Saturday, October 08, 2022

2000年の新橋 - Shinbashi (with an "n")

Shinbashi is one of the areas of Tokyo that I often went to in the 1980's, starting in 1984.  At the time, JNR (国鉄) spelled it "Shinbashi" and while I think "し" should be written "shi" and not "si", I disagree with writing "ん" as "m"... ever.  "ん" is "n" - period.  I strongly think that writing it as "m" is a mistake.  I wouldn't bother to explain this, but from time-to-time people assume I'm misspelling 新橋 when I write it as "Shinbashi".  No, no mistake.  Shinbashi is the correct way to spell it.  Of the various forms of romanization for Japanese, Hepburn romanization is probably best, but writing "ん" as "m" is an error.

As you can see from these photos, Shinbashi had a stronger architectural connection with the past in 2000 than it does today (2022 as I write this).  If I had had a camera in 1984, the trains would have been solid green for the Yamanote Line and solid blue for the Keihin-Tohoku Line.

Today some people are horrified by the concept of there being no platform walls (no, it's not a "screen"), but that's just the way all the stations were before.

The fountain in the SL Plaza in front of Shinbashi Station.  A really strange thing about it is how for many people (myself included) it disappeared without its disappearance being immediately noticed.  On one visit to Shinbashi I suddenly realized it was gone.  So I asked around and most of the people I talked to had basically the same reaction.  They knew it was gone, but had no idea when it had disappeared.

Below is a fairly rare example of a building that goes back several decades but is still in use and (as far as I know) isn't planned for demolition anytime soon.

Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon - www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/ - youtube.com/lylehsaxon - lylehsaxon.blogspot.jp/ - lookback1997.blogspot.jp/

No comments: