My first job in Japan, back in 1984, was at a company that had a small office in Ebisu. I have fairly vivid memories of walking down the street on my way to the company (strangely, not going back to the station - I suppose the fact that it was more difficult to find the company than the station produced increased concentration and thus stronger memories), and walking up the stairs in an old building to the company, but no memories of Ebisu Station itself (before it was modernized) that I can recall. And so it was a bit of a shock to see it (from the Yamanote Line) in one of my old videos from 1991:
Ebisu is a modern and fashionable place/station now, with two double-sided platforms at which several different train lines stop. There is a department store built over the station, so entering the station (in a train) is a bit like going into a tunnel. Contrast that with 1991, when it was just a single open-air platform, and it's hard to see the pictures of the open-air platform and draw any kind of mental connection with how it is now! I was there! I took the video! I used the station! And I still can't recognize the old images as "Ebisu Station". But it makes sense... the open-air type platforms were all about the same - so each particular one doesn't/didn't have much in the way of anything distinct to remember. (Current Shin-Okubo Station is about the same design of the former Ebisu Station, if someone would like to know how it was on the inside.)
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Monday, July 28, 2008
Monday, July 21, 2008
"Tokyo Morning Trains (February 1991)"
My most recent post to YouTube is a video composed of many clips taken one morning between about 5:30 a.m. and 7:50 a.m., starting with the Yamanote Line in Shibuya, and then going up to Ikebukuro, where I changed to the Seibu-Ikebukuro Line and rode out to Tokorozawa (by mistake - I fell asleep on the train), and then back to Hibarigaoka, then to Shakujikoen, and finally back to Hibarigaoka.
This video picks up exactly where "night before The Train" leaves off (I'll put links to both below), and includes short clips from "Shakujikoen Sardine Run" and "Actually Full Train in 1991 (Why Flex-Time is a Good Idea)". New are several scenes of other express trains loading in Shakujikoen, as well as not so crowded trains going away from central Tokyo, and station scenes at Ikebukuro, Tokorozawa, Shakujikoen, and Hibarigaoka.
"Morning Tokyo Trains in 1991" (2 of 2)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=53cgj-FJQhg
"night before The Train" (1 of 2)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ZISXHGXIAyc
The video is a jumble of images, but keep in mind that all the images are chronological and all the images were taken on the same morning. So the images of one crowded train after another loading & leaving in Shakujikoen are not a compilation from different days, but rather just one train after another leaving on the same morning. The progression from most people sitting down at 6:30 a.m. (from Tokorozawa anyway, not from Hibarigaoka!) to some people not being able to force themselves onto the train between around 7:15 - 7:45 a.m. (from Hibarigaoka & Shakujikoen) can give you some idea of how the crush-rush morning commute works.
The unfortunate thing about the "Actually Full Train in 1991 (Why Flex-Time is a Good Idea)" video (that has been copied and reposted under various titles dozens of times over, and seen by something like three million people AFAIK), is that people with no idea how the Tokyo train system is, seem to have actually come to the conclusion that all the trains in Japan - all the time - are like that. Obviously (I would have thought anyway!), this is not the case, but maybe seeing other trains from the same morning can set some people's mistaken mental image of Tokyo's trains straight(er)....
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
This video picks up exactly where "night before The Train" leaves off (I'll put links to both below), and includes short clips from "Shakujikoen Sardine Run" and "Actually Full Train in 1991 (Why Flex-Time is a Good Idea)". New are several scenes of other express trains loading in Shakujikoen, as well as not so crowded trains going away from central Tokyo, and station scenes at Ikebukuro, Tokorozawa, Shakujikoen, and Hibarigaoka.
"Morning Tokyo Trains in 1991" (2 of 2)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=53cgj-FJQhg
"night before The Train" (1 of 2)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ZISXHGXIAyc
The video is a jumble of images, but keep in mind that all the images are chronological and all the images were taken on the same morning. So the images of one crowded train after another loading & leaving in Shakujikoen are not a compilation from different days, but rather just one train after another leaving on the same morning. The progression from most people sitting down at 6:30 a.m. (from Tokorozawa anyway, not from Hibarigaoka!) to some people not being able to force themselves onto the train between around 7:15 - 7:45 a.m. (from Hibarigaoka & Shakujikoen) can give you some idea of how the crush-rush morning commute works.
The unfortunate thing about the "Actually Full Train in 1991 (Why Flex-Time is a Good Idea)" video (that has been copied and reposted under various titles dozens of times over, and seen by something like three million people AFAIK), is that people with no idea how the Tokyo train system is, seem to have actually come to the conclusion that all the trains in Japan - all the time - are like that. Obviously (I would have thought anyway!), this is not the case, but maybe seeing other trains from the same morning can set some people's mistaken mental image of Tokyo's trains straight(er)....
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Friday, July 18, 2008
"Manga Beyond the Peak in Japan?"
There have been some reports in Japan concerning falling sales for the weekly manga magazines, with interviews with long-time readers who say they think the quality has dropped, causing them to lose interest in the publications. What with the time lag in local trends crossing oceans, maybe a decline in manga popularity in the rest of the world is in the pipeline. I'm no expert in manga and anime, but from what I've personally seen, I would tend to agree that a lot of the new stuff isn't as interesting as many of the older series were/are. Over the years, I've really enjoyed reading some manga series (in Japanese in order to learn Japanese), but I haven't found much that I'm interested in lately.
Aside from quality, I think manga has reached a saturation point in Japan. I remember about 15-18 years ago, when historical manga books were becoming popular, there were some concerned voices over the young people who were learning shallow history from easy-to-read manga and not reading proper books that presented history in any depth. History is never completely understood by anyone, and nearly always greatly misunderstood by everyone, but even so, worry over that shallow way of learning history may have been valid - many current twenty-something people (they don't quite know it yet, but they will-not & can-not stay there!) don't seem to be very knowledgeable about the basic facts of even fairly recent history).
For a while, it seemed like there were manga everywhere in Japan, and then manga began to be popular outside of Japan. Just about the time it was looking like there was no end to the growth in popularity of Japanesee manga, I think they have become a bit of a standard production thing, and creativity seems to be lagging. One exception seems to be "One Piece" which has some pretty creative story lines and has been (and continues to be) very popular, although the newest episodes of the animated version of that have become really bad - I don't know why that is exactly - one theory being that they had some catching up to do initially when the anime kicked in later than the manga, but now they're caught up, there isn't enough original manga material to fill up a 30-minute animation, so they put in meaningless filler in order to bring the show up to 30 minutes (with many commercials and a long intro and exit, more like 15 minutes actually). Whatever the reason, many of the latest animated versions of One Piece aren't worth watching).
One type of manga that seems to be selling well, are manga-novels, which people are reading at home I suppose - as you don't see much of them on the trains... which brings up another reason for the decline of the weekly manga magazines - cell phones! Before cell phones took over people's lives (text-messaging & games), magazines of all types were popularly bought from train station newstands to pass the time in the train reading. These days, when people aren't text messaging with their cell phones on the train (which they nearly always are - especially the early-twenties crowd, who I swear must be doing it even when they sleep), or sleeping (for the lucky few who get seats), I've seen more A-6 text-only paperback books in hand lately than comic books. The advantage of a text-only A6 paperback book, is that it's thin enough to easily fit into a pocket or bag, so they can be carried for a week or two or three. The small phone book sized thick magazines used to be bought for a single journey's worth of reading (usually on the homeward-bound evening trains), and then tossed up onto the overhead racks before getting off the train (to be picked up by someone else to read), but I hardly ever see that any more. (Since we entered the Age of Unknown Danger, railways have asked people not to leave things on the overhead racks like that, but I don't see many people reading them in the first place anyway.)
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Aside from quality, I think manga has reached a saturation point in Japan. I remember about 15-18 years ago, when historical manga books were becoming popular, there were some concerned voices over the young people who were learning shallow history from easy-to-read manga and not reading proper books that presented history in any depth. History is never completely understood by anyone, and nearly always greatly misunderstood by everyone, but even so, worry over that shallow way of learning history may have been valid - many current twenty-something people (they don't quite know it yet, but they will-not & can-not stay there!) don't seem to be very knowledgeable about the basic facts of even fairly recent history).
For a while, it seemed like there were manga everywhere in Japan, and then manga began to be popular outside of Japan. Just about the time it was looking like there was no end to the growth in popularity of Japanesee manga, I think they have become a bit of a standard production thing, and creativity seems to be lagging. One exception seems to be "One Piece" which has some pretty creative story lines and has been (and continues to be) very popular, although the newest episodes of the animated version of that have become really bad - I don't know why that is exactly - one theory being that they had some catching up to do initially when the anime kicked in later than the manga, but now they're caught up, there isn't enough original manga material to fill up a 30-minute animation, so they put in meaningless filler in order to bring the show up to 30 minutes (with many commercials and a long intro and exit, more like 15 minutes actually). Whatever the reason, many of the latest animated versions of One Piece aren't worth watching).
One type of manga that seems to be selling well, are manga-novels, which people are reading at home I suppose - as you don't see much of them on the trains... which brings up another reason for the decline of the weekly manga magazines - cell phones! Before cell phones took over people's lives (text-messaging & games), magazines of all types were popularly bought from train station newstands to pass the time in the train reading. These days, when people aren't text messaging with their cell phones on the train (which they nearly always are - especially the early-twenties crowd, who I swear must be doing it even when they sleep), or sleeping (for the lucky few who get seats), I've seen more A-6 text-only paperback books in hand lately than comic books. The advantage of a text-only A6 paperback book, is that it's thin enough to easily fit into a pocket or bag, so they can be carried for a week or two or three. The small phone book sized thick magazines used to be bought for a single journey's worth of reading (usually on the homeward-bound evening trains), and then tossed up onto the overhead racks before getting off the train (to be picked up by someone else to read), but I hardly ever see that any more. (Since we entered the Age of Unknown Danger, railways have asked people not to leave things on the overhead racks like that, but I don't see many people reading them in the first place anyway.)
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Monday, July 14, 2008
"Visiting the Past..."
On Friday, after walking from Shinbashi Station up through Ginza and over to Yurakucho, I stopped by a "stand-bar" (cheap place to buy suds, where you stand - sometimes on the sidewalk - while you drink, thus "stand" bar) near Yurakucho Station, had a drink, and - looking at the old brickwork of the elevated railbed - pondered someone putting those bricks in place, one at a time. Then, looking down the street, I thought of stories an e-pal has written about the times he spent in Yurakucho, Ginza, and Hibiya Park in 1948-51. Maybe the bricks soaked up some of those times, because it almost seemed as though I could - realizing the brick-faced overhead railbed was the same as at that time - see him and the people of that time walking by in the distance - crossing under the railbed when going to and from Hibiya Park and Ginza.
The next step in that line of thinking was (naturally) a time machine, so I could actually go back and walk around in that era. And here I ran into turbulence. Supposing you really could go back to another era - you would have to have period clothes ready before crossing the time bridge, and you'd have to assume some sort of period identity. Someone asks you who you are, and you might have to actually be someone other than a time traveler, which would spoil the fun:
"What? Another time traveler huh? Well look here bud, this here is our time, and we don't appreciate you future time tourists coming here and treating us like funny animals in a zoo! Go back to where you came from, and stay out of the past! You don't belong here!".
The main attraction to going back, after all, would be to find out first hand exactly how it felt to live in that era, so being a part of the past - even for just a few hours - would be important.
And that's about where I was on Friday, when some people from a group also drinking at the stand-bar began to talk to me, and I shifted gears and re-entered the 21 century.
The flow of time has been on my mind since last Wednesday actually, when I attended a retirement party for a man who joined the company I work at in 1969. That was part of what got me going on the past on Friday, and then over the weekend I watched a color newsreel from... 1944 I think, that showed life aboard an aircraft carrier (with the title "Fighting Lady", if I remember correctly). The young men in the film seemed pretty much the same as the young men I remember from my school days. Maybe adjusting to the past wouldn't be so difficult after all. No Internet though....
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
The next step in that line of thinking was (naturally) a time machine, so I could actually go back and walk around in that era. And here I ran into turbulence. Supposing you really could go back to another era - you would have to have period clothes ready before crossing the time bridge, and you'd have to assume some sort of period identity. Someone asks you who you are, and you might have to actually be someone other than a time traveler, which would spoil the fun:
"What? Another time traveler huh? Well look here bud, this here is our time, and we don't appreciate you future time tourists coming here and treating us like funny animals in a zoo! Go back to where you came from, and stay out of the past! You don't belong here!".
The main attraction to going back, after all, would be to find out first hand exactly how it felt to live in that era, so being a part of the past - even for just a few hours - would be important.
And that's about where I was on Friday, when some people from a group also drinking at the stand-bar began to talk to me, and I shifted gears and re-entered the 21 century.
The flow of time has been on my mind since last Wednesday actually, when I attended a retirement party for a man who joined the company I work at in 1969. That was part of what got me going on the past on Friday, and then over the weekend I watched a color newsreel from... 1944 I think, that showed life aboard an aircraft carrier (with the title "Fighting Lady", if I remember correctly). The young men in the film seemed pretty much the same as the young men I remember from my school days. Maybe adjusting to the past wouldn't be so difficult after all. No Internet though....
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Friday, July 11, 2008
"Not as Bad, and Worse"
Just when I tell people that the crush-rush commuter trains here are not as bad as they appear in a video I took in 1991 - "Actually Full Train in 1991 (Why Flex-Time is a Good Idea)" - I take my usual set of trains to work today and am reminded of the bad aspects to rail travel as a sardine. It's not the crowding exactly that is unpleasant, but rather when you get stuck next to an unpleasant individual. An a sardine in a fully packed train, you can't do anything other than stand there and wait for the train to reach a station. Well... to be more precise, you can't do anything in the way of moving to another part of the train, but there are little wars going on beneath the surface, with actions, reactions, subtle attacks, revenge moves, etc. etc. These take the form of stepping on feet, elbows in backs, arms strategically located to protect sides from other's elbows, "accidentally" stepping on a foot of a foot-stomper in retaliation, turning to face someone who has been poking you in the back with a paperback book, standing your ground (by holding on to an overhead bar) against someone pushing into you without good cause (some people will have empty space in front of them, and they *still* lean back against a group of people uncomfortably packed together), and.... many many more things that are very real to sardine-run commuters, but unseen by a casual observer, and completely off the radar screen of people in a car culture seeing a crowd of people smashing themselves onto a train, who have never experienced it.
Most of the time, most people are quite civil with each other on the trains here (as they should be - it would be chaos if they weren't!), but there are some very unpleasant people out there (as you might imagine - they're everywhere after all!), and they are the primary reason that riding the rails to work can be a very unpleasant experience. What's the latest in unpleasantness? Early twenties males who get in front of everyone and walk at a snail's pace - proving how big and tough they are - "I'm not going to hurry, and I'm going to slow you down and make you late to work - HaHaHa!". A certain percentage of early-twenties males in every society are brain-dead neanderthals - they should be forbidden from riding public transport.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Most of the time, most people are quite civil with each other on the trains here (as they should be - it would be chaos if they weren't!), but there are some very unpleasant people out there (as you might imagine - they're everywhere after all!), and they are the primary reason that riding the rails to work can be a very unpleasant experience. What's the latest in unpleasantness? Early twenties males who get in front of everyone and walk at a snail's pace - proving how big and tough they are - "I'm not going to hurry, and I'm going to slow you down and make you late to work - HaHaHa!". A certain percentage of early-twenties males in every society are brain-dead neanderthals - they should be forbidden from riding public transport.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Thursday, July 10, 2008
"Train & Lifestyle Perceptions"
Groan... no - not more text about the Tokyo sardine run trains!?! Well... it's an ongoing issue! The comments section of some of the copy postings have thousands of responses and some of them are worth taking a look at (if not for their content, then for what they suggest about culture, or lack thereof).
Responses to views of sardine-run commuter train conditions in Tokyo vary drastically, but there are two main categories, which correlate with the vantage point of the viewer: 1) Mega-City dwellers, who typically say something along the lines of "Ah, that's nothing! My city's trains are more crowded than that!" (which they tend not to say for the "Actually Full Train in 1991 (Why Flex-Time is a Good Idea" video) BTW, and 2) Car Culture city dwellers who are horrified by it and either say "That's got to be fake!" or "You've got to be kidding!", or "After ten minutes in there, people will be dying from lack of air!", etc. (I rode trains like that for many years, and lack of air wasn't an issue - heat in the winter was though, with the windows closed, it would sometimes get to be very hot in there.)
It's interesting to me how it becomes a badge of honor for Mega-City dwellers to brag about how crowded their trains are ("I'm strong enough to endure this! Ho-ho!"?), and how horrified non-train riders are, sounding as though they have just viewed something unimaginatively horrible from the fringe of the universe - not something any human is likely to be able to endure for long without dropping over dead.
And - overall - I've been disappointed & shocked at the lack of any evidence of effort to understand what the pictures are, and what they mean, not to mention the racist and nationalistic insults that people post. Who are these people who blithely insult people and cultures they know nothing about? I'm hoping they're middle-school students, because if they're adults, then this world is in some serious trouble, with too many of the human race having retrogressed into idiotdom.
And... something else... what was it? ........ Hmmmmm..... there was something else I wanted/needed to say.....
I can't remember what it was, but there's something else I've noticed. There is endless speculation about the video, where it was taken (Japan? China?), whether it's real or fake ("It's fake!", "It's real!"), what it must be like inside the train, etc. etc., and no one seems to consider the concept that someone took the video and that person not only took the video, but rode that train line and trains just as crowded as that one for more than a decade. That person is me, and I'm still shaking my head about the idiotic comments I see and the claims I see for it. I KNOW what's what with that video, but it seems to be very difficult to get the truth out.
Traffic jams versus people jams.
In a traffic jam, you've got your personal space, but you don't have any kind of dependable time-line for exactly how long it will take you to get to work. More cars on the road means slower speeds and increased waiting at lights, etc. There is some variation to train travel as well (not so much in Tokyo usually), but whether a train is empty or is completely packed, it travels down the rails at the same speed. So, while it's not fun being smashed in together with a bunch of strangers, the crowded conditions don't actually slow you down. It's less pleasant than an empty train, but still speedy!
So, to sum up - I think Tokyo's trains are probably more crowded than the trains in New York and London (that depends on the line of course - there are many train lines in Tokyo, some more crowded than others), and for people who find the "Actually Full Train in 1991 (Why Flex-Time is a Good Idea" shocking - I can report that it's not as bad as it looks. And I know what I'm talking about - I've spent many years riding trains like that.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Responses to views of sardine-run commuter train conditions in Tokyo vary drastically, but there are two main categories, which correlate with the vantage point of the viewer: 1) Mega-City dwellers, who typically say something along the lines of "Ah, that's nothing! My city's trains are more crowded than that!" (which they tend not to say for the "Actually Full Train in 1991 (Why Flex-Time is a Good Idea" video) BTW, and 2) Car Culture city dwellers who are horrified by it and either say "That's got to be fake!" or "You've got to be kidding!", or "After ten minutes in there, people will be dying from lack of air!", etc. (I rode trains like that for many years, and lack of air wasn't an issue - heat in the winter was though, with the windows closed, it would sometimes get to be very hot in there.)
It's interesting to me how it becomes a badge of honor for Mega-City dwellers to brag about how crowded their trains are ("I'm strong enough to endure this! Ho-ho!"?), and how horrified non-train riders are, sounding as though they have just viewed something unimaginatively horrible from the fringe of the universe - not something any human is likely to be able to endure for long without dropping over dead.
And - overall - I've been disappointed & shocked at the lack of any evidence of effort to understand what the pictures are, and what they mean, not to mention the racist and nationalistic insults that people post. Who are these people who blithely insult people and cultures they know nothing about? I'm hoping they're middle-school students, because if they're adults, then this world is in some serious trouble, with too many of the human race having retrogressed into idiotdom.
And... something else... what was it? ........ Hmmmmm..... there was something else I wanted/needed to say.....
I can't remember what it was, but there's something else I've noticed. There is endless speculation about the video, where it was taken (Japan? China?), whether it's real or fake ("It's fake!", "It's real!"), what it must be like inside the train, etc. etc., and no one seems to consider the concept that someone took the video and that person not only took the video, but rode that train line and trains just as crowded as that one for more than a decade. That person is me, and I'm still shaking my head about the idiotic comments I see and the claims I see for it. I KNOW what's what with that video, but it seems to be very difficult to get the truth out.
Traffic jams versus people jams.
In a traffic jam, you've got your personal space, but you don't have any kind of dependable time-line for exactly how long it will take you to get to work. More cars on the road means slower speeds and increased waiting at lights, etc. There is some variation to train travel as well (not so much in Tokyo usually), but whether a train is empty or is completely packed, it travels down the rails at the same speed. So, while it's not fun being smashed in together with a bunch of strangers, the crowded conditions don't actually slow you down. It's less pleasant than an empty train, but still speedy!
So, to sum up - I think Tokyo's trains are probably more crowded than the trains in New York and London (that depends on the line of course - there are many train lines in Tokyo, some more crowded than others), and for people who find the "Actually Full Train in 1991 (Why Flex-Time is a Good Idea" shocking - I can report that it's not as bad as it looks. And I know what I'm talking about - I've spent many years riding trains like that.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Sunday, July 06, 2008
"Japan's Clockwork Trains - Sayonara?"
Japan's trains are generally known for three things - 1) They're crowded, 2) They're nearly always on-time, and 3) The super-express (Shinkansen) trains are fast. Many of the trains are less crowded than before (thanks to more of them and to companies allowing flextime), but unfortunately, breaks with the schedule seem to be increasing. (The Shinkansen trains are still fast, and as I very rarely use them, I don't know if they're running precisely on time or not - hopefully they are.) At this rate, Tokyo's famous "always on time & running like clockwork" train system is in danger of becoming just another "always late and off-schedule" system to grumble about. (The Shinkansen trains are in a special category - like aircraft - and don't play a part in most people's commutes to and from work every day.)
Some obvious reasons for slipping schedules, are the many train stopping buttons they've installed on station platforms (which coincide with the aftermath of, and are probably in response to, an incident in which three people were run over by a train (at Shin-Okubo Station on the Yamanote Line) while people on the platform watched helplessly), and less pressure to be at work precisely on time (flex-time is common at many companies now).
Less obvious, but no less real, some segments of society seem to be more prone to destructive actions. ...... Uh-oh... did I just say that? Ouch - now I know I'm old! Well... it's true though; while things still run pretty well, there are many more instances (than before) of people tossing a wrench into the gears for the sport of seeing part of an operation stop (at least temporarily).
Now - I should delete that paragraph above, but I'll leave it in as an example of what happens to a formerly young person who has begun to get old(er). It's a shocking thing - you look at grumpy old people and wonder why they are like that, and one day you wake and up realize you're complaining about irresponsible young people! Whoa! Wait a minute! What's going on here?
And so I have made a transition from shaking my head at the frantic rush into central Tokyo to get to work on time, to shaking my head at a lack of passion for getting to work on time! A couple of examples witnessed first hand.
I was on an express train, standing (always standing, never sitting) near a group of elementary first grade students traveling somewhere (to school for the first time?; on some kind of field trip?) with a woman who was escorting them. After a bit, one of the boys said he was feeling a little queasy, and the woman said, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, "Okay, let's stop the train then".
I don't know how that sounds to you, but I was horrified both by the casualness of her remark and the triviality of the reason. She didn't seem to be in the least bothered by the idea of inconveniencing tens of thousands of people (about 2,000 people on one train, and trains all down the line stopped waiting for a train stopped out of place and out of schedule), and not for anything that could really be termed an emergency! If the boy is going to throw up, so be it! Give him a plastic bag! We're not talking about a day-long journey here, all he would have to do is wait an extra fifteen minutes before getting off at the normally scheduled stop. (There's the issue of throwing up *on* people of course - and that's something that's considerate to avoid, but she could have asked for a plastic bag - I'm sure someone had one. In fact, I had one, because I always carry a few for one use or another, including just such an emergency (more on that at the end of this story).
But, horrified as I was, I made no comment, and watched the woman open a window as the train slowly passed a station it wasn't due to stop at, and - sounding like it was actually an emergency - asked the people on the platform to get the train to stop because there was a sick passenger. Someone hit one of the emergency stop buttons (curse them!) and the train stopped. So far, so bad, but it gets worse.
There is a downside to a system that nearly always runs on time. Throw it out-of-whack, and the operators are not well-trained in, or accustomed to, how to think-on-their-feet and improvise a speedy new solution to an unplanned disruption in any given routine. The train stopped soon enough, but it took a few minutes to communicate with the train operators just why one of the platform emergency stop buttons had been pressed (put there to save lives, not for trivial reasons it should be noted). They then opened the doors to let out the boy (and the rest of his group). "Okay" I thought, "Let's get the show back on the road!", but since it was an emergency stop and the system isn't geared to not working on time, it took about five minutes(!) to clear whatever safety procedures (and I'm sure there are many) they have in place and get going again. I thought then, and still think now "Why so long? The sightly queasy boy is off the train. Just re-shut the doors and go!" It shouldn't take more than 20 seconds from the boy getting off to getting things in motion again. (Veteran Tokyo train rider I am - I think great efforts should be expended to keep the trains running On Time.)
At this point, I wish I could jump through to your side of the screen and ask how this sounds to you. Are you shaking your head at the woman forcing an emergency stop for a non-emergency reason, or at me for being callous? My view is the woman is far more callous - ignoring tens of thousands for one person who was not in the slightest bit of danger and had no need for emergency action.
The next example is sort of funny (in an "I shouldn't be laughing at this, but..." kind of way), that - at its core - showcases the very same "Ho-ho! Let's stop the train! It's easy! It's fun! Nobody needs to go anywhere! Ho-ho!" kind of (non-)thinking way.
The day began with me standing on the platform waiting for an express train. I watched a local (that shouldn't have been at the platform at that time) shut its doors and set out, then looked at the clock, which indicated my express should have been leaving (with me aboard) at that exact time. Three minutes later, the express roars in and I walk aboard (the term "climb aboard" isn't applicable here since the platform is exactly the same height as the floor of the train - it's pretty much like walking onto an elevator).
As I walk on with my fellow sardine riders, I wonder if the train will be less crowded than usual due to some earlier riders having taken a local, rather than wait for the express (depending on how many locals leave before the express arrives, they can be faster to a destination - there are only so many places for express trains to pass locals), but then quickly counter that with the thought "There may be fewer people on this train who were on the platform earlier, but there'll be more people who arrived on the platform later!" But (due to there actually being fewer people aboard or not, I'm not sure), I only have two people pressed up against me, compared to a more typical three to six.
I settle in for the ride by listening to my MP3 player (not an i-Pod), after forcing myself to look away from the two over-door monitors. One of them displays useful information about the train route, progress, station information, and news of which train lines are running late, and why (with ludicrous English translations - whoever did them was exceedingly lazy and/or lacking actively firing electrical signals in their head - there are something like ten different phrases that they translated into "Accident" in English), and the other display showing advertisements - some of them soundless versions of existing television ads, and others specifically made for the trains.
I avoid looking at the screens, because I've noticed how I'll be listening to an audio-book on my MP3 player; I'll look up and then realize (after a couple of minutes of watching the screen) that I'm not hearing the words (of the recording I'm listening to) any longer while I process the moving images. "Ah... this is why people are becoming ever more stupid in the world then! They watch TV!" I sometimes think, and then watch some TV on the weekend that I consider to be educational....
I settled into looking out the window between two peoples' heads (I was lucky to be second from the door - when you're stuck in the middle of a sardine run train, sometimes it's hard to find something to aim your eyes at - it's rude to stare at people's faces...), and listened to the classical Japanese story coming from my earphones (well-read and interesting-sounding, although its divergence from modern spoken Japanese makes it hard to understand). Suddenly the train went into hard braking with a simultaneous announcement saying we were making an emergency stop. The first time that happened to me was about a month ago - and large numbers of people fell down (a woman's high heel broke my skin and bloodied my leg in the pile up on the floor). This time around, it was old news ("Oh... another emergency stop..."), and since the train had been traveling fairly slowly anyway (stuck behind a slow local train until we could reach a station with extra rails for passing), no one (that I saw anyway) fell down, and I just braced myself and wondered *why* we were being thrown into an emergency stop (I don't recall hearing an explanation for the other time either - just a "Sorry everyone, we had to make an emergency stop"). Same deal this time, but at least we got back under way fairly quickly.
In re-reading this, it just occurred to me that it could be the ATS (Automatic Train System) jumping on a train that it detects as following too close to another train. The expresses run right behind locals until they get to a station where they can pass. In which case, it would make sense that the train could get under way again quickly. There's something to be said for trains being operated by people rather than computers.
I drifted off to commuter-stupor-land again - looking out the window - basically just waiting for the time of the ride to pass, looking forward to getting off the train and getting on with the day. But... what's this? The woman on my left is looking past me and also looking down, to the right, to the left... "Wha...?" So I look down, back, left, right, expecting to either see that someone has dropped something, or that some pair of sardines are beginning to have an argument (which always makes us other sardines nervous when that - infrequently, fortunately - happens). I don't see either of those things, but instead note that several people in my vicinity are looking left, right, down, left, right... I give the woman who first caught my attention a questioning look and she tells me "Byonin ga iru" ("Someone is sick"). I nod "Ah..." and while I'm just starting to comprehend what the "left-right-down-left-right people are doing (looking for an emergency stop), I see a tall man on the other side of the train open the emergency door release cover (as far as I can tell, on that particular train line, there are no longer any emergency stop buttons/levers on the inside of the train, but pulling the emergency door open lever will obviously also stop the train), and - while I'm thinking "No... please don't do that...", he pulls the lever until it's sticking out at a 90-degree angle.
That pair of doors slightly opens (probably terrifying the people who had been standing up against it!), and the train stops while I imagine the driver looking at an error on his control panel and thinking "What the &%$%?!".
Great - now we're stopped *between* stations - on an *elevated* railway, and the train isn't going to move until the doors are shut again. The driver (or the conductor) comes on the intercom and says "Hasshin era o hakken shimashita" ("A running error has been detected"). I looked over at the source of that error - the guy who had pulled the lever, who was standing there with his arms crossed, looking quite pleased and proud of himself for having figured out how to stop the train, and said (from here out the wholly Japanese conversation at the time translated to English here) "You should close that." He ignored me, so I turned around, shaking my head, and thinking "Alright - we'll just wait this one out then", but after about three seconds of living with that decision, I turned around again in frustration, looked at the lever, and watched as Mr. Lever-Puller then pulled the doors halfway open and poked his head outside (we were in the middle of the train, so both the driver and the conductor were about five cars away). Not seeing anyone, nor anyone seeing him, he pulled his head back in and mostly closed the doors. Another announcement came on that they were still investigating the running error (with 80 pairs of doors on a 10-car train (four per side, eight per car), apparently when one is open, it's not immediately apparent which one - and anyway, I suspect the driver probably imagined it to be a computer or sensor error rather than the doors really being open).
I turned back to the window, away from the source of our troubles, and pondered whether - in my agitated state - my Japanese was up to the task of conveying the lunacy of our disabling the train on an elevated railway between stations. Then, without first working out what to say, I cast aside the general rule of not talking on the train in the morning (not talking is the best way of getting to work without arguments breaking out under sardine conditions) and somehow the vocal gears started turning for me. I said "Okay - so we've got a sick person on board - now we can sit here and watch them die!" This got a response from Mr. Lever-Puller, who looked at me and said with an amazing look of calm & concern "Do you think I should close it?" Struck by the non-combativeness in his way of speaking, I dialed back my frustration a few notches and said "Well... if someone wants to get off the train right here...." So the guy looks at the sick man (who I noticed for the first time - I didn't know who it was before) and asks him with the same calm & concerned look/voice "Do you want to get off here?" The man nodded and started to move towards the door....
I watched in wordless fascination thinking (in pictures and feelings, not words) "Is he really going to climb down off the train right here, onto the elevated tracks? I wonder how much of a walk it is to the next station...." But as he began to move towards the doors, another man said "That's..." which carried a radio-broadcast load of meaning, more fully conveying "That's not a good idea" than actually saying "That's not a good idea". (What the Japanese language lacks in precision and clarity, people often more than make up for with radio broadcasts. Any serious student of the language should bear this factor in mind.) The man stopped, and it was apparent that he was not going to get off the train where we were stopped... with the power to get moving again tantalizingly close at hand ("Shut that emergency door valve!" was my broadcast signal!).
So Mr. Lever-Puller, once again with calm & concern, asked the sick man if he thought we should push the lever back to its normal, closed position. The man gave a small nod, Mr. Lever-Puller became Mr. Lever-Pusher, the doors closed with the same sound they make when closing at stations, and there soon followed an announcement that the error had been cleared. As the train slowly began to move again, I looked back to the sick man and began to wonder what was wrong with him (he looked okay, standing there in an expensive-looking suit). A student offered him a plastic bag, which he refused, and then Mr. Lever-Puller/Pusher quietly confirmed that it was another type of stomach problem. You don't want to know the details, but suffice it to say that the subsequent smell that arose in the carriage explained the exact nature of the man's problem. I sure felt for the guy - he probably had to buy a new suit before going to work, but stopping the train between stations like that hadn't helped him or any of us in any way. It just made things worse. (If someone really needs to get off for an actual emergency, the thing to do, is time the pulling of the emergency lever so that the train stops at a station.
Having said that - did we try stopping the train again for that poor guy? No... the thought didn't occur to me until after I was on my next train, and anyway, by the time we came to the next station after getting under way again, it was too late and I think we all just figured another ten minutes (to the regularly scheduled stop) wasn't going to make much difference. Although... the woman who was standing next to me, looked at me as we passed the next station... maybe she thought I should have pulled the emergency door open lever on our side of the train, where the platform was.
As we picked up speed, I again took to looking out the window, thinking over the morning's events and having a silent discussion with myself wondering if I had acted callously or badly about people wanting to help the guy get off the train. I came to the same conclusion I had already made in the heat of the moment: If stopping the train had helped at least one person in some way, then there's something to think about and discuss, but as it was, it made things worse for everyone - including the man Mr. Lever-Puller was trying to help. (That logic ignores the possibility of trying it again at a station, but the idea of doing that didn't occur to me until I was on my next train. But even then, if the train is running at speed, people could get injured when it's suddenly thrown into emergency braking.)
Interestingly, about five minutes later, suddenly the driver (or conductor) had very precise details about the "running error". They came on the intercom again apologizing for the delay and explaining that there was an indication that a door on the left-hand side of coach #5 had been open. We coach #5 people almost lowered our heads a notch in shame, and I seemed to detect an underlying thought with the announcement along the lines of "What are you idiots in car #5 doing anyway?!" I could only agree.
I think... not so many years ago, that the man with stomach trouble wouldn't have asked to have the train stopped, and the man who pulled the emergency door release, wouldn't have done that. People don't seem to think of the thousands (or tens of thousands) of people they're going to inconvenience in the attempt to help one person. If that one person is having a heart attack or something that really is a life-threatening emergency, then of course it's great to stop the trains, if it helps the individual, but for stomach trouble? How many other people were barely holding on, counting the seconds until they could get off and rush to a restroom? Out of tens of thousands on one of the main rail lines (not an exaggeration), it's not unreasonable to imagine that there are a few individuals in such a state on any given day. That incident made us a further ten minutes late (on top of the initial five minutes) getting into the next station. (We got going again so quickly after the first emergency stop, that I don't think that actually affected the schedule.)
The conclusion? If people continue to stop the trains for frivolous reasons, they will increasingly run off-schedule, until Tokyo's "clockwork" trains become Tokyo's "broken-clockwork" trains.
Ah...I promised to put in my example of having used a plastic bag on a train. It happened like this - there was a man leaving the PR agency (back when I still worked there) for better employment. He was one of a string of people who left, and I was incensed at how the company had a made a big deal about most of the other people, throwing farewell parties for them, etc., but hadn't done anything for this guy, who I thought had done more for the company than many of the others. So, on his final day, I went out and bought some can-chuhai (sort of like vodka), and some things to eat with it, and we had a small (two-person) party in the office after quitting time (there were *always* people working there overtime, so the company was always "open" (for want of a better word) and we just used a conference table over by the balcony. After the chuhai ran out, we were having such a good time, that we raided the company refrigerator, where we discovered left-over supplies from a birthday celebration for another employee, that had occurred the week before. I'm ashamed to write the details, but these supplies included a half-bottle of vodka and a half-bottle of gin. Both of these we fully consumed and I staggered off to the train station to catch the last train home.
So - there I was, standing on the platform at Shinjuku Station, and the last train was approaching the platform just as I was beginning to feel queasy.... What to do - what to do. If I stayed off the train, I would have to find something to do with myself for the night while waiting until the first train at about 4:50 in the morning (Tokyo's entire train system shuts down every night except December 31st). But how could I get on?
Plastic bags to the rescue! I quickly opened my backpack and took two of them out, doubling them up so as to make sure there would be no leakage. The train came in, I climbed in with the rest of the sardines, bags in hand, and sure enough - after about five minutes I had to throw up, which I proceeded to carefully do into the double-walled plastic bag. I can still remember the expression on the face of a woman standing in front of me, who looked nervously back at me while I was throwing up (you can't go anywhere when you're packed into a train like a sardine, so it can't have been a happy discovery that her next-door-neighbor sardine was throwing up), but not to worry - the bags didn't leak and I didn't get anything on anyone. (There must have been some smell though.)
Ugh. I probably shouldn't even tell that story, but I would like to show that I know what I'm talking about when I say it's possible to throw up into a plastic bag on a moving train.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
http://lylehsaxon.blogspot.jp/
http://youtube.com/lylehsaxon
Some obvious reasons for slipping schedules, are the many train stopping buttons they've installed on station platforms (which coincide with the aftermath of, and are probably in response to, an incident in which three people were run over by a train (at Shin-Okubo Station on the Yamanote Line) while people on the platform watched helplessly), and less pressure to be at work precisely on time (flex-time is common at many companies now).
Less obvious, but no less real, some segments of society seem to be more prone to destructive actions. ...... Uh-oh... did I just say that? Ouch - now I know I'm old! Well... it's true though; while things still run pretty well, there are many more instances (than before) of people tossing a wrench into the gears for the sport of seeing part of an operation stop (at least temporarily).
Now - I should delete that paragraph above, but I'll leave it in as an example of what happens to a formerly young person who has begun to get old(er). It's a shocking thing - you look at grumpy old people and wonder why they are like that, and one day you wake and up realize you're complaining about irresponsible young people! Whoa! Wait a minute! What's going on here?
And so I have made a transition from shaking my head at the frantic rush into central Tokyo to get to work on time, to shaking my head at a lack of passion for getting to work on time! A couple of examples witnessed first hand.
I was on an express train, standing (always standing, never sitting) near a group of elementary first grade students traveling somewhere (to school for the first time?; on some kind of field trip?) with a woman who was escorting them. After a bit, one of the boys said he was feeling a little queasy, and the woman said, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, "Okay, let's stop the train then".
I don't know how that sounds to you, but I was horrified both by the casualness of her remark and the triviality of the reason. She didn't seem to be in the least bothered by the idea of inconveniencing tens of thousands of people (about 2,000 people on one train, and trains all down the line stopped waiting for a train stopped out of place and out of schedule), and not for anything that could really be termed an emergency! If the boy is going to throw up, so be it! Give him a plastic bag! We're not talking about a day-long journey here, all he would have to do is wait an extra fifteen minutes before getting off at the normally scheduled stop. (There's the issue of throwing up *on* people of course - and that's something that's considerate to avoid, but she could have asked for a plastic bag - I'm sure someone had one. In fact, I had one, because I always carry a few for one use or another, including just such an emergency (more on that at the end of this story).
But, horrified as I was, I made no comment, and watched the woman open a window as the train slowly passed a station it wasn't due to stop at, and - sounding like it was actually an emergency - asked the people on the platform to get the train to stop because there was a sick passenger. Someone hit one of the emergency stop buttons (curse them!) and the train stopped. So far, so bad, but it gets worse.
There is a downside to a system that nearly always runs on time. Throw it out-of-whack, and the operators are not well-trained in, or accustomed to, how to think-on-their-feet and improvise a speedy new solution to an unplanned disruption in any given routine. The train stopped soon enough, but it took a few minutes to communicate with the train operators just why one of the platform emergency stop buttons had been pressed (put there to save lives, not for trivial reasons it should be noted). They then opened the doors to let out the boy (and the rest of his group). "Okay" I thought, "Let's get the show back on the road!", but since it was an emergency stop and the system isn't geared to not working on time, it took about five minutes(!) to clear whatever safety procedures (and I'm sure there are many) they have in place and get going again. I thought then, and still think now "Why so long? The sightly queasy boy is off the train. Just re-shut the doors and go!" It shouldn't take more than 20 seconds from the boy getting off to getting things in motion again. (Veteran Tokyo train rider I am - I think great efforts should be expended to keep the trains running On Time.)
At this point, I wish I could jump through to your side of the screen and ask how this sounds to you. Are you shaking your head at the woman forcing an emergency stop for a non-emergency reason, or at me for being callous? My view is the woman is far more callous - ignoring tens of thousands for one person who was not in the slightest bit of danger and had no need for emergency action.
The next example is sort of funny (in an "I shouldn't be laughing at this, but..." kind of way), that - at its core - showcases the very same "Ho-ho! Let's stop the train! It's easy! It's fun! Nobody needs to go anywhere! Ho-ho!" kind of (non-)thinking way.
The day began with me standing on the platform waiting for an express train. I watched a local (that shouldn't have been at the platform at that time) shut its doors and set out, then looked at the clock, which indicated my express should have been leaving (with me aboard) at that exact time. Three minutes later, the express roars in and I walk aboard (the term "climb aboard" isn't applicable here since the platform is exactly the same height as the floor of the train - it's pretty much like walking onto an elevator).
As I walk on with my fellow sardine riders, I wonder if the train will be less crowded than usual due to some earlier riders having taken a local, rather than wait for the express (depending on how many locals leave before the express arrives, they can be faster to a destination - there are only so many places for express trains to pass locals), but then quickly counter that with the thought "There may be fewer people on this train who were on the platform earlier, but there'll be more people who arrived on the platform later!" But (due to there actually being fewer people aboard or not, I'm not sure), I only have two people pressed up against me, compared to a more typical three to six.
I settle in for the ride by listening to my MP3 player (not an i-Pod), after forcing myself to look away from the two over-door monitors. One of them displays useful information about the train route, progress, station information, and news of which train lines are running late, and why (with ludicrous English translations - whoever did them was exceedingly lazy and/or lacking actively firing electrical signals in their head - there are something like ten different phrases that they translated into "Accident" in English), and the other display showing advertisements - some of them soundless versions of existing television ads, and others specifically made for the trains.
I avoid looking at the screens, because I've noticed how I'll be listening to an audio-book on my MP3 player; I'll look up and then realize (after a couple of minutes of watching the screen) that I'm not hearing the words (of the recording I'm listening to) any longer while I process the moving images. "Ah... this is why people are becoming ever more stupid in the world then! They watch TV!" I sometimes think, and then watch some TV on the weekend that I consider to be educational....
I settled into looking out the window between two peoples' heads (I was lucky to be second from the door - when you're stuck in the middle of a sardine run train, sometimes it's hard to find something to aim your eyes at - it's rude to stare at people's faces...), and listened to the classical Japanese story coming from my earphones (well-read and interesting-sounding, although its divergence from modern spoken Japanese makes it hard to understand). Suddenly the train went into hard braking with a simultaneous announcement saying we were making an emergency stop. The first time that happened to me was about a month ago - and large numbers of people fell down (a woman's high heel broke my skin and bloodied my leg in the pile up on the floor). This time around, it was old news ("Oh... another emergency stop..."), and since the train had been traveling fairly slowly anyway (stuck behind a slow local train until we could reach a station with extra rails for passing), no one (that I saw anyway) fell down, and I just braced myself and wondered *why* we were being thrown into an emergency stop (I don't recall hearing an explanation for the other time either - just a "Sorry everyone, we had to make an emergency stop"). Same deal this time, but at least we got back under way fairly quickly.
In re-reading this, it just occurred to me that it could be the ATS (Automatic Train System) jumping on a train that it detects as following too close to another train. The expresses run right behind locals until they get to a station where they can pass. In which case, it would make sense that the train could get under way again quickly. There's something to be said for trains being operated by people rather than computers.
I drifted off to commuter-stupor-land again - looking out the window - basically just waiting for the time of the ride to pass, looking forward to getting off the train and getting on with the day. But... what's this? The woman on my left is looking past me and also looking down, to the right, to the left... "Wha...?" So I look down, back, left, right, expecting to either see that someone has dropped something, or that some pair of sardines are beginning to have an argument (which always makes us other sardines nervous when that - infrequently, fortunately - happens). I don't see either of those things, but instead note that several people in my vicinity are looking left, right, down, left, right... I give the woman who first caught my attention a questioning look and she tells me "Byonin ga iru" ("Someone is sick"). I nod "Ah..." and while I'm just starting to comprehend what the "left-right-down-left-right people are doing (looking for an emergency stop), I see a tall man on the other side of the train open the emergency door release cover (as far as I can tell, on that particular train line, there are no longer any emergency stop buttons/levers on the inside of the train, but pulling the emergency door open lever will obviously also stop the train), and - while I'm thinking "No... please don't do that...", he pulls the lever until it's sticking out at a 90-degree angle.
That pair of doors slightly opens (probably terrifying the people who had been standing up against it!), and the train stops while I imagine the driver looking at an error on his control panel and thinking "What the &%$%?!".
Great - now we're stopped *between* stations - on an *elevated* railway, and the train isn't going to move until the doors are shut again. The driver (or the conductor) comes on the intercom and says "Hasshin era o hakken shimashita" ("A running error has been detected"). I looked over at the source of that error - the guy who had pulled the lever, who was standing there with his arms crossed, looking quite pleased and proud of himself for having figured out how to stop the train, and said (from here out the wholly Japanese conversation at the time translated to English here) "You should close that." He ignored me, so I turned around, shaking my head, and thinking "Alright - we'll just wait this one out then", but after about three seconds of living with that decision, I turned around again in frustration, looked at the lever, and watched as Mr. Lever-Puller then pulled the doors halfway open and poked his head outside (we were in the middle of the train, so both the driver and the conductor were about five cars away). Not seeing anyone, nor anyone seeing him, he pulled his head back in and mostly closed the doors. Another announcement came on that they were still investigating the running error (with 80 pairs of doors on a 10-car train (four per side, eight per car), apparently when one is open, it's not immediately apparent which one - and anyway, I suspect the driver probably imagined it to be a computer or sensor error rather than the doors really being open).
I turned back to the window, away from the source of our troubles, and pondered whether - in my agitated state - my Japanese was up to the task of conveying the lunacy of our disabling the train on an elevated railway between stations. Then, without first working out what to say, I cast aside the general rule of not talking on the train in the morning (not talking is the best way of getting to work without arguments breaking out under sardine conditions) and somehow the vocal gears started turning for me. I said "Okay - so we've got a sick person on board - now we can sit here and watch them die!" This got a response from Mr. Lever-Puller, who looked at me and said with an amazing look of calm & concern "Do you think I should close it?" Struck by the non-combativeness in his way of speaking, I dialed back my frustration a few notches and said "Well... if someone wants to get off the train right here...." So the guy looks at the sick man (who I noticed for the first time - I didn't know who it was before) and asks him with the same calm & concerned look/voice "Do you want to get off here?" The man nodded and started to move towards the door....
I watched in wordless fascination thinking (in pictures and feelings, not words) "Is he really going to climb down off the train right here, onto the elevated tracks? I wonder how much of a walk it is to the next station...." But as he began to move towards the doors, another man said "That's..." which carried a radio-broadcast load of meaning, more fully conveying "That's not a good idea" than actually saying "That's not a good idea". (What the Japanese language lacks in precision and clarity, people often more than make up for with radio broadcasts. Any serious student of the language should bear this factor in mind.) The man stopped, and it was apparent that he was not going to get off the train where we were stopped... with the power to get moving again tantalizingly close at hand ("Shut that emergency door valve!" was my broadcast signal!).
So Mr. Lever-Puller, once again with calm & concern, asked the sick man if he thought we should push the lever back to its normal, closed position. The man gave a small nod, Mr. Lever-Puller became Mr. Lever-Pusher, the doors closed with the same sound they make when closing at stations, and there soon followed an announcement that the error had been cleared. As the train slowly began to move again, I looked back to the sick man and began to wonder what was wrong with him (he looked okay, standing there in an expensive-looking suit). A student offered him a plastic bag, which he refused, and then Mr. Lever-Puller/Pusher quietly confirmed that it was another type of stomach problem. You don't want to know the details, but suffice it to say that the subsequent smell that arose in the carriage explained the exact nature of the man's problem. I sure felt for the guy - he probably had to buy a new suit before going to work, but stopping the train between stations like that hadn't helped him or any of us in any way. It just made things worse. (If someone really needs to get off for an actual emergency, the thing to do, is time the pulling of the emergency lever so that the train stops at a station.
Having said that - did we try stopping the train again for that poor guy? No... the thought didn't occur to me until after I was on my next train, and anyway, by the time we came to the next station after getting under way again, it was too late and I think we all just figured another ten minutes (to the regularly scheduled stop) wasn't going to make much difference. Although... the woman who was standing next to me, looked at me as we passed the next station... maybe she thought I should have pulled the emergency door open lever on our side of the train, where the platform was.
As we picked up speed, I again took to looking out the window, thinking over the morning's events and having a silent discussion with myself wondering if I had acted callously or badly about people wanting to help the guy get off the train. I came to the same conclusion I had already made in the heat of the moment: If stopping the train had helped at least one person in some way, then there's something to think about and discuss, but as it was, it made things worse for everyone - including the man Mr. Lever-Puller was trying to help. (That logic ignores the possibility of trying it again at a station, but the idea of doing that didn't occur to me until I was on my next train. But even then, if the train is running at speed, people could get injured when it's suddenly thrown into emergency braking.)
Interestingly, about five minutes later, suddenly the driver (or conductor) had very precise details about the "running error". They came on the intercom again apologizing for the delay and explaining that there was an indication that a door on the left-hand side of coach #5 had been open. We coach #5 people almost lowered our heads a notch in shame, and I seemed to detect an underlying thought with the announcement along the lines of "What are you idiots in car #5 doing anyway?!" I could only agree.
I think... not so many years ago, that the man with stomach trouble wouldn't have asked to have the train stopped, and the man who pulled the emergency door release, wouldn't have done that. People don't seem to think of the thousands (or tens of thousands) of people they're going to inconvenience in the attempt to help one person. If that one person is having a heart attack or something that really is a life-threatening emergency, then of course it's great to stop the trains, if it helps the individual, but for stomach trouble? How many other people were barely holding on, counting the seconds until they could get off and rush to a restroom? Out of tens of thousands on one of the main rail lines (not an exaggeration), it's not unreasonable to imagine that there are a few individuals in such a state on any given day. That incident made us a further ten minutes late (on top of the initial five minutes) getting into the next station. (We got going again so quickly after the first emergency stop, that I don't think that actually affected the schedule.)
The conclusion? If people continue to stop the trains for frivolous reasons, they will increasingly run off-schedule, until Tokyo's "clockwork" trains become Tokyo's "broken-clockwork" trains.
Ah...I promised to put in my example of having used a plastic bag on a train. It happened like this - there was a man leaving the PR agency (back when I still worked there) for better employment. He was one of a string of people who left, and I was incensed at how the company had a made a big deal about most of the other people, throwing farewell parties for them, etc., but hadn't done anything for this guy, who I thought had done more for the company than many of the others. So, on his final day, I went out and bought some can-chuhai (sort of like vodka), and some things to eat with it, and we had a small (two-person) party in the office after quitting time (there were *always* people working there overtime, so the company was always "open" (for want of a better word) and we just used a conference table over by the balcony. After the chuhai ran out, we were having such a good time, that we raided the company refrigerator, where we discovered left-over supplies from a birthday celebration for another employee, that had occurred the week before. I'm ashamed to write the details, but these supplies included a half-bottle of vodka and a half-bottle of gin. Both of these we fully consumed and I staggered off to the train station to catch the last train home.
So - there I was, standing on the platform at Shinjuku Station, and the last train was approaching the platform just as I was beginning to feel queasy.... What to do - what to do. If I stayed off the train, I would have to find something to do with myself for the night while waiting until the first train at about 4:50 in the morning (Tokyo's entire train system shuts down every night except December 31st). But how could I get on?
Plastic bags to the rescue! I quickly opened my backpack and took two of them out, doubling them up so as to make sure there would be no leakage. The train came in, I climbed in with the rest of the sardines, bags in hand, and sure enough - after about five minutes I had to throw up, which I proceeded to carefully do into the double-walled plastic bag. I can still remember the expression on the face of a woman standing in front of me, who looked nervously back at me while I was throwing up (you can't go anywhere when you're packed into a train like a sardine, so it can't have been a happy discovery that her next-door-neighbor sardine was throwing up), but not to worry - the bags didn't leak and I didn't get anything on anyone. (There must have been some smell though.)
Ugh. I probably shouldn't even tell that story, but I would like to show that I know what I'm talking about when I say it's possible to throw up into a plastic bag on a moving train.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
http://lylehsaxon.blogspot.jp/
http://youtube.com/lylehsaxon
Saturday, June 28, 2008
"Instantaneous Water Heaters vs. Tank Water Heaters"
To start with the conclusion, instantaneous water heaters rule. The only thing better about tank water heaters, is if you turn the hot water tap off and on rapidly, the tank could care less, while the same action seriously stresses a machine that goes from idling to action with each opening of the tap, and back to idle with each closing of the tap.
I grew up with 40-gallon (later 50-gallon, and one 30-gallon) gas-fired hot water tanks that would heat the 40 gallons with a raging blaze of blue flames, and then drop back to a flickering pilot light when a certain temperature was reached. Hot water was pulled from the top of the tank, which was replenished by a cold water feed at the bottom of the tank, and when a water temperature sensor detected that the temperature had fallen to a certain point, the raging blue blaze would come back to heat the tank of water again. A hot-water-run-dry cold tank would take something like 20-30 minutes to come back up to fully heated temperature.
The tank was hidden away out-of-sight and out-of-mind in either a basement or garage, and the only thing that made you think about it was taking too long of a shower, which would run the hot water out and require a waiting period before the household had hot water again. First in to take a shower and you were likely to incur the wrath of subsequent shower users who ran out of hot water ("You used up all the hot water!"), and second in and you were likely to complain to the first user, "You used up almost all the hot water! It went cold on me after about two minutes!", etc.
So, one day in 1984, I climbed onto a Tokyo-bound 747, had dinner, watched a movie, fell asleep, and woke up in a land of instantaneous water heaters. Strangely, in that era of so many things being "Made in Japan", I noticed at the built-in-1928 YMCA I stayed at, that it had a "Made in USA" OTIS elevator and "Made in USA" silverware!!! I don't think I'd ever seen "Made in USA" silverware before - everything I used in the US was "Made in Japan", so I cross the Pacific and my first meal is with "Made in USA" silverware - in Japan!
But I digress. I got onto that line of thinking due to my experience of renting a room in a house in Chigasaki from a man who was long-term house-sitting (once a week) for the owners, who were friends of his parents. The owners had apparently lived overseas for some years and were keen to carry back to Japan some of the luxury that they had experienced while in the US. So they had their new house built with central heating (via a kerosene-burning furnace that was fed from a large tank behind the house that cost something like - at the current exchange rate - $500 to fill), and a US-made 40-gallon gas-fired water heater. How did those air and water heating systems transplant over here? In a word, badly! First, let's look at the central heating system.
The problem was, the house construction was not in line with the concept of heating the whole house (something practically unheard of in Tokyo at the time), so the house wasn't properly insulated (if it was insulated at all) and the heat just went through the walls and ceiling. The furnace produced enough heat to warm the house, but since the house couldn't hold that heat, the furnace just ran constantly. Energy costs were then (and still are) quite a bit higher here than in the US, so the only time we used the furnace was when guests were invited over, and then the furnace was fired up for a few hours. Otherwise we left that thing shut down, lest it bankrupt us and make us sleep under a bridge somewhere. Better to sleep in freezing cold under a roof than throw all your money away on sleeping in a warm house for a few months, followed by being kicked out for lack of rent money and having to sleep under a bridge! Space heaters slightly reduced the inside chill, but they lacked enough power to actually warm a room up.
Now - the water heater! In contrast to the nearly useless central heating system (if we had been filthy-dirty-stinking-rich, we might have actually used that on a daily basis), we did use the water heater, but the basic procedure was to fire the thing up 30 minutes before taking a bath/shower, and then to shut it off (completely shut it off, including the pilot light) right after taking a shower. Used in this way, the gas bill was manageable, but still higher than it would have been with an instantaneous water heater (provided it was used correctly). (Thinking back on those US-made things at a time when imported things here were pricey and rare, and how I ran into them in my first months after crossing the Pacific, it's almost as though there was some magnetic force putting a US-made biped in contact with US-made machinery.)
Now - finally we come to instantaneous water heaters. Wonderful devices, with many advantages over tank water heaters, and with only a few disadvantages. First, the advantages.
Since they heat fully cold water to warm/hot temperatures as it comes from the cold water supply, there is no warm up period and no running out of hot water. In a multi-person household, you can take one shower after another and no one ever (ever) runs out of hot water. When they are completely shut down (every night, etc.), there is zero gas consumption (in contrast to the constantly burning pilot light in a tank water heater).
Disadvantages: Instantaneous water heaters are more complicated than tank water heaters, and so the initial cost is probably higher. I'm not sure about the cost, but I am fairly certain about the complexity leading to more possibilities for malfunction. Over the 23 years or so I've been using them, I've had to have a few of them repaired or replaced. And... one of the advantages can be a disadvantage as well - never running out of hot water means that if you get to thinking about something while taking a shower and the clock speeds up on you, you can end up wasting a lot of water and gas through overuse.
Oh! And one other disadvantage (at least with the system I'm using now). The hot water is not mixed with cold - rather the hot water the machine generates is used directly, so you adjust the temperature of the heated water output - you don't mix it with cold water. This is done in two ways. It has three different flame settings, and fine-tuning adjustments are made by controlling water flow - more water is cooler and less water is hotter. In theory, this setup should work fine, but the gradation between gas settings one, two, and three is such that setting-one is virtually useless (too cold even on the hottest day with the minimum water flow setting); setting-two is usable in the summer if the water flow is turned way down; and setting three, while perfect for the coldest days of winter, requires typhoon levels of water flow to keep the water from being too hot in the summer. So when the weather is warm, as it is now, you end up bouncing between flame-two with not quite enough water coming out, and flame-three with a typhoon water blast. It would be perfect if flame-one was brought up to the current flame-two level and flame-two was brought up to a level between the current flame-two and flame-three settings.
More than you wanted to know about water heaters....
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
I grew up with 40-gallon (later 50-gallon, and one 30-gallon) gas-fired hot water tanks that would heat the 40 gallons with a raging blaze of blue flames, and then drop back to a flickering pilot light when a certain temperature was reached. Hot water was pulled from the top of the tank, which was replenished by a cold water feed at the bottom of the tank, and when a water temperature sensor detected that the temperature had fallen to a certain point, the raging blue blaze would come back to heat the tank of water again. A hot-water-run-dry cold tank would take something like 20-30 minutes to come back up to fully heated temperature.
The tank was hidden away out-of-sight and out-of-mind in either a basement or garage, and the only thing that made you think about it was taking too long of a shower, which would run the hot water out and require a waiting period before the household had hot water again. First in to take a shower and you were likely to incur the wrath of subsequent shower users who ran out of hot water ("You used up all the hot water!"), and second in and you were likely to complain to the first user, "You used up almost all the hot water! It went cold on me after about two minutes!", etc.
So, one day in 1984, I climbed onto a Tokyo-bound 747, had dinner, watched a movie, fell asleep, and woke up in a land of instantaneous water heaters. Strangely, in that era of so many things being "Made in Japan", I noticed at the built-in-1928 YMCA I stayed at, that it had a "Made in USA" OTIS elevator and "Made in USA" silverware!!! I don't think I'd ever seen "Made in USA" silverware before - everything I used in the US was "Made in Japan", so I cross the Pacific and my first meal is with "Made in USA" silverware - in Japan!
But I digress. I got onto that line of thinking due to my experience of renting a room in a house in Chigasaki from a man who was long-term house-sitting (once a week) for the owners, who were friends of his parents. The owners had apparently lived overseas for some years and were keen to carry back to Japan some of the luxury that they had experienced while in the US. So they had their new house built with central heating (via a kerosene-burning furnace that was fed from a large tank behind the house that cost something like - at the current exchange rate - $500 to fill), and a US-made 40-gallon gas-fired water heater. How did those air and water heating systems transplant over here? In a word, badly! First, let's look at the central heating system.
The problem was, the house construction was not in line with the concept of heating the whole house (something practically unheard of in Tokyo at the time), so the house wasn't properly insulated (if it was insulated at all) and the heat just went through the walls and ceiling. The furnace produced enough heat to warm the house, but since the house couldn't hold that heat, the furnace just ran constantly. Energy costs were then (and still are) quite a bit higher here than in the US, so the only time we used the furnace was when guests were invited over, and then the furnace was fired up for a few hours. Otherwise we left that thing shut down, lest it bankrupt us and make us sleep under a bridge somewhere. Better to sleep in freezing cold under a roof than throw all your money away on sleeping in a warm house for a few months, followed by being kicked out for lack of rent money and having to sleep under a bridge! Space heaters slightly reduced the inside chill, but they lacked enough power to actually warm a room up.
Now - the water heater! In contrast to the nearly useless central heating system (if we had been filthy-dirty-stinking-rich, we might have actually used that on a daily basis), we did use the water heater, but the basic procedure was to fire the thing up 30 minutes before taking a bath/shower, and then to shut it off (completely shut it off, including the pilot light) right after taking a shower. Used in this way, the gas bill was manageable, but still higher than it would have been with an instantaneous water heater (provided it was used correctly). (Thinking back on those US-made things at a time when imported things here were pricey and rare, and how I ran into them in my first months after crossing the Pacific, it's almost as though there was some magnetic force putting a US-made biped in contact with US-made machinery.)
Now - finally we come to instantaneous water heaters. Wonderful devices, with many advantages over tank water heaters, and with only a few disadvantages. First, the advantages.
Since they heat fully cold water to warm/hot temperatures as it comes from the cold water supply, there is no warm up period and no running out of hot water. In a multi-person household, you can take one shower after another and no one ever (ever) runs out of hot water. When they are completely shut down (every night, etc.), there is zero gas consumption (in contrast to the constantly burning pilot light in a tank water heater).
Disadvantages: Instantaneous water heaters are more complicated than tank water heaters, and so the initial cost is probably higher. I'm not sure about the cost, but I am fairly certain about the complexity leading to more possibilities for malfunction. Over the 23 years or so I've been using them, I've had to have a few of them repaired or replaced. And... one of the advantages can be a disadvantage as well - never running out of hot water means that if you get to thinking about something while taking a shower and the clock speeds up on you, you can end up wasting a lot of water and gas through overuse.
Oh! And one other disadvantage (at least with the system I'm using now). The hot water is not mixed with cold - rather the hot water the machine generates is used directly, so you adjust the temperature of the heated water output - you don't mix it with cold water. This is done in two ways. It has three different flame settings, and fine-tuning adjustments are made by controlling water flow - more water is cooler and less water is hotter. In theory, this setup should work fine, but the gradation between gas settings one, two, and three is such that setting-one is virtually useless (too cold even on the hottest day with the minimum water flow setting); setting-two is usable in the summer if the water flow is turned way down; and setting three, while perfect for the coldest days of winter, requires typhoon levels of water flow to keep the water from being too hot in the summer. So when the weather is warm, as it is now, you end up bouncing between flame-two with not quite enough water coming out, and flame-three with a typhoon water blast. It would be perfect if flame-one was brought up to the current flame-two level and flame-two was brought up to a level between the current flame-two and flame-three settings.
More than you wanted to know about water heaters....
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Saturday, June 21, 2008
"The Night Before the Sardine Express"
In the maelstrom of a typical Tokyo early evening, CT showed up at our prearranged (no pocketable cell phones in February 1991) meeting place at Naka-Meguro Station with a few friends of his, and then led the way to a Columbian bar that he knew. After sitting down and ordering the first round of food & drinks, we settled in for an evening of talk & laughter:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ZISXHGXIAyc
The evening wore on - too much time & money was spent, and by the time I looked at the time, thinking I would go home, it was too late - the train system was already beginning its nightly shutdown.
CT said I could stay at his place, and so we went out into the concrete & asphalt night - stopping for more drinks at a second place (his idea, not mine), and after that place, we then had soba noodles at a third place, before finally going to his apartment in Yutenji.
It was great to have a place to stay, but when visiting a friend's home, you can only dial down your social politeness level so far, and the polite tension prevents a thorough rest. Keep in mind that we're talking about a typical (especially in 1991) small Tokyo apartment, so the supreme luxury of a private room was not to be had.
Sleeping on the tatami mat floor (a couple of feet from my snoring freind) for a couple of hours and waking up more than half-asleep, I finally roused myself enough to begin the journey across town via the (very) early morning trains (which typically start up between 4:30-5:00 a.m.).
And it was on this journey home that I came across the situation I recorded on the Seibu-Ikebukuro Line:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf8Ig2M3Zq0
I knew that that station at that time was a sardine packing point, but I hadn't recorded it, since when I had to pack myself on with the other sardines, I got on with the video camera in its case and over my head. (On the day the video was taken, I had a late schedule.) I would work pretty hard to get it onto one of the overhead racks, but when I couldn't, I put it on my shoulder to keep it from getting smashed. As for recording the inside of one of those high-density sardine runs, it just seemed like way too rude of a thing to do. Taking pictures of the backs of people disappearing into a train is one thing, but taking the camera out and recording everyone's faces on the inside of the train didn't seem like a great idea.
That evening was no big deal, but I'm hoping to give some context to my very often very misunderstood clip about the Sardine Run Express. I had originally wanted to keep on editing in bits from the original tape until the peak rush towards Tokyo, but I decided to just cover the night before and the first couple of trains in the morning. I might put together another clip to fill the gap between the Naka-Meguro/Yutenji-to-Shibuya clip and the crush-rush clip - if anyone is interested....
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ZISXHGXIAyc
The evening wore on - too much time & money was spent, and by the time I looked at the time, thinking I would go home, it was too late - the train system was already beginning its nightly shutdown.
CT said I could stay at his place, and so we went out into the concrete & asphalt night - stopping for more drinks at a second place (his idea, not mine), and after that place, we then had soba noodles at a third place, before finally going to his apartment in Yutenji.
It was great to have a place to stay, but when visiting a friend's home, you can only dial down your social politeness level so far, and the polite tension prevents a thorough rest. Keep in mind that we're talking about a typical (especially in 1991) small Tokyo apartment, so the supreme luxury of a private room was not to be had.
Sleeping on the tatami mat floor (a couple of feet from my snoring freind) for a couple of hours and waking up more than half-asleep, I finally roused myself enough to begin the journey across town via the (very) early morning trains (which typically start up between 4:30-5:00 a.m.).
And it was on this journey home that I came across the situation I recorded on the Seibu-Ikebukuro Line:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf8Ig2M3Zq0
I knew that that station at that time was a sardine packing point, but I hadn't recorded it, since when I had to pack myself on with the other sardines, I got on with the video camera in its case and over my head. (On the day the video was taken, I had a late schedule.) I would work pretty hard to get it onto one of the overhead racks, but when I couldn't, I put it on my shoulder to keep it from getting smashed. As for recording the inside of one of those high-density sardine runs, it just seemed like way too rude of a thing to do. Taking pictures of the backs of people disappearing into a train is one thing, but taking the camera out and recording everyone's faces on the inside of the train didn't seem like a great idea.
That evening was no big deal, but I'm hoping to give some context to my very often very misunderstood clip about the Sardine Run Express. I had originally wanted to keep on editing in bits from the original tape until the peak rush towards Tokyo, but I decided to just cover the night before and the first couple of trains in the morning. I might put together another clip to fill the gap between the Naka-Meguro/Yutenji-to-Shibuya clip and the crush-rush clip - if anyone is interested....
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Monday, June 16, 2008
"2008 - Cultural Balancing Point"
I visited a western-influenced building last week and felt an ancient (for me) comfort with an interior layout similar to what is (or was) typical in the land-beyond-the-ocean that I came from, over two decades before. It was just little things - like paper towels in the restroom (nearly nonexistent here) and the layout of furniture. Pondering how I was so easily going on a nostalgia trip, I thought back to early experiences here with western-influenced interiors. In the old days, I would notice one western thing, and then notice twenty eastern local touches. The feeling tended to be along the lines of "this has lost something in translation/transplant..."
But now - having spent half my life here and half my life there - when I find something from that distant past & distant land - that single item, regardless of its surroundings, is enough to take me back to another era, another land, another me.
It's something like this - newly arrived, I would look for a perfect picture with all the details intact, and invariably I would notice that the picture was not complete. Now, I don't think I can even remember the whole picture of life in the land-beyond-the-ocean, so discovery of a single item is enough to start up an old video clip in the mind.
....... That was what I intended to say when I starting writing this, but it occurs to me that this is also tied in with my shock at many of the comments made by viewers of the Sardine Run video. It's not a big deal - no one was being forced to ride the train, and the ride they faced was only about 20-25 minutes, but many of the comments make it clear that there is zero understanding of the situation, and with that level of non-comprehension, I wish that hadn't been posted. I wanted to make a point to my New York and London friends who claimed that Tokyo's trains couldn't be any more crowded than their trains, but the vast sea of misunderstanding that was to ensue was unforeseen.
"The seed doesn't fall far from the tree"
"You can never go home"
Which is true? Both & neither it would seem.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
But now - having spent half my life here and half my life there - when I find something from that distant past & distant land - that single item, regardless of its surroundings, is enough to take me back to another era, another land, another me.
It's something like this - newly arrived, I would look for a perfect picture with all the details intact, and invariably I would notice that the picture was not complete. Now, I don't think I can even remember the whole picture of life in the land-beyond-the-ocean, so discovery of a single item is enough to start up an old video clip in the mind.
....... That was what I intended to say when I starting writing this, but it occurs to me that this is also tied in with my shock at many of the comments made by viewers of the Sardine Run video. It's not a big deal - no one was being forced to ride the train, and the ride they faced was only about 20-25 minutes, but many of the comments make it clear that there is zero understanding of the situation, and with that level of non-comprehension, I wish that hadn't been posted. I wanted to make a point to my New York and London friends who claimed that Tokyo's trains couldn't be any more crowded than their trains, but the vast sea of misunderstanding that was to ensue was unforeseen.
"The seed doesn't fall far from the tree"
"You can never go home"
Which is true? Both & neither it would seem.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Saturday, June 07, 2008
"Shinjuku East Exit Ticket Gates - 1990 & 2008"
I've been living my in-motion life on the Tokyo train system for over two decades now, but since posting a few video clips, I realize from comments from overseas that the system here must not be very widely understood. So, rather than focus on the sensational aspect (as portrayed in the gone-viral pack-'em-in video), there seems to be a need to focus a little on the mundane stuff, like ticket gates.
1990 was just before they began automating the Tokyo ticket gates, which might sound slow (San Francisco's BART system was automated when I moved there in 1982), but keep in mind how vast the Tokyo train system is, and the need for more computing power, more machines, etc. is apparent. To compare 1990 with 2008, I have two clips that I took - both of the same ticket gates at the East Exit of Shinjuku Station:
1990 Shinjuku East Exit Ticket Gates:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-28511952765748213
2008 Shinjuku East Exit Ticket Gates:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6725662219489500607
One comment about the 2008 clip - the guy going the wrong way is a ticket gate crasher. Many of the gates are bi-directional, but from the way he goes through and the sound, he rushed through with no ticket before the gates could close.
Tickets and cards. The system has advanced to the point where you can travel on all of the trains and most of the buses with a single type of IC card, which saves an incredible amount of time (especially time that used to be spent in line at the ticket machines).
(Note: I posted the video clips for this a while back, and I've discussed them with a few people, but I don't think I've posted any text about them - or have I?)
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
1990 was just before they began automating the Tokyo ticket gates, which might sound slow (San Francisco's BART system was automated when I moved there in 1982), but keep in mind how vast the Tokyo train system is, and the need for more computing power, more machines, etc. is apparent. To compare 1990 with 2008, I have two clips that I took - both of the same ticket gates at the East Exit of Shinjuku Station:
1990 Shinjuku East Exit Ticket Gates:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-28511952765748213
2008 Shinjuku East Exit Ticket Gates:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6725662219489500607
One comment about the 2008 clip - the guy going the wrong way is a ticket gate crasher. Many of the gates are bi-directional, but from the way he goes through and the sound, he rushed through with no ticket before the gates could close.
Tickets and cards. The system has advanced to the point where you can travel on all of the trains and most of the buses with a single type of IC card, which saves an incredible amount of time (especially time that used to be spent in line at the ticket machines).
(Note: I posted the video clips for this a while back, and I've discussed them with a few people, but I don't think I've posted any text about them - or have I?)
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
"People are Holding Back!"
I've noticed over the past couple of years that some people are not as eager to get on a train when it's crowded than everyone used to be. Rarely in the old days (1980's) but not so rare in 2008, is the sight of a few people who could easily get on the train if they just tried - with a little contact effort - but who stand there on the platform and (gasp!) just let the train go! They actually wait for the next train when they could have gotten on the train sitting in front of them with its doors open. I'm telling you, this is shocking behavior! Kidding tone aside, it really is surprising to me to see it, so used have I become to packing myself onto trains, no matter how crowded they are.
But what really surprised me was the Shinjuku/Ikebukuro-bound Yamanote Line platform at Shibuya Station a few days ago at about 8:30 p.m. The train took on a load of passengers, and could have taken on a lot more, but there were something like eight people per door (32-48 per car - some cars have four doors, some six) who just held back and waited for the next train. That's actually sensible behavior if you only have one one to use, but for those with multiple transfers (hello...), one lost minute can snowball into a lost 15-30 minutes if it makes you miss long-distance express train connections, not to mention the possibility that a whole string of trains will be similarly packed anyway.
So I remember that scene, and have to step back for a minute and look at myself... who was amazed at the high-density trains for the first several years I lived here, but then grew accustomed to them, to the point where it seems abnormal that people - recently - don't want to force their way onto a train, no matter how crowded it is!
I think there's an image of culture movers getting used to a new culture, and then knowing it. I don't recall ever - until it happened to myself that is - contemplating the concept of learning a culture, and then having that culture change from under your feet. Change of culture versus change of generation. Either it's something travel writers have not encountered or thought about, due to overly strong focus on the initial transitional years in moving into a new culture; or the pace of change has accelerated to the point where cultures fairly radically change in a decade or less, rather than... a century or at least several decades.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
But what really surprised me was the Shinjuku/Ikebukuro-bound Yamanote Line platform at Shibuya Station a few days ago at about 8:30 p.m. The train took on a load of passengers, and could have taken on a lot more, but there were something like eight people per door (32-48 per car - some cars have four doors, some six) who just held back and waited for the next train. That's actually sensible behavior if you only have one one to use, but for those with multiple transfers (hello...), one lost minute can snowball into a lost 15-30 minutes if it makes you miss long-distance express train connections, not to mention the possibility that a whole string of trains will be similarly packed anyway.
So I remember that scene, and have to step back for a minute and look at myself... who was amazed at the high-density trains for the first several years I lived here, but then grew accustomed to them, to the point where it seems abnormal that people - recently - don't want to force their way onto a train, no matter how crowded it is!
I think there's an image of culture movers getting used to a new culture, and then knowing it. I don't recall ever - until it happened to myself that is - contemplating the concept of learning a culture, and then having that culture change from under your feet. Change of culture versus change of generation. Either it's something travel writers have not encountered or thought about, due to overly strong focus on the initial transitional years in moving into a new culture; or the pace of change has accelerated to the point where cultures fairly radically change in a decade or less, rather than... a century or at least several decades.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
"Stepping off the Beaten Path - Jiyugaoka, May 2008"
It's easy to get into a set routine in life, but easy to step outside of it as well - especially in a mega-city like Tokyo. Last week I received an e-mail inviting me to visit an Irish pub in Jiyugaoka (Irish pubs are popular in Tokyo and there are a fair number of them scattered about the city), where I had a couple of glasses of Kilkenny (which I prefer to Guinness), and I took some video clips of the live band there, one of which can be seen here:
"Jiyugaoka Irish Music at Irish Pub"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fsxeVhXhfM
Backing up a notch - before I met my friend and we went to the Irish pub, I was walking around Jiyugaoka a little and took some videos in the rain. Jiyugaoka is a nice area, with (some) tree-lined streets, fashionable shops, and nice (and expensive) houses nearby. One of the tree-lined streets looks like this:
"Jiyugaoka in the Rain"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtb-LmbQoCc
It's almost always fun going somewhere off the beaten path, but by the time I'm ready to go home, I always wish I could just step into a transporter and *be* home, and not have to spend an hour or two navigating the train system to get back. And so it was at the Irish Pub - at one point, as I was running very low on energy (I'd only gotten a few hours sleep the night before), I looked off into space (through the wall) and thought "It would be so nice to just have a five minute walk home now....'.
But I don't live in Jiyugaoka and I don't have access to a transporter, so I hiked back to Jiyugaoka Station and began the two-hour multi-train trip back. The first train I got on (Toyoko Line) was strangely not crowded, with only about 60% of the seats taken, so I took the one semi-box seat arrangement (the rest are bench seats with the seat back against the windows), opened the window as far as it would go (only about 40% from the top, pulling down), and stood up between the seats to have a real look at the world outside, without glass getting in the way. And it was a nice (as in big-city interesting, not countryside beautiful) sight, with a cool breeze blowing into the car. When there's nothing but air between yourself and what you're looking at, you really know you're there; but when you're looking through glass, it's as though you're watching it on TV or something.
And... seeing this on a computer screen, it's further still from "being there", but even on the computer, removing the window glass from the chain of actions and technology leading to your screen brings you one step closer to the original scene. It's not the same as being there of course, but....
As I looked out into the electric Tokyo night ("electric" in the sense of everything being electric more than being charged, although there's some of that as well), there was that big-city feeling of being in middle of urban action and adventure. Part of the big-city ambiance of Tokyo comes form the sound of the many trains echoing between the buildings or heard in the distance - steel wheels and electric motors ("screeeech... screeeeech... mmmmmMMMMMM...... MMMMMMmmmmmmm......"). There's a little of that in the following video:
"Approaching Shibuya Station at Night"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_xz9TK7n3A
In playing that back - there is no screeching exactly, but there is a low-tone sound made by the wheels - hard to describe, but you can hear it in the video. And um... yeah... you're not supposed to stick your head out the window - you could lose it that way.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
"Jiyugaoka Irish Music at Irish Pub"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fsxeVhXhfM
Backing up a notch - before I met my friend and we went to the Irish pub, I was walking around Jiyugaoka a little and took some videos in the rain. Jiyugaoka is a nice area, with (some) tree-lined streets, fashionable shops, and nice (and expensive) houses nearby. One of the tree-lined streets looks like this:
"Jiyugaoka in the Rain"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtb-LmbQoCc
It's almost always fun going somewhere off the beaten path, but by the time I'm ready to go home, I always wish I could just step into a transporter and *be* home, and not have to spend an hour or two navigating the train system to get back. And so it was at the Irish Pub - at one point, as I was running very low on energy (I'd only gotten a few hours sleep the night before), I looked off into space (through the wall) and thought "It would be so nice to just have a five minute walk home now....'.
But I don't live in Jiyugaoka and I don't have access to a transporter, so I hiked back to Jiyugaoka Station and began the two-hour multi-train trip back. The first train I got on (Toyoko Line) was strangely not crowded, with only about 60% of the seats taken, so I took the one semi-box seat arrangement (the rest are bench seats with the seat back against the windows), opened the window as far as it would go (only about 40% from the top, pulling down), and stood up between the seats to have a real look at the world outside, without glass getting in the way. And it was a nice (as in big-city interesting, not countryside beautiful) sight, with a cool breeze blowing into the car. When there's nothing but air between yourself and what you're looking at, you really know you're there; but when you're looking through glass, it's as though you're watching it on TV or something.
And... seeing this on a computer screen, it's further still from "being there", but even on the computer, removing the window glass from the chain of actions and technology leading to your screen brings you one step closer to the original scene. It's not the same as being there of course, but....
As I looked out into the electric Tokyo night ("electric" in the sense of everything being electric more than being charged, although there's some of that as well), there was that big-city feeling of being in middle of urban action and adventure. Part of the big-city ambiance of Tokyo comes form the sound of the many trains echoing between the buildings or heard in the distance - steel wheels and electric motors ("screeeech... screeeeech... mmmmmMMMMMM...... MMMMMMmmmmmmm......"). There's a little of that in the following video:
"Approaching Shibuya Station at Night"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_xz9TK7n3A
In playing that back - there is no screeching exactly, but there is a low-tone sound made by the wheels - hard to describe, but you can hear it in the video. And um... yeah... you're not supposed to stick your head out the window - you could lose it that way.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Sunday, June 01, 2008
"Nostalgia & Tourism"
There's a very narrow path between old buildings in Shinjuku, not far from Shinjuku Station, that is still, to this day, defying the near absolute "nothing old tolerated" rule of Tokyo. I'm not sure of its beginnings, but in 1984, when I first stumbled upon it, it was a nice holdout from bygone days, and very near to new and modern things, so entering the street was quite like stepping past a barrier into another age. Foreign residents like myself liked the ambiance of the place - even if only to walk through - but it wasn't the sort of place many tourists visited, and it still performed its timeless (at least timeless in nothing-old-tolerated Tokyo) function of offering a collection of small, inexpensive, cozy drinking places that (mostly men) would drop in at for a drink on the way home, or to have a quick lunch at.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8469303174098363852&q=source:0169
In 2008, visually, the street ("path" would probably be a more accurate term) looks mostly the same as it did 24 years ago (and probably 30-40 years before that), but that type of collection of old style drinking shops is now so rare in Tokyo that it's becoming more and more of a tourist destination for ("exotic thrill") foreign and ("nostalgia") local tourists. Originally, many of the shops were probably husband & wife run, but the last few times I visited one or another of them, they were being run by foreigners (from south-east Asia). (That's not a complaint, but it does change the atmosphere from what it was into something different.)
Just that one area isn't something worth spending time thinking about, but it's tied in with Tokyo's disconnect with the past in its relentless drive to destroy everything old and be forever modernizing any and everything. Tokyo needs to be modern, but that modernity would be a more comfortable one to live in if it were in context among a certain number of older things. New is exciting, off-new is hum-drum, but just as something is becoming old enough to be interesting, it is smashed to rubble and something squeaky new is put in its place....
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8469303174098363852&q=source:0169
In 2008, visually, the street ("path" would probably be a more accurate term) looks mostly the same as it did 24 years ago (and probably 30-40 years before that), but that type of collection of old style drinking shops is now so rare in Tokyo that it's becoming more and more of a tourist destination for ("exotic thrill") foreign and ("nostalgia") local tourists. Originally, many of the shops were probably husband & wife run, but the last few times I visited one or another of them, they were being run by foreigners (from south-east Asia). (That's not a complaint, but it does change the atmosphere from what it was into something different.)
Just that one area isn't something worth spending time thinking about, but it's tied in with Tokyo's disconnect with the past in its relentless drive to destroy everything old and be forever modernizing any and everything. Tokyo needs to be modern, but that modernity would be a more comfortable one to live in if it were in context among a certain number of older things. New is exciting, off-new is hum-drum, but just as something is becoming old enough to be interesting, it is smashed to rubble and something squeaky new is put in its place....
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
"Yurakucho Time Slip"
I got it into my mind to visit Yurakucho on the way home last night. I could find no logical reason to go there, but when you get the feeling you should do something, you should, so....
There isn't much of anything old left in Tokyo, but you can get at least a taste of industrial decades past by visiting a handful of places in Yarakucho that have somehow survived many decades in old-is-not-tolerated Tokyo. The most picturesque of these is probably the drinking place under the tracks - so over-photographed that you've probably already seen pictures of it a few dozen times... but... here it is again:
After taking that, I wandered over to nearby Hibiya Park and stumbled into a German Beer Festival, where I talked myself into having sausage and beer. The weather was actually perfect for it - not to be taken for granted here, what the rainy season, cold windy winter, hot & humid summer, etc.
"Hibiya Park German Beer Garden"
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
There isn't much of anything old left in Tokyo, but you can get at least a taste of industrial decades past by visiting a handful of places in Yarakucho that have somehow survived many decades in old-is-not-tolerated Tokyo. The most picturesque of these is probably the drinking place under the tracks - so over-photographed that you've probably already seen pictures of it a few dozen times... but... here it is again:
After taking that, I wandered over to nearby Hibiya Park and stumbled into a German Beer Festival, where I talked myself into having sausage and beer. The weather was actually perfect for it - not to be taken for granted here, what the rainy season, cold windy winter, hot & humid summer, etc.
"Hibiya Park German Beer Garden"
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Yurakucho & Hibiya Park Videos (May 2008)
"Yurakucho Time Slip"
There isn't much of anything old left in Tokyo, but you can get at least a taste of industrial decades past by visiting one of the There isn't much of anything old left in Tokyo, but you can get at least a taste of industrial decades past by visiting one of the places under the tracks in Yarakucho.
"Hibiya Park German Beer Garden"
One of the cool evening events held in Hibiya Park - there was German sausage, German beer, and German music seemingly played by German bipeds. - LHS
http://www.youtube.com/user/lylehsaxon
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
There isn't much of anything old left in Tokyo, but you can get at least a taste of industrial decades past by visiting one of the There isn't much of anything old left in Tokyo, but you can get at least a taste of industrial decades past by visiting one of the places under the tracks in Yarakucho.
"Hibiya Park German Beer Garden"
One of the cool evening events held in Hibiya Park - there was German sausage, German beer, and German music seemingly played by German bipeds. - LHS
http://www.youtube.com/user/lylehsaxon
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Sunday, May 25, 2008
"Trying to Figure Out What it Means..."
It began with the day (in 1991) that I walked my video camera out to the end of the platform at Hibarigaoka Station on the Seibu-Ikebukuro Line in Tokyo (there is also a Hibarigaoka Station in Hokkaido) to capture the morning rush ritual of getting to work on time under difficult conditions. I spent about twenty minutes on the platform, taking video of a few different trains, one of which showed more clearly than the others, the pressures of competition for finite space by a very large number of people....
Then, after burning out four cameras taking video from 1990 to 1992 (with a couple of tapes in 1993), I decided I couldn't afford to keep taking Hi8 video, as the (disposable?) video equipment was too expensive for me to buy a new camera/editing controller/editing deck every six to nine months (all four of the cameras I did buy had to be repaired several times within their one-year guarantee period). So, with all the hardware that could play the tapes broken, I boxed the lot of them and sent them to hibernate in the closet.
This is where you might expect to read "... and there they lay forgotten, until..." but they were not forgotten. I had spent too much of my resources and time taking those tapes, so it was a constant thought in the back of my mind that I needed to get them digitized. From time-to-time over the years I would ask around a bit, but the system and storage space requirements were beyond what my computers at the time could handle. After about fifteen years, I began to worry that the tapes would disintegrate from age before I could vacuum the images off of them.
2007 - The power of affordable computers rose to a level sufficient to handle digitizing analogue tapes and I was able to buy what appears to be the last retail-available 8mm playback deck. So - with the necessary equipment finally at hand, I set to work digitizing the tapes. It hasn't always been easy. I was having an increasingly difficult time getting some of the tapes to play, so I bought a second playback deck and it turns out that some of the tapes will play on deck-B, but not deck-A, and - strangely - some of them will play on deck-A, but not on deck-B (I would have thought the newer one would best be able to play all of the tapes). Don't ask me why - both playback decks are the same model, but considering all the trouble I had with all four 8mm cameras and the 8mm editing deck, I'm not particularly surprised. Now, I just want to get everything into digital form so I can stop worrying about it.
In the digitizing process, I came across that early morning crush-rush commuter train material, edited out a piece of it, posted it to Google Video, and mentioned it online. I watched some other sites linking to it with interest, and then after it had been up at Google Video for a few weeks, an e-pal e-mailed me with the unwelcome news that my video had been ripped off and was being posted by others with no attribute to me. Worse, the test introducing the video came in various shades of BS - that the men on the platform were professional pushers (not true - two of them were the drivers of the two stopped trains, the others doing various work at the station), that it was current (no, it was taken in 1991), that it was in China (at least this bit of nonsense was easily pointed out due to the platform men speaking in Japanese in the video), etc. etc.
When I first saw the postings on YouTube saying "Crowded Train in China" etc., I laughed at the ludicrousness of it, but the comments at the foremost copy site (1,104,227 views the last time I checked) have been sobering. Mostly they are people laughing, which is not unexpected, but when they think it's present-day Japan and they start making derogatory remarks about the trains system here, etc., I really wish my video hadn't been copied and used in an idiotic way. I named it "Actually Full Train in 1991 (Why Flextime is a Good Idea)" for a reason. The train system is better now than when the video was taken. New train lines, new rails on existing lines, new train cars, flex time at companies, etc., have improved the morning commute here.
Numbers - I don't think there is any train system in the world that carries more passengers into a central area than the extensive network of trains in Tokyo. The system is nearly overwhelmed at times, but that it carries the number of people it does, nearly always on time, is an extraordinary feat.
In any case, to do something specific about my vague statement that the system is better now, I went back to the same station, on the same train line, at the same time, and stood in the same spot on the same platform, where I took a new video of the same (in the schedule) express train. There was still a two or three second push needed from the two drivers to get the first door closed, but only there, not at the other doors. Have a look at the video here to see for yourself - remember, this one is current, it was taken less than a week ago:
Now... for the part that feels really weird. I read the comments and see people saying "It's fake", "I've seen real videos of crowded Japanese trains, and this one is fake", "That's not Japan, that's China" etc. etc. and it's really bizarre. Up until now, I've believed one thing or another based on books, conversations with people who know (or seem to know) what they're talking about, and even when I'm feeling quite certain about something, there's still the possibility in the background, however small, that I've got it wrong - that there's some crucial evidence that I'm unaware of. But this time, I'm thinking "Hey! Wait a minute! I was there! I took that video! I rode that line all the bloody time! I KNOW what's what here folks, I KNOW. I didn't get it on good athority, I f***ing KNOW. I mean... I wish I could put that in stronger terms, but all caps for "know" and the all-purpose "F" word is all that comes to mind right now. Maybe I could scream or break something? Naw, nobody could take that seriously. See? I KNOW, but how to convey that?
Anyway, to round out the commuting picture, here is another 2008 view of that same station - Hibarigaoka, on the Seibu-Ikebukuro Line:
See? It's all quite civilized. Crowded, yes, but working very well.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Then, after burning out four cameras taking video from 1990 to 1992 (with a couple of tapes in 1993), I decided I couldn't afford to keep taking Hi8 video, as the (disposable?) video equipment was too expensive for me to buy a new camera/editing controller/editing deck every six to nine months (all four of the cameras I did buy had to be repaired several times within their one-year guarantee period). So, with all the hardware that could play the tapes broken, I boxed the lot of them and sent them to hibernate in the closet.
This is where you might expect to read "... and there they lay forgotten, until..." but they were not forgotten. I had spent too much of my resources and time taking those tapes, so it was a constant thought in the back of my mind that I needed to get them digitized. From time-to-time over the years I would ask around a bit, but the system and storage space requirements were beyond what my computers at the time could handle. After about fifteen years, I began to worry that the tapes would disintegrate from age before I could vacuum the images off of them.
2007 - The power of affordable computers rose to a level sufficient to handle digitizing analogue tapes and I was able to buy what appears to be the last retail-available 8mm playback deck. So - with the necessary equipment finally at hand, I set to work digitizing the tapes. It hasn't always been easy. I was having an increasingly difficult time getting some of the tapes to play, so I bought a second playback deck and it turns out that some of the tapes will play on deck-B, but not deck-A, and - strangely - some of them will play on deck-A, but not on deck-B (I would have thought the newer one would best be able to play all of the tapes). Don't ask me why - both playback decks are the same model, but considering all the trouble I had with all four 8mm cameras and the 8mm editing deck, I'm not particularly surprised. Now, I just want to get everything into digital form so I can stop worrying about it.
In the digitizing process, I came across that early morning crush-rush commuter train material, edited out a piece of it, posted it to Google Video, and mentioned it online. I watched some other sites linking to it with interest, and then after it had been up at Google Video for a few weeks, an e-pal e-mailed me with the unwelcome news that my video had been ripped off and was being posted by others with no attribute to me. Worse, the test introducing the video came in various shades of BS - that the men on the platform were professional pushers (not true - two of them were the drivers of the two stopped trains, the others doing various work at the station), that it was current (no, it was taken in 1991), that it was in China (at least this bit of nonsense was easily pointed out due to the platform men speaking in Japanese in the video), etc. etc.
When I first saw the postings on YouTube saying "Crowded Train in China" etc., I laughed at the ludicrousness of it, but the comments at the foremost copy site (1,104,227 views the last time I checked) have been sobering. Mostly they are people laughing, which is not unexpected, but when they think it's present-day Japan and they start making derogatory remarks about the trains system here, etc., I really wish my video hadn't been copied and used in an idiotic way. I named it "Actually Full Train in 1991 (Why Flextime is a Good Idea)" for a reason. The train system is better now than when the video was taken. New train lines, new rails on existing lines, new train cars, flex time at companies, etc., have improved the morning commute here.
Numbers - I don't think there is any train system in the world that carries more passengers into a central area than the extensive network of trains in Tokyo. The system is nearly overwhelmed at times, but that it carries the number of people it does, nearly always on time, is an extraordinary feat.
In any case, to do something specific about my vague statement that the system is better now, I went back to the same station, on the same train line, at the same time, and stood in the same spot on the same platform, where I took a new video of the same (in the schedule) express train. There was still a two or three second push needed from the two drivers to get the first door closed, but only there, not at the other doors. Have a look at the video here to see for yourself - remember, this one is current, it was taken less than a week ago:
Now... for the part that feels really weird. I read the comments and see people saying "It's fake", "I've seen real videos of crowded Japanese trains, and this one is fake", "That's not Japan, that's China" etc. etc. and it's really bizarre. Up until now, I've believed one thing or another based on books, conversations with people who know (or seem to know) what they're talking about, and even when I'm feeling quite certain about something, there's still the possibility in the background, however small, that I've got it wrong - that there's some crucial evidence that I'm unaware of. But this time, I'm thinking "Hey! Wait a minute! I was there! I took that video! I rode that line all the bloody time! I KNOW what's what here folks, I KNOW. I didn't get it on good athority, I f***ing KNOW. I mean... I wish I could put that in stronger terms, but all caps for "know" and the all-purpose "F" word is all that comes to mind right now. Maybe I could scream or break something? Naw, nobody could take that seriously. See? I KNOW, but how to convey that?
Anyway, to round out the commuting picture, here is another 2008 view of that same station - Hibarigaoka, on the Seibu-Ikebukuro Line:
See? It's all quite civilized. Crowded, yes, but working very well.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
"Less Crowded may be More Dangerous..."
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/
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/
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/
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