirls in mini-skirt uniforms, it seemed sort of... I hesitate to use the word, but it fits the feeling at the time: outrageous & almost shocking. (Not that I was distressed by the sight...).
- The vast majority of the ticket gates were still not automated, so you gave your ticket to an actual living human being. From this point forward though, they steadily installed automated ticket gates and now there are hardly any stations anywhere without the machines.
And a comment specifically for this video clip:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2988379136981680986
This was taken in the Oku-tama area of Tokyo, up near the mountains. It may not look like Tokyo, but it is. Probably by design, the western part of Tokyo reaches into the mountains, making it easier to lay claim to part of the watershed there.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Why focus on 1991? Because I have about 200 hours of video from 1991! At the time, I nearly always carried a video camera with me wherever I went, and I had the thing fired up most of the time, taking a stream of pictures every minute or so. (I always carried several batteries, an extra two-hour tape, and in heavy usage from 1990 to 1992, I burned out four cameras.)
So - on to a few obvious detail differences in 1991:
- Many young women had long straight hair that reached halfway down their backs. This was most common among single women in their early twenties, but some high school girls also had it. Now it's practically unheard of.
- Y100 clear plastic umbrellas had yet to make an appearance, so umbrellas were more varied and more interesting when any crowd opened up a sea of them.
- It was right around this time that schoolgirl uniforms first began appearing as mini-skirts, but it was still unusual. In fact, this is something that was shocking at the time! You got used to school uniforms for girls always being long, and so the first time you saw a group of schoolgirls in mini-skirt uniforms, it seemed sort of... I hesitate to use the word, but it fits the feeling at the time: outrageous & almost shocking. (Not that I was distressed by the sight...).
- The vast majority of the ticket gates were still not automated, so you gave your ticket to an actual living human being. From this point forward though, they steadily installed automated ticket gates and now there are hardly any stations anywhere without the machines.
And a comment specifically for this video clip:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2988379136981680986
This was taken in the Oku-tama area of Tokyo, up near the mountains. It may not look like Tokyo, but it is. Probably by design, the western part of Tokyo reaches into the mountains, making it easier to lay claim to part of the watershed there.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Sunday, March 02, 2008
"1991 Tokyo - Hibarigaoka Rain (July 1991)"
1991 - It was just before video camera manufacturers came out with stabilization technology, so there is some camera shake at telephoto lengths, but I tried to hold the camera steady and it's fairly stable at wider angles at least. I just figured out today how to pull a small bit out of a two-hour digital transfer from 8mm analog tape, so it's more haphazard than anything, but the rain seemed sort of interesting (to me anyway), so I grabbed that as a test. I'll try to find more interesting bits for the next video post....
The out-of-sight opening on the right of the frame that people are running to, is the side entrance to Hibarigaoka Station on the Ikebukuro Line in Tokyo.
The short clip is here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=592706179792646501&hl=en
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
The out-of-sight opening on the right of the frame that people are running to, is the side entrance to Hibarigaoka Station on the Ikebukuro Line in Tokyo.
The short clip is here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=592706179792646501&hl=en
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Thursday, February 28, 2008
"Mr. Foot-Kicker"
The ride into work today wasn't overly bad, but Mr. Foot-Kicker was standing next to me and he kicked my foot about twenty times on the way into town. The first five or six times I thought he was just accidentally acting like the big sub-human neanderthal bear he looked like, but after being kicked (and fairly hard, not the usual light accidental tap) about fifteen times, I had to consider the possibility that it was intentional.
The train finally reached my station, and as I got off (receiving a final parting kick from that low-life critter), I walked over to the next train and pondered what to do about it if the beast assaulted my foot again tomorrow. Visions of hitting the emergency door release and throwing him off the train at speed leaped to mind, but that's what bottled up frustration does to the imagination. Getting back on an even keel, I could only think of talking to him - something like this (in Japanese):
"Hi there. How are you today? Is there some reason that you have to haul off and kick me every 90 seconds? Would you mind stopping that please?"
If I'm lucky, the beast will have crawled back under a rock or gone back to its cage at the zoo, and I'll never have to see it again, but no - I see that bugger from time to time on the train, so it'll likely be (shudder-shudder) back.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
The train finally reached my station, and as I got off (receiving a final parting kick from that low-life critter), I walked over to the next train and pondered what to do about it if the beast assaulted my foot again tomorrow. Visions of hitting the emergency door release and throwing him off the train at speed leaped to mind, but that's what bottled up frustration does to the imagination. Getting back on an even keel, I could only think of talking to him - something like this (in Japanese):
"Hi there. How are you today? Is there some reason that you have to haul off and kick me every 90 seconds? Would you mind stopping that please?"
If I'm lucky, the beast will have crawled back under a rock or gone back to its cage at the zoo, and I'll never have to see it again, but no - I see that bugger from time to time on the train, so it'll likely be (shudder-shudder) back.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
"The Secret to Studying Long Hours in Japan?"
I've often wondered how some people stay up studying as late as they do here.... I think I've discovered the method - or more precisely, it has gradually dawned on me. Simply put, the method is simple - blast yourself with enough strong light that it's difficult to fall asleep in the middle of the light blast!
As evidence, note the design of typical students study desks here. The key Stay-Awake! feature is a bright florescent tube that not only illuminates the study material open on the desk, but also shines some of its bright light directly into the eyes of the person studying! No wonder they're able to stay awake!
The down side to this method though, is that (many) people get so used to having very bright light blazing away when they are studying/working, that they perceive normal lighting as "dark"....
Lyle H Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
As evidence, note the design of typical students study desks here. The key Stay-Awake! feature is a bright florescent tube that not only illuminates the study material open on the desk, but also shines some of its bright light directly into the eyes of the person studying! No wonder they're able to stay awake!
The down side to this method though, is that (many) people get so used to having very bright light blazing away when they are studying/working, that they perceive normal lighting as "dark"....
Lyle H Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Friday, February 22, 2008
"A Desire for Space - 43,200 Rides & Counting"
Growing up in the western area of the US, I didn't like the desert very much - I always preferred lots of trees in the wild on one hand, and lots of buildings and excitement in the city on the other hand. But after 12 years in Japan, I went to the US desert in 1986 and it was just so wonderfully empty! No people! No cars! No trucks! No noise! No buildings! No smoke! Just wonderful, glorious space! And stars! Lots of stars seen through transparent (as opposed to translucent) air!
With this in mind, I sometimes find myself standing in a sardine-packed train - dreaming of sitting in a car, listening to music I like on the car's stereo. That image seems like pure paradise. It wouldn't matter if the car was a traffic jam - it would just feel so nice to have that space all to myself.
There's another element to train travel in mega-city Tokyo that should be explored. Namely the Russian roulette nature of it. The overwhelmingly vast majority of people who ride the rails are decent human beings, who just want to get from point-A to Point-B without molesting other innocent souls, but there are (inevitably in any society on the planet) some unfriendly elements out there in the crowd.
Think of this way - take a two or three hour walk around your city, walking through a park, through a department store, etc. Have a good look at all the people you meet and imagine how it would feel to have them physically pressed up against you.
Ah-ha! You may well have recoiled in horror already just at the concept, without having even gone the mechanics of really imagining it. Go ahead and imagine it, because to comprehend the Russian roulette game of becoming a sardine every morning and every night to get to and from work, you must do this thing. Look at everyone and imagine how it would feel with them up against you. (Guys, I know what you're thinking, but forget it! It's not like that! Also, there's a "Women Only" car for the rush times, and aside from that, women work pretty hard to avoid the horror of RRST - Russian Roulette Sardine Time.)
Also keep in mind the time factor and laws of increasing probability as you spend year after year on the system. With different jobs and whatnot, I think it's averaged out to about two-and-a-half hours (round trip) per weekday, which would mean the following tale of woe and pain:
Five days per week
20 days per month
20x12= 240 days a year
240 days x 24 years = 5,760 days
2.5 hours per day x 5,760 = 14,400 hours
14,400 hours divided by 24-hour blocks=...
600 days in the trains
600 days - more than a year and a half of my life spent on the Tokyo trains. That's bad enough, but what makes me look into the distance with a feeling of something having gone wrong, is that 14,400 hour figure. Go back to your two-hour walk and an inevitable character or two that you would definitely not like to be in physical contact with. You can keep a watch out for unpleasant bipeds, but you can't always spot things in time to avoid them. It's a low percentage of the total - out of 14,400 hours, really bad experiences probably only amount to... say... a few hours, but those few hours out of 14,400 were pretty intensely bad, so the lingering desire not to have them repeat stays with you.
Actually, hours isn't the right unit to look at here. I've both lived and worked in a number of places in Tokyo, not to mention going here and there for one reason or another, and daily train rides have ranged from two minutes (the typical distance between stations on most of the subways), to an hour. The average train ride overall, would probably work out to twenty minutes (although if you take away the hour-long rides, that would fall to fifteen minutes).
So, for the total number of train rides so far, multiplying 14,400 by three should be somewhere on the playing field: 43,200. A relatively small number of those rides have been really bad (very many have been at least mildly unpleasant - probably more than half), but the bad ones have really been bad - some examples:
- While waiting to board a train, someone spit on my backpack from behind - which I discovered as I was taking it off as I got on the train
- I was thrown up on. Not intentionally, but I was still thrown up on! And then I had to transfer to other trains smelling like I had crawled out of the sewer, with people looking at me like "Man! I knew foreigners smelled bad, but this is too much!" (the evil brew seemed to be a mixture if cheap red wine, grilled meat, and stomach acids).
- Back in 1986 this old guy who probably was in WW-II, harassed my wife in front of me (while we were in Kyoto). It could have been worse - an Australian friend of mine nearly throttled a guy who was more persistently harassing his wife in front of him on a train - and in a more obnoxious way than the experience my wife and I had.
- On Monday of this week, as I was part of the mass of people flowing off the train, this powerful neanderthal standing beside the door opening, put his knuckles into the middle of my back, exactly on the spine, and gave a mighty shove - four days later, I still have back pain in that spot and I'm about to arrange a hospital visit to see if my spine has been damaged. The people on my side who stumbled with me away from the mighty shove on my spine are probably the only thing that prevented that beast from breaking my back.
Now you know what prompted my post about heaven on wheels. Sitting here right now typing with my back still in pain, a car interior seems like a blissful paradise of surrounding sheet metal - keeping neanderthals at bay and away from my spine. Some things you wonder if they are accidental or intentional - this could only have been intentional. After all my years riding hellishly crowded trains, I have never even remotely come close to doing to another human being what that the neanderthal did to me. It couldn't have been an accident. (If you're skeptical, keep in mind that in recent years there have been widely reported cases of passengers actually murdering other passengers - like... dead, you know? No more train rides for the dead body left on the platform.)
Many more things have happened, but of a minor nature - being elbowed in the face (not often), being elbowed in the back (all the time!), verbal insults (not often, but also not forgotten), etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. Enough things have happened over 43,200 train rides, that I now approach morning and evening rush hour trains with a feeling of dread and foreboding.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
With this in mind, I sometimes find myself standing in a sardine-packed train - dreaming of sitting in a car, listening to music I like on the car's stereo. That image seems like pure paradise. It wouldn't matter if the car was a traffic jam - it would just feel so nice to have that space all to myself.
There's another element to train travel in mega-city Tokyo that should be explored. Namely the Russian roulette nature of it. The overwhelmingly vast majority of people who ride the rails are decent human beings, who just want to get from point-A to Point-B without molesting other innocent souls, but there are (inevitably in any society on the planet) some unfriendly elements out there in the crowd.
Think of this way - take a two or three hour walk around your city, walking through a park, through a department store, etc. Have a good look at all the people you meet and imagine how it would feel to have them physically pressed up against you.
Ah-ha! You may well have recoiled in horror already just at the concept, without having even gone the mechanics of really imagining it. Go ahead and imagine it, because to comprehend the Russian roulette game of becoming a sardine every morning and every night to get to and from work, you must do this thing. Look at everyone and imagine how it would feel with them up against you. (Guys, I know what you're thinking, but forget it! It's not like that! Also, there's a "Women Only" car for the rush times, and aside from that, women work pretty hard to avoid the horror of RRST - Russian Roulette Sardine Time.)
Also keep in mind the time factor and laws of increasing probability as you spend year after year on the system. With different jobs and whatnot, I think it's averaged out to about two-and-a-half hours (round trip) per weekday, which would mean the following tale of woe and pain:
Five days per week
20 days per month
20x12= 240 days a year
240 days x 24 years = 5,760 days
2.5 hours per day x 5,760 = 14,400 hours
14,400 hours divided by 24-hour blocks=...
600 days in the trains
600 days - more than a year and a half of my life spent on the Tokyo trains. That's bad enough, but what makes me look into the distance with a feeling of something having gone wrong, is that 14,400 hour figure. Go back to your two-hour walk and an inevitable character or two that you would definitely not like to be in physical contact with. You can keep a watch out for unpleasant bipeds, but you can't always spot things in time to avoid them. It's a low percentage of the total - out of 14,400 hours, really bad experiences probably only amount to... say... a few hours, but those few hours out of 14,400 were pretty intensely bad, so the lingering desire not to have them repeat stays with you.
Actually, hours isn't the right unit to look at here. I've both lived and worked in a number of places in Tokyo, not to mention going here and there for one reason or another, and daily train rides have ranged from two minutes (the typical distance between stations on most of the subways), to an hour. The average train ride overall, would probably work out to twenty minutes (although if you take away the hour-long rides, that would fall to fifteen minutes).
So, for the total number of train rides so far, multiplying 14,400 by three should be somewhere on the playing field: 43,200. A relatively small number of those rides have been really bad (very many have been at least mildly unpleasant - probably more than half), but the bad ones have really been bad - some examples:
- While waiting to board a train, someone spit on my backpack from behind - which I discovered as I was taking it off as I got on the train
- I was thrown up on. Not intentionally, but I was still thrown up on! And then I had to transfer to other trains smelling like I had crawled out of the sewer, with people looking at me like "Man! I knew foreigners smelled bad, but this is too much!" (the evil brew seemed to be a mixture if cheap red wine, grilled meat, and stomach acids).
- Back in 1986 this old guy who probably was in WW-II, harassed my wife in front of me (while we were in Kyoto). It could have been worse - an Australian friend of mine nearly throttled a guy who was more persistently harassing his wife in front of him on a train - and in a more obnoxious way than the experience my wife and I had.
- On Monday of this week, as I was part of the mass of people flowing off the train, this powerful neanderthal standing beside the door opening, put his knuckles into the middle of my back, exactly on the spine, and gave a mighty shove - four days later, I still have back pain in that spot and I'm about to arrange a hospital visit to see if my spine has been damaged. The people on my side who stumbled with me away from the mighty shove on my spine are probably the only thing that prevented that beast from breaking my back.
Now you know what prompted my post about heaven on wheels. Sitting here right now typing with my back still in pain, a car interior seems like a blissful paradise of surrounding sheet metal - keeping neanderthals at bay and away from my spine. Some things you wonder if they are accidental or intentional - this could only have been intentional. After all my years riding hellishly crowded trains, I have never even remotely come close to doing to another human being what that the neanderthal did to me. It couldn't have been an accident. (If you're skeptical, keep in mind that in recent years there have been widely reported cases of passengers actually murdering other passengers - like... dead, you know? No more train rides for the dead body left on the platform.)
Many more things have happened, but of a minor nature - being elbowed in the face (not often), being elbowed in the back (all the time!), verbal insults (not often, but also not forgotten), etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. Enough things have happened over 43,200 train rides, that I now approach morning and evening rush hour trains with a feeling of dread and foreboding.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
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