"Last Edition of
Shinjuku Street Bands - October 30th & 31st
2008"
October 30th & 31st - having run out of
not only patience, but also days in October, this
is definitely the last one of this series. I
originally meant for it to be one video containing
the whole week's worth of performances, but there
was too much material for one YouTube posting, so
I divided it up.
As I mentioned in "Shinjuku Street Bands - October
2008 #3", I have no intention of focusing
exclusively on street bands for videos, I just
wanted to finish this project, so I slogged it out
until the end. (I'm open to recording the
subject again, but for now I want to do other
topics for awhile.)
All of that said, there is some excellent guitar
music in this one I think - with two sections
highlighting Otofuke, the solo guitarist with a
unique guitar-playing method (the first section is
very brief, but the second takes a better look
from multiple angles), and one section (at the
end) of the group, Oshare Dorobo. Others are
featured as well, such as the three-piece group
Ondo.
December 31st, 2008. Another year
over. But not just any year it seems.
It's looking like "2008" will be remembered in
history in much the same way as "1929".
Here's to moving forward constructively; to not
slipping into World-War-III; to proving that
history does not have to repeat itself!
Happy New Year everyone! May it be a great
one!
Lyle
2008/12/24
"Shinjuku Street
Bands - October 2008 #3"
I don't intend to make writing and taking pictures
of Shinjuku street bands a profession, but I would
like to finish the project at least! I went
by there every evening in late October 2008 and
this is the next video in that series. #1
was taken earlier actually, and then #2, #3 (and
#4, when I can get around to editing it) were
taken in the same week. This one, #3, is
from a couple of days - back-to-back.
In searching for the street bands, I walked around
the station (about a 20 minute hike - Shinjuku
Station is large) and there are some brief views
of areas of Shinjuku around the station.
Also in this video are views of three police
officers shutting down a performance by the
South-East Exit of the station.
October may have been the peak of street bands
performing in Shinjuku (mostly in the South and
South-East exit areas), what with comfortable
temperatures (no humid heat and no biting cold),
and not very strict patrolling by local police
officers. Since then however, the police
have been more rigorously enforcing a ban on
unlicensed pubic performances, and the weather has
made it uncomfortable to be outside anyway (for
both the performers and the audience).
For one week of October in particular, I went to
Shinjuku every day, and this is one of the days
(or "another of the days" - if you've seen the
previous Shinjuku Bands post), a not very crowded
evening, with only three bands:
The Ikegami Line is interesting, for a few
reasons. The first thing you notice when
using the line is that the trains only have three
cars, which is really unusual for Tokyo.
Most lines have ten cars, with a few six and eight
car trains on one end of that, and a few 15-car
trains on the other. http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=NNgzUkWPU9Q
The next
thing you notice as you travel down the line, is
that several of the stations are as though in a
time slip, with wooden roofs and other station
bits that look as though they're either from the
many-decades-ago past, or on a seldom traveled
line out in the countryside somewhere.
Then - as you watch the trains going in the other
direction, you notice that there are several
different types of train on the line. By
riding a few of them and noting the plaques that
say when they were manufactured, you notice that
the oldest of the four types being used dates back
to around 1963 or so, and the newest is from this
year (2008).
Other than that, it's just a normal branch line,
except the station names tend to be more
interesting than those on many other lines.
Anyway, that's not much, but it's four in the
morning and I need to get some sleep, so....
Lyle
2008/12/04
"Guitar Music by
the South-East Exit"
Time-wise, I can't walk the streets of Shinjuku
every evening in search of street bands, but
following my visit there on Monday, I returned on
Tuesday and saw a guitar player I had enjoyed
listening to before (and bought a CD of his music)
named Otofuke Kenta. Before I get going with
an attempt to put some of the thought typhoon I
had earlier this evening (Thursday) into words,
here's the guitarist's website: http://www.otofuke.net/inner2.html
Once upon a time, I wanted to be a musician, then
a photographer. I abandoned the idea of
becoming a musician when I assessed how much
difficulty I had distinguishing one note from
another, but have never abandoned my love of
music, nor my quest for visual experiences and
recorded images. The quest continues as the
years continue their relentless acceleration
towards the inevitable end of the story... and the
man walking through life begins to... worry about
running out of time... and to look at the sky and
deeply feel that the world needs more art and
music.
...... There was a moment earlier this evening,
with the air thick with meaning, sorrow, tragedy,
hope, promise... and all the wordless feelings
such moments carry. In the moment I
determined to write the experience into form with
words. This is that attempt, but there was
so much more. Maybe some of the moment is
conveyed between the lines? I wish I could
do better - this is where music would help - if
only I could create music to fit the thought
typhoons....
Lyle
2008/12/03
"A Hard Evening
in the Plaza"
On Monday I stopped by Shinjuku to see if any
bands were playing and found the band Ondo playing
in the plaza by the Southeast Exit (correct name?
I think it's "Tonan" in Japanese). As they
finished playing one song, an unfriendly looking
cleaning man came up and seemed to be telling them
they shouldn't be playing in the plaza, which they
smiled off and then began playing another song as
he walked off.
As I dug my hands into my pockets, I thought "It's
getting cold to be playing outside..." and was
just getting into the song when the bass player
hurriedly put down his instrument and dashed off
down the street. I looked back at the other
two members of the band, who kept playing.
Looking back down the street to see where the bass
player had gone, I saw him talking with a
policeman by what looked like the band's van -
probably getting a parking ticket.
I looked back to the two band members still
playing and pondered the band's difficulties - the
time and trouble of setting up their equipment for
a performance; the difficulty in parking their
van; and then the unfriendly man telling them not
to play. As they finished the song, a pair
of policemen walked up, and that was the end of
the evening's performance. As one of the
policemen talked with one of the three band
members, I bought one of their CDs from the
keyboard player/singer (at least two of the three
sing, maybe all three), and she mentioned that
they would be playing at a "live house" in Shibuya
the following Monday (is "live house" an English
term, or just a Japanese term?)
Incidentally, the system with the police asking
people to write something on a clipboard when they
are asked to stop playing in public seems to be
one in which the written statements basically say
something like "I promise not to do this again
here", so if they are caught a few times, there
comes a point where the police can take out a
stack of statements and say "You obviously are
willfully breaking the law" and then they can
be... fined I guess. (One of the musicians
filled me in regarding what the clipboards were
about.)
Lyle
2008/11/22
"Friendly Advice
& an Empty Field"
On Friday, I went to an (early for the season)
end-of-the-year party in Akasaka. The food
and drink were good, irritations few and far
between, and basically a great time was had by all
(except one guy who had too much to drink, and had
slipped into the "Uuu... can I hang on... uuuuu"
zone). I was hoping to convince him to go
home, but he was more interested in staying with
the group for more fun. A perfectly
understandable and good motivation, but generally
a mistake under those circumstances. (I'll
have to ask about what happened after I went
home!).
I actually had the good sense to leave the "Let's
keep going all night - all weekend - forevermore!"
die-hards before reaching a "I should have left
earlier..." point of regret, and sensibly left for
home in time to catch my last trains.
However, as I sat down on the last of the set of
four trains I needed to take that evening, I
relaxed, thinking I had completed the journey (big
mistake!). I fell asleep and woke up a
couple of stations past where I wanted to get
off. Getting off, I walked across the
platform, intending to take a train back in the
other direction, but a station employee told me
there were no more trains headed in that
direction. (Tokyo shuts its entire train
system down each and every night - except on
December 31st - for... maintenance I suppose.)
No trains to get home on... time to wear my shoes
down! I was rather irritated with myself and
the situation as I began my long walk (on top of
everything, I had to pay extra for that part of
the train journey I hadn't wanted to take), but
then (after walking for about 90 minutes) I began
to enjoy the clear, cool (cold, but not too cold)
night air. After getting instructions from a
friendly man keeping guard over a crossing as
workmen did some work on the nearby railway (the
railways are kept in very good condition here, by
the way), my mood improved still more and then I
found myself positively and throughly enjoying
walking through a field away from houses and
lights - with the stars above visible as they
rarely are in over-lit and often smoggy Tokyo (the
air tends to be clearer in the winter).
I suppose you might be wondering about the idea of
walking through fields in Tokyo! I live away
from the center of Tokyo, so there are some, but
not many. I considered myself fortunate for
the experience of walking through an open
field. I get very tired of always walking
about on asphalt or concrete, in canyons of
buildings, and of in being in sealed-box
buildings. It's very rare to experience a
wide-open sky in this city.... (That said, I
certainly don't want to live outside! I just
want a little more fresh air than I usually get!)
Why not a taxi? Basically, I'm allergic to
taxi drivers! I've been cheated in the US,
Hong Kong, Australia, and in Japan. About
seven out of ten rides have been unpleasant.
The usual problem has been drivers taking a
round-about route, but I've also been overcharged,
with the driver saying there was an extra luggage
charge (in both Hong Kong and Australia, when I
didn't have that much luggage anyway). A
couple of times in Japan the driver blatantly
ignored my direct requests and made sure that he
ran the meter up. A couple of examples would
be in order:
One time I said (using the local language, mind
you) "Stop here please" and the driver - the dirty
rotten scoundrel - kept driving past where I
wanted to get off saying "I can get you
closer". As soon as the meter jumped up,
then he stopped, I (very unhappily) paid the extra
fee and then had to walk back to where the driver
had refused to stop!
Another time, I was running late for a friend's
wedding and I took a taxi from the station to make
up time. Not only did the driver pretend to
not know the streets at all, but when I (looking
at my map) was giving him directions, as we neared
the destination, I said (using the local language
of course) "Turn left here", and the dirty bugger
turned right! Turning left would have gotten
me to the wedding just in time, but by turning
right, the scoundrel driver was able to take a
long detour that made me late. Naturally my
story about why I was late was not believed.
"The taxi drivers here are wonderful and honest -
they would never do such a thing." Yeah,
sure, right....
But the clearest example I had was a weekly trip I
took out to a factory in Tatebayashi, which is in
Gunma Prefecture, just over the border with
Saitama; a one hour trip out of Tokyo by Ryomo
Express train on the Tobu-Isesaki Line (I had
thought it was spelled/pronounced "Isezaki", but
there are more Google hits for "Isesaki", so I
guess that's the correct way). Over a period
of about six months, I went out there once a week,
and took a taxi from the station to the same
factory each time. Tatebayashi is a smallish
city (by Japan's standards anyway), with a
population of about 80,000. In Tokyo,
there's always the possibility that a driver
really doesn't know the streets in a particular
area well, since the city is so vast (less of an
excuse now with electronic navigation), but in a
city of 80,000, that's not very likely. It's
highly probably that the taxi drivers there know
the city like the back of their hands (better
maybe, who studies the back of their own hands
anyway?).
So what happened? Well, in a spirit of
anthropology (and since my company was paying the
taxi fare), I just sat back and observed what the
drivers did each week when I gave them the name of
the well-known factory I was going to. The
first time out, I sat back and watched the scenery
go by outside as I took in Tatebayashi for the
first time. Arriving at the factory, I
thought it was a little expensive, but I just
figured that the factory was far away from the
station. On subsequent trips, I began to
wonder why the price was never the same, but just
put it down to traffic conditions. Then -
about the sixth or seventh trip out - I suddenly
found myself with an honest taxi driver who -
zip!-zip!-zip! - took me directly to the factory
in the shortest distance and time. The fare
was about 30-40 percent cheaper and I arrived
quite a bit sooner than usual.
From that point forward, I watched the drivers
more closely, and - more often than not I'm afraid
- they were not taking the most direct, least
crowded, or fastest route to the factory. (I
could have battled them each and every time, but I
wanted to see what they would do.) One time
was funny, because this driver had taken me on one
of the detours, but it was a slightly less lengthy
detour than usual, and the meter was just on the
verge of jumping up when we stopped in front of
the factory. I could sense his
disappointment as he looked at the meter that was
just about to give him some (dishonestly earned)
extra income, but didn't. He reluctantly hit
the stop button on the meter and I gleefully
thought "Serves you right, you dishonest bugger
you! You wasted time and fuel, and all to
very little avail!" (Thinking back on this,
I realize that he was likely confident the meter
had already changed, as he didn't look at it until
we were sitting there in front of the factory, and
then what's he going to do? I guess he could
have said "Look, I took a special detour to cheat
you out of some extra money, but the meter hasn't
climbed much beyond the honest price yet, so let's
do a few loops in the parking lot here until it
jumps into the next range. You don't mind if
I steal some more of your money, do you?"
The lingering question is whether this despicable
behavior and lack of morals of many taxi drivers
is equally dispersed among their unfortunate
passengers... but that's a stupid question.
Of course it isn't! If you're going to cheat
someone, you pick people who are cheat-able!
Doing that to a savvy local of Tatebayashi could
generate some serious trouble for them.
After all, it is illegal to steal people's money
dishonestly.
On the flip side of this issue of course, are the
people who cheat taxi drivers. Jumping out
without paying, throwing up in the back seat,
saying unpleasant things, doing unpleasant things,
etc. I don't envy the job taxi drivers have,
along with the different kinds of nonsense they
have to put up with, but that's still not an
excuse to victimize innocent people. Getting
"revenge" on innocent people is not getting
revenge at all, but rather perpetuating the
crime. (It's a fearsome thing the way things
can snowball.)
A question the reader may have, is how could that
happen with me going out there so often? The
answer is that if the weekly business I had out
there had been more frequent, or went on longer
than six months (there
may only be 80,000 people in Tatebayashi, but the
city still has a large number of taxis, so I kept
getting different drivers each time), the
drivers would have begun recognizing me and then
behaving more honestly. They would have to,
otherwise I would have begun getting angry and
combative, not to mention that the company paying
the taxi fare for me would have begun to get angry
and started making complaining phone calls to the
taxi company (and if the problem persisted), to
the police, the newspapers, etc. The taxi
drivers probably (incorrectly) took me for a
one-time visitor from overseas (people would come
from overseas to visit that factory from
time-to-time), and thought it was a safe crime to
commit.
So there you have it. Sorry for my long rant
against dishonest taxi drivers, but now that I've
explained in some detail why I'm allergic to them,
if I need to explain again in the future, I can
just dig up this text again and won't have to
spend time explaining it.
This is another advantage to having an extensive
train system, by the way: you can completely shun
taxis (save riding somewhere past the nightly
shutdown point). In fact, I don't think I've
been in a taxi for a few years now. The last
time was when one of my train lines caused me to
miss the last connection due to some problem with
the trains, so they gave out taxi vouchers to the
people who had missed their connections.
They first determined which stations people were
going to, and then grouped them together, giving
them a voucher to that specific station. You
can bet the taxi drivers didn't even consider
trying to rip off the railroads, who know very
well what it should cost and are more than willing
to fight about it (from a position of power no
less).
Lyle
2008/11/15
"Visiting the
Tokyo Motor Show in 1991"
Watching a video I took of my trip out to the
Chiba convention center Makuhari
Messe in October 1991, the number of changes
between then and now is striking in some
ways. If you rent a historical CD of
documentary footage taken decades ago, you expect
things to be different and it just seems natural
that a different era had people wearing funny
clothes ("Ha-ha! Look at those people in
those ridiculous clothes! And they don't
even realize how silly they look! Ha-ha!"),
but when you take a video of modern life, today,
right now, you have the current situation in hand
to show people living in different parts of the
world how things are where you are, currently.
So.... when you put that video in a box in your
closet, let 17 years pass, and then have another
look, you know it's not going to look modern any
more, but the degree and depth of changes in the
video can be a bit shocking. Having been
through all the time between then and now, one day
at a time, it's disconcerting to see how nearly
everything has changed. ("Wait a minute...
when did that change so much anyway? I've
been here the whole time... how could this happen
without noticing it?").
And with that preamble out of the way, let's have
a look at some of the things that have changed in
Tokyo since this video was taken (comments
preceded by the time where a comment topic
appears): http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=6k_lOBIPTag
00:01 - A few things right from the start in the
first second of the video: Women wearing
long hair and long skirts. Not exactly
non-existent now, but there was a fashion trend
back then with very long skirts and very long
hair. That's definitely changed.
Painted trains. There are still some trains
on the Seibu line like in the video with that same
paint scheme, but new trains are nearly always
some combination of unpainted steel and aluminum,
with a colored stripe along the side.
00:05 - Old type train station. This
specific station - Hibarigaoka Station (on the
Seibu-Ikebukuro Line) has been completely rebuilt
(although those narrow stairs leading to the
station are still basically the same). The
old stations were practical. They often used
old rails as a construction material (which makes
sense - rails are I-beams after all) and were
typically open on the sides, so they were cold in
the winter, but nice in other seasons since you
could look out on the world from them
easily. New stations typically force you to
look through glass, and while they are larger and
have higher ceilings, they sometimes feel more
confining somehow.
00:07 - Manually punched tickets. The ticket
gates of Tokyo train stations were just beginning
to go automatic in 1991. Some other cities
in Japan (Nagoya for one I think) had already gone
automatic, but the vastness and complexity of
Tokyo's train system made it much more difficult
to automate.
00:10 - A view through an open window at the old
roofs over the two platforms at Hibarigaoka
Station. There is now Plexiglas there that
keeps out cold wind in the winter, but I liked
being able to look through clear free air
before. The Plexiglas isn't kept clean and
there's that early 21st century claustrophobic
sealed-in-a-box feeling that ruins atmosphere and
photos.
00:25 - It's hard to see, but if you look closely,
you can see what look like square steel boxes on
the roof of the train that is passed over.
These are air intakes for openable vents on the
inside. Trains used to always have these - a
way of getting ventilation inside when the windows
are closed (for rainy weather, etc.). On new
trains, they've stopped making these and made most
of the windows unopenable. There are some
improvements to the new trains, but doing away
with the roof vents was a very bad idea I
think. In the past, there have been many
times when I was stuck as a sardine in the middle
of the train, unable to reach the windows (which
were nearly all openable before), but the stuffy
uncomfortable atmosphere was easily remedied by
reaching up and opening one of the roof
vents. But alas, now they are gone from new
trains, and in a similar situation, I just stand
there suffering, with no way of alleviating the
bad situation. Admittedly, they do seem to
make a point of running the circulation system
more, but mostly that is just recirculating the
same air - better than nothing, but the vents for
outside air were a vastly superior idea.
00:41 - That "Bee!!-Bee!!-Bee!!-Bee!!-Bee!!"
("Hurry!-Hurry!-Hurry!) sound used to be used at
all the JR (formerly JNR) stations, but they've
since changed over to using melodies instead,
using a different melody for each station.
This change corresponded with signs saying "Don't
run for the train!", flex-time, and a less
industrial approach to life in general.
00:47 - Painted trains - you see less and less of
them as they are replaced with stainless steel and
aluminum ones.
00:52 - A real live human being making the
announcement that the train is arriving at Tokyo
Station, not a recording. Also, the
announcement is in Japanese only, without a
secondary English announcement. If the
announcement is always the same anyway, then why
not use a recording? Because after you've
heard the very same recording for about 20,000
times (if you travel ten stops on a line, you'll
hear it twenty times a day for a round-trip - they
only change the station name part of the
recording, otherwise there is only one recording),
you start to go insane! People need
variety! Also, while the Japanese
announcement isn't too bad, the English one is
really irritating! It's too loud, too slow,
robotic like, and just... horrible! And
what's the point? Shinjuku is Shinjuku,
Yotsuya is Yotsuya, Ochanomizu is Ochanomizu....
so in Japanese: "Tsugi no eki wa, Shinjuku desu"
and in English: "The next station is Shinjuku" -
either way, the important part of that: "Shinjuku"
is the same, so torturing commuters with a
myopically spoken "The next station is..." is
really uncalled for. Not only could tourists
catch the station name within the Japanese, but
there are displays over the doors in both English
and Japanese. JR - please - drop those
horrible English announcements on the commuter
lines, they are unneeded, unwanted, unpleasant,
and unnecessary.
01:07 - This passageway over to the Keiyo Line was
new at the time. In fact, the Makuhari Messe
conversion center was new at the time as
well. The Tokyo Motor Show used to be held
at the Harumi convention grounds.
01:58 - Tokyo Disneyland. At the time this
was taken, there were a lot of amusement parks in
Japan, but since then, I've seen news reports
about one after another of them going
bankrupt. Through it all - good times and
bad - Tokyo Disneyland is crowded with expensive
ticket holders, day after day, year after year,
rain, shine, and in hot and cold weather.
I've talked to people who go there several times a
year, year after year! And people actually
fly in from foreign countries (in Asia primarily)
to go there! It's amazingly successful....
02:16 - Chiba would qualify as a bed town, in that
most of the people living in these houses and
apartments travel into Tokyo to work. It's
the same with Saitama and (to a lessor extent due
to Yokohama) Kanagawa. The only thing that's
changed here, is that they have since built a lot
of luxury high-rise apartment towers in central
Tokyo, and people who can afford to live in them,
are happy to escape the purgatory of the morning
crush-rush sardine-run trains.
02:18 - The big green netted box is most likely a
golf driving range. Those are scattered
about the city - providing golfers without the
time or money to visit a real golf course,
someplace to practice their swings by hitting real
golf balls (as opposed to the people I've seen
practicing in their yards or in parks with sponge
or light plastic balls).
03:25 - Crowds of people heading for the Tokyo
Motor Show. The shows are always crowded,
but the last couple I've been to seem to have been
a little less crowded than they used to be - like
this time in 1991.
04:20 - I'm not even exactly sure what it is that
makes these two women look so retro - but they
seem quite different from women their age in the
year 2008. It's probably some combination of
hair color (so many women dye their hair now, that
black hair is actually unusual), eyebrows (it's
common to more radically thin them now), eye size
(it seems that a lot of women are having their
eyes surgically enlarged now - a terrible mistake
I think, as the women here look much better with
their original eyes), clothes, attitude, radio
waves, etc.
05:07 - It's a strange thing about
mini-skirts. You didn't actually see so many
of them in 1991, but when you did, they were often
really short. Mini-skirts tend to be a
little longer now, but they're everywhere!
The biggest change is that high school girls used
to be required to have skirts that went below
their knees and to not wear make up, but then a
few private schools started allowing mini-skirt
uniforms and now a majority of high school girls
are marching around Tokyo in mini-skirt uniforms
and many of them also have thick layers of paint
on their faces (in their prime physically, why
they think they need to hide their face is a
mystery).
05:10 - Definitely a retro look from a 2008
perspective. Three things stand out as
reasons - 1) existence of eyebrows, 2) black hair,
and 3) that hat!
05:41 - Live narration about the cars. They
used to have the models (the human models I
mean) memorize long and complicated presentation
speeches about the cars, but the last time I went,
more often they just played recordings and had the
models walk around in front of the cars, acting
like... models! I did see one presentation
just like in the old days though, with the model
flawlessly (seemingly anyway, I didn't see the
script!) giving a long presentation about the
car's technical details.
05:58 - Four-wheel steering was a big deal at that
time. It seems to be have been completely
abandoned. Have you heard of any current
production cars having four-wheel steering?
07:21 - Large crowds around the Ferrari cars....
Lyle
2008/11/08
"Hibarigaoka,
Ikebukuro, Tokyo, & Shinjuku - October 1991"
Another look back at 1991 - mainly just detail
changes in fashion and trains (train carriages
since retired), but the scene at the Tokyo Central
Post Office shows how it was before e-mail - when
people still used stamps for letters, and since
they needed to use stamps, they had much more
interest in obtaining good-looking ones to
use. (If you only send a rare occasional
letter, the detail of the stamp design doesn't
seem so important).
When the post office released it's special
regional stamps, they were sold only in the region
being featured at the time, and at the Central
Tokyo Post Office, so large numbers of people in
Tokyo would go there and buy tremendous amounts of
them, particularly businesses and
collectors. Businesses simply because it
looked better to send letters with interesting
stamps, and collectors for obvious reasons.
In-between the volume buyers were individuals such
as myself buying just a sheet or two.
Note that there is a bit of traveling about to
other places in there, with the post office scenes
in the middle.
Lyle
2008/11/03
"A Stroll Around
Electric Shibuya"
There are many aspects to Shibuya, from upscale
department stores to kawaii shops, to restaurants,
movie theaters, hotels, Yoyogi Park... and in fact
all the way over to Southern Terrace by the south
exit of Shinjuku Station (even most locals don't
realize that as soon as they cross the street
after coming out of the south exit of Shinjuku
Station, they are in Shibuya).
So, if I'd given the idea of video-recording it a
lot of thought, I either would have set aside a
lot of time to try to cover all angles, or I would
have agonized over which aspects of the area were
most wanting to be covered. As it was, I
just let my feet run on auto-pilot for an hour or
so, from the Hachiko side of Shibuya Station, and
they naturally followed the path of the former
river (maybe still down there under the street
somewhere in a pipe), and then took a turn here
and there as seemed appropriate.
Why is "kawaii" in Shibuya? The other side
of the Yamanote Line
(Ueno-Tokyo-Shinbashi-Shinagawa) is more
professional/business oriented, with the
Ikebukuro-Takadanobaba-Shinjuku-Shibuya stretch
heavier with students, and Shibuya with (seemingly
- I haven't actually studied the exact
demographics of this) having the most high school
students. Sooo.... Shibuya is probably the
world capital of kawaii. That said and out
of the way - if you look at the passersby in this
video by master videographer LHS: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4nME33Zeos
- there are also businesspeople, etc. in the
scene, but the majority of the crowd are probably
in their twenties.
There should be much more to say, but after living
with Shibuya for over 24 years, it just feels like
part of the local scene (which it is), so I'm
having a hard time getting into the frame of mind
of seeing it as something novel - even though it
has never ceased to intrigue....
Lyle
2008/11/02
"More Music on
the Streets Worldwide? - Sounds Good to Me!"
Just when I was beginning to think that Japan was
becoming exceptionally musical and wondering if it
was peculiar to Japan, I have begun receiving
e-mails from e-pals in other countries
(incidentally, one pronunciation of good in
Japanese is "ee", so e-pals sounds like "good
pals" in Japanese), saying that they're seeing the
same thing in other cities (Ikebukuro, etc.) and
in other countries, so I guess it's a world-wide
phenomenon. These comments are from a friend
who visited Italy a couple of years ago:
Just read your story on streets musicians of
Shinjuku.
That's really too bad for them. Guys on
the bottom always get the lumps. However,
don't blame the cops. I'm sure they had
official complaints from nightclubs and
businesses. Nightclubs want people to come
inside and spend money, and some businesses see
such things as a neighborhood problem,
attracting rowdiness. Imagine trying to
sleep. But, I'll bet those musicians will
find another place to perform.
During my tour of Italy a couple of years ago,
we witnessed unlicensed street vendors in every
major city creating problems for licensed
stores, and police who were constantly chasing
the low-overhead vendors from one street to
another.
However, in vast St Mark Square of Venus, small
street orchestras (in tuxedos) were set up in
front of restaurants with outdoor tables.
I saw three such orchestras playing beautiful
music, a delight to all but the dullest of
hoodlums. The idea was to lure people to
sit at tables and spend money, but mostly people
would stand just close enough to be entertained,
listen to one orchestra for a while and then
drift over to another, listening and standing
was free, while sitting at a table would cost
you. Historic and romantic St. Mark
Square, night time sea air, and lovely music
created a wonderful memory. The street
musicians in Shinjuku just haven't found the
right location yet.
Regarding "Imagine
trying to sleep." - This
may be why Shinjuku is such a popular place for
street musicians - there are no residences around
the south exit side of Shinjuku Station (where
most of them play) that I'm aware of, so there
shouldn't be any sleep-related complaints.
The idea that area nightclubs might not like the
idea of free music getting in the way of their
selling it hadn't occurred to me, but that seems
plausible enough. After writing that the
police were chasing the musicians off the street,
I went back another day, and there were several
bands out playing again - including several with
advertisements for local clubs! They played
a few songs behind boards saying that they would
be playing live at such-and-such a club on
such-and-such a date, and a few were selling
tickets to these places in addition to the usual
CD's.
"Coming into
Gotanda Station on the Yamanote Line, etc.
(October 2008)"
Another train video - looking out the window of
the Yamanote Line. My video camera doesn't
handle wind very well, so the sound is shockingly
bad, but the images might be sort of
interesting. The video is on YouTube here: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=tpQLxsdVP-E
Sore dewa,
Lyle
2008/10/28
"Sayonara
Shinjuku Music? (So Soon?)"
I went by Shinjuku again this evening and checked
out a couple of street bands. Then as I was
walking off in search of a third band (going down
the outside escalator from the South Exit area -
heading towards the East Exit area), I glided past
a team of four police officers walking up the
stairs going in the other direction. At
first I just thought "Ah... better be careful with
the camera - they probably don't want their
pictures taken", but as soon as I had gone past
them, it suddenly occurred to me that they might
be on the march looking for street musicians....
So I did a U-turn at the bottom of the escalator
and rushed back up the stairs (up and down
escalators separated by wide staircase) just in
time to see the four police officers walking up to
the band and the band stop playing. They
began talking; one of the band members pulled out
a card, handed it to main police officer, who then
handed it to another police officer, who called
somewhere and talked into the phone as he looked
at the card the musician had handed over.
While the other band members started putting away
their gear, the main police officer handed a
clipboard to the head musician, and the musician
was writing something down on it as I walked off
disappointed - wondering what the police were
asking the musician to write down. Suddenly
the excitement of a Shinjuku night was fading
away, and it was becoming an ordinary boring
evening again.
I'm all for law & order, but I don't see any
harm being done by these street musicians.
They're not obstructing traffic, they're not
over-amplified; most of them sound good, and
they're not political (at least not the ones I've
seen)... once winter sets in, it'll be too cold
for them to be outside (not for long anyway), so
why not just let them play now, while the weather
is nice? In these days of doom & gloom
on the news, a little live music on the streets
doesn't seem like a such a bad idea to me.
Lyle
2008/10/26
"Shinjuku - Music
Town?"
Over the years I've seen street musicians
performing in Shinjuku, but lately there seem to
be a lot of bands there - every night! Last
Friday, there were even two bands set up
side-by-side, each taking turns playing three
songs each - back and forth. I was already
beginning to think of Shinjuku as a sort of "music
town" before I put a DVD in the machine to watch
the Nana-2 movie, and the movie features an
outdoor performance in... Shinjuku!
So it must be official. Shinjuku is Tokyo's
music town. Ginza for class, galleries, and
classy (overpriced) nightclubs, Harajuku for
middle-school fashion, Shibuya for high school
wild-side bipeds, Roppongi for hard core night
life on the one hand and new-found class on the
other, Ueno for museums, Chigasaki for the Shonan
Beach, and Shinjuku for movies and music?
Why not. Japan likes to assign things to
areas - it's good for tourism and makes things
much more interesting than having everywhere
looking the same.
Anyway - for a look at Shinjuku at night in
October 2008, this video was taken by the eminent
Lyle H Saxon (cough-cough) one evening a couple of
weeks ago: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=pVCpvZLFU1E
Lyle
2008/10/23
"Stone, Bamboo,
& Earth"
I stumbled upon a local festival in Tokyo at a
mostly unknown (outside of the area) small temple
and found myself standing on the bare earth (no
concrete! no asphalt!), watching the festival
people beat drums, etc. as they walked down a
stone path - past a grove of bamboo - and without
banks of florescent lighting destroying the
atmosphere with too much harsh and ugly
light. All this in Tokyo! There was
some electric lighting, casting a radioactive
greenish glow (hey, this is Tokyo after all, where nearly
every square meter of the entire place is over-lit
in one way or another), but there were actually
some dark spaces among the trees (darkness
at night! in the shade! imagine the novelty!) where
you could feel a trace of wind from past centuries
animating the event.
All-in-all, it was about as good as a festival
gets here, because usually, any kind of cultural
festival like that in Tokyo is overrun with
tourists, both foreign and domestic. Out of
respect, I didn't hang around too long, but I took
a video clip of part of the event, tossed it onto
the wires, and it can be seen here: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=5n6OmZoXUfA
Lyle
2008/10/19
"Meeting Artists
in Tokyo"
This year I've been spending a little more time
visiting art galleries and listening to musical
performances than... before. I've tended to
spend all my time taking/editing photos/videos and
haven't spent much time seeing/hearing other
people's creations. For whatever reason,
I've begun to take more of an interest in these
things, so I thought I'd mention a few that I've
recently seen.
There's a good-sounding street guitarist I've seen
a few times, most recently in Shinjuku, where/when
I bought one of his CD's. As it says in the
liner of the CD, he plays a 5, 6, or 7-string
electric bass guitar, playing "the melody and
backing lines at the same time" (and it really
does sound like two people playing two guitars
sometimes!). He goes by the name "ani-zoo"
(兄蔵, which is pronounced "a-knee zoe" - I suspect
the musician doesn't realize English speakers will
see "zoo", think of animals, and looking at the
"ani", imagine "animal zoo"...), and this YouTube
video of him playing in Shinjuku is a good
representation of how he looks and sounds when he
performs: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=5tOibGtWK-4
Another musician I've met a few times (most
recently at "Smiles" in Yoyogi-uehara), is Torazo
Udagawa, saxophone player. I haven't
actually seen him perform live myself, but there's
a compilation of his playing in this YouTube
video: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrOjGVgP-Pw
For paintings, photographs, etc., there are a
collection of galleries in the fascinating Okuno
Building, which was built in 1932 as an apartment
building. Actually, in walking around the
building, it's apparent that one half was built as
an independent building first, and the second half
was added on afterwards. I haven't yet found
the details of this in print, but heard it
verbally from a tenant, and the evidence of the
building itself suggests that that is indeed the
case. There is one elevator (with cool
manually operated doors!) for the dual structure,
and one restroom per floor, but dual staircases
(one per building, or per half of the building,
depending on how you look at it), with windows
(mostly opened when I visited) between the
landings.
The address for the building is: 1-9-8 Ginza
Chuo-ku, Tokyo
This (Japanese) website has some photos of the
building: http://www.art-icle.jp/special2.html
And this next website (in difficult-to-decipher
English - obviously translated from Japanese,
possibly with translation software) has some
good photos of the Okuno Building, although the
pictures of the elevator are old. The
elevator has since been renovated with glass doors
on all floors. A happy (but very rare in
Tokyo) instance of something old being restored
rather than destroyed). This website
indicates that the elevator only goes to the sixth
floor, but now it stops at all floors: http://www.f-banchan.net/tokyo/ginza_elv/ginza_elv_AD.htm
So - if you're in Ginza and want to check out art
spaces, the Okuno Building is something you ought
to see - both for the art on display (most
exhibits change weekly) and the building itself.
Lyle
2008/10/14
"Clearing
Bicycles Away in Omiya in 1991"
Revisiting 1991 again - the young people who are
now middle-aged, the little kids who are now in
their twenties. The trains that have been
scrapped and replaced with newer ones. The
women with long, straight, black hair (you very
rarely see that any more). The vast number
of bicycles parked around the stations....
Basically, everything is different, which
shouldn't be a surprise, but change comes little
by little, day by day, so you don't even realize
how much things have changed (even though you
think you do), unless you have visual & audio
recordings to look back at your past with.
There are so many details that go missing in the
memory - so seeing everything again can be a bit
of a surprise.
That preamble out of the way, I should explain the
situation with the bicycles. Recognizing
there was a serious problem of insufficient
parking space for bicycles, multi-level bicycle
parking garages were built all over the city, but
they were still rare in 1991. In the middle
of this video ("Trip to Omiya - 1991"): http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=CgHyfc8qn9U
- is an example of what cities did from time
to time to clear roads and try to get people to
park their bicycles in a way that didn't get in
the way of everything. People would rush to
the station to get to work on time, and park their
bicycle anywhere they could - often double and
triple parking along roads, to the point that cars
and delivery truck drivers would have to get out
of their vehicles and move bicycles before they
could continue down a street. People would
park so many bicycles around the entrances to a
shop that you'd sometimes have to move one of them
before you could even get into the shop!
And so the men clearing away illegally parked
bicycles are not being real careful with them
(slam! bash! - see the video). What happened
to the bicycles being taken away? Many were
probably given up on, and some (the better and/or
more expensive ones) reclaimed. Once taken
away like that there was a fine to reclaim one,
and if the bicycle was rusted and old, people
would often just buy a new one.
With many more bicycle parking areas created since
then, this is not as serious of a problem as it
used to be, but still there are parking problems
here and there. Typically, certain shops
will have parking for customers, and then people
visiting shops without parking will leave their
bicycles in whatever parking space they can
find. The space fills up, and customers of
the shop providing the space can't park their
bicycles there, so the shop owners get angry and
remove bicycles of people obviously not shopping
there, etc.
I should put in some more details, but it's late
and I need to get some sleep!
Lyle
2008/10/10
"Foreign
Broadcasts Broadcast Locally"
One of the reasons it's fun to spend some time
with short-term visitors from outside Japan, is
that they come over here still broadcasting on
their regular frequencies, and since I used to
send/receive on those same (or nearly the same)
frequencies myself, I can pick up their broadcasts
and see Japan from the outsider's
perspective. The narrow side streets where
everything (cars, scooters, bicycles, pedestrians,
etc.) shares the same space; the surprise of a
first experience on a sardine-run train; etc.
And so it was last night. Dinner in an
Indian restaurant (not what I would have picked,
but it turned out to be a great restaurant and a
good choice), with tales of the old country and
talk of speeding trains (they were scheduled to
take the Shinkansen to Kyoto today), all seeming
almost strangely familiar (after 24 years here,
the west is beginning to seem exotic and things
here normal), and - somewhat surprisingly - I
found myself today still seeing "Exotic
Japan". Having switched frequencies last
night, perception of the world was still colored
by the experience.
And um... that's all folks. Except to say
that the fall weather is quite nice recently - the
last pre-coat weather with some of the trees just
beginning to change color. Days to dream of
the age when offices had windows you could
actually (gasp!-shock!-horror!) open (what?!) to
get some fresh air, instead of being sealed in
like a fish in a fishbowl.
Lyle
2008/10/06
"Dodging Flying
Fish at Tsukiji - 1991"
On my first visit to Tsukiji, I felt as though I
was on a movie set - no doubt due to those old
Hollywood movies that attempted to capture the
hustle & bustle of a seaport, a train
platform, a ballroom, etc., by having a bunch of
extras wander back and forth on a large stage in
southern California made up to look like a more
crowded exotic city somewhere else in the
world. But after walking around for a few
hours, it all began to seem quite normal and
ordinary. Still busy, but only a collection
of a lot of individuals going about their work
day.
I was driven to capture as much of Tokyo on video
as I could back then (1990-92), and it was a video
quest that led me to enter the Tsukiji fish
market. The resulting analog tapes slept in
their cases within boxes at the back of closets
for many years, and have - through the magic (or
curse) of time, become interesting in a historical
way, which was not my intention when I took
them! I was capturing "Tokyo Today", and now
- suddenly it feels - it's history? Time is
a fearsome thing! In any case, here is the
link to the video entitled "Tsukiji Fishmarket -
1991": http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=OjwQbjtWFUQ
The quality of the picture isn't great, due to my
having dialed the size down quite low (to keep
from going over my limit at YouTube). To get
an idea of what the picture quality really is (of
the digitized-from-analog tapes), have a look at
this commercially prepared version (used in a TV
ad for HowStuffWorks.com) of the Pack-'em-in"
video I took the same year as the Tsukiji video: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=9sn5bjHAIFY
Lyle
2008/10/01
"From Yurakucho
to Hibiya Park Beer Festival"
I went to a couple of beer festivals in Hibiya
Park this year - one in the spring and one in the
late summer (technically early autumn). Of
the two, the spring one was larger and more
interesting, but they both were nice and lucky
with good weather (at least on the one day in the
spring and one day in the autumn that I went).
I took a series of video clips as I walked over to
Hibiya Park. I didn't get the timing of the
edited clips down right, but as far as showing a
few scenes here and there between (and including)
Yurakucho Station and Hibiya Park, it might be of
some small interest: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=vBpL8NA7z_M
Lyle
2008/09/30
"Hard Times
Straight Ahead?"
Taking a hard look at things in the world, it's
difficult to imagine that things won't be
difficult in the immediate future.
Overfished seas, rapidly dwindling sources of new
oxygen (the continuing decimation of the world's
forests), ever higher levels of toxic garbage
being pumped into the air, greed &
stupidity-generated financial crisis. What's
to like in any of that? Not much!
A silver lining? Maybe the continual
degeneration of too many people into increasing
levels of stupidity will stop. When times
are genuinely bad, there's less room to be
mindless about life. So, to give it a good
outlook, hard times will wake people up and force
them to start thinking more. If we think,
and we really try to solve things in the best way
possible, we can handle whatever... I
think/believe.
Lyle
2008/09/29
"Screaming in
Public...."
Letting out a good yell is always fun, but where
can you scream without causing stampeding, sudden
panic, and general mayhem? Where else?
Roller coasters! I went on one for the first
time in a quite a while a few weeks ago: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=P1vZrkcn9bQ
I had a good time at the Seibu-en Amusement Park,
especially since I hardly had to wait in line at
all - and this on a holiday! I looked around
at the park, with some pieces of it shut down - a
restaurant here, one of the rides there - and
wondered how long they will keep it going.
If it's almost empty on a warm weekend in the
summer, it must be downright desolate on weekdays
off-season! No wonder they close it down at
around 5:00 p.m. The thing is probably
hemorrhaging money as it is.
Tokyo Disneyland seems to always do good business,
one of the reasons being that it's close to Narita
Airport, and (strange
I think), people
actually fly in from other countries just to go to
Disneyland! I like going to Disneyland
myself, but while I don't mind taking a few trains
across town to go there, I don't think I'd take an
international journey for it! And it's
always popular with people here anyway.
Another key to this is that most of the rides and
shops at Tokyo Disneyland are inside, so the place
just keeps humming even in the pouring rain.
Contrast this with Toshimaen and Seibu-en, which
are dependent on good weather. Once the rain
starts falling, there's almost nothing to do
there. They largely rebuilt Korakuen (next
to Tokyo Dome) with several things inside, but
they don't have much space, so the inside rides
are... not exactly breathtaking.
Well - enough on that! I've got a cold, so I
better get some sleep.
Street musicians fairly regularly perform here and
there in Tokyo and - when I can afford to (and
like the music) - I sometimes buy a CD or two from
the musician (or musicians, but usually just
one). I've had mixed luck with the CD's -
some I have enjoyed listening to and some I didn't
like as much as the live performance that prompted
me to buy them in the first place.
A few weeks back, I bought a CD of some guitar
music I particularly wanted to hear, but when I
got home, the disk wouldn't play in my computer (I
no longer have a CD player, so I have to listen to
disks with my computer). It was a
computer-made disk, so I'm not sure whether I just
got a bad disk, or whether it has some kind of
very heavy-handed mutations thrown in to stop
people from copying it (I was hoping to make some
MP3 files for my MP3 player).
Within the disks I can play, like them or not, I'm
at least glad my money went directly to the
artist. With regular commercial stuff, you
have to wonder how much of your money actually
finds it way back to the artist who made the
music, so it's satisfying in a way to give it
directly to the artist.
Lyle
2008/09/22
"Haunted
Amusement Park"
A friend called, saying they had heard about a new
ride at the Seibu-en Amusement Park (erroneous
information I think, but...) and floated the idea
of going there next weekend, so after hanging up,
I got the bright/stupid idea of going out there
after work this evening - thinking that I could
get there before they closed at 9:00 ("or 10:00
p.m. maybe..." thought I), to ask about ticket
prices, availability(?) of discount advance sales
tickets, etc.
Although I did make it there just before 21:00, it
took a bit longer than I had hoped it would to get
there. I had forgotten how many train
transfers were required and how long I would have
to wait for some of the small branch line trains
to come. Stepping off the train at
Seibu-Yuenchi Station, I noticed the low number of
people at the station ("Is the amusement park that
unpopular, or is it closed?"), walked through the
ticket gates, turned left, and walked down a wide,
empty path towards the entrance of the amusement
park (which I now realized was definitely
closed). As I walked, I realized there were
a fair number of fallen dead leaves in the path,
so I simultaneously pondered the evidence of
autumn having arrived while I thought "You've got
to be kidding me - it's just before nine and
they've already closed the park?".
I reached the gates more quickly than I expected
(confusing Seibu-Yuenchi Station with Seibu-en
Station, which requires a bit of a hike). and
looked through the gates....
Blackness! Blackness with a dim outline of
completely dark amusement park structures
within. It was striking for three reasons -
a) not only was the park closed, but it had
obviously been closed for some time, b) I had
never in my life seen a completely dark amusement
park before, and c) in Tokyo it's very difficult
to escape electric lights. The reason I
always hear for the love of florescent tubes in
this country is that things were dark and bad
after the war, so people have (over)compensated
for their dislike of darkness by light-blasting
the entire city. Whether that is good or bad
is a matter of personal opinion I guess (ignoring
wasted power on unneeded excess and the harshness
on the eyes), but I think the lighting in Tokyo
could generally be done a little better.
That said, new construction has been headed in
that direction, and many new places have sensible
and pleasant lighting, but I digress....
I didn't stand there for long, but the feeling was
as though I had stumbled upon some long-lost
remnant of civilization strangely intact and
devoid of living people. I should have
stayed a little longer to observe the atmosphere
and think about it, but I was tired and wanted to
get home, so I rushed back and got on the same
train I had come there on, jumping on just before
it began its return trip.
Lyle
2008/09/18
"Empty Trains"
I recorded my trip to the beer garden at Mt. Takao
after work one evening a few weeks ago, and have
posted an edited version of that at YouTube here: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=HV7O4jkTp5c
Some details about the scenes in the video:
00:01 - The Yamanote Line.
00:02 - Heading down the stairs at Shinjuku to the
Keio Line platform.
00:04 - Getting on a "Jyunkyu-Kaisoku" (a
sub-commuter express).
00:06 - Pulling out of Shinjuku Station. The
people on the platform are waiting for the next
time. This was taken during the peak of the
evening rush for home.
00:11 - Manga reading on the trains is still liked
by many, but you see less and less of it since
cell phones became part of people's daily
lives. Cell phones have become just about
everything except
telephones (you hardly ever see anyone actually
talking of them these days), so people are
basically carrying around very small computers
that they do various types of computing on, which
includes reading text on the screen (usually in
the form of text-messaging, but also for
electronic books), watching TV and movies, etc.
The announcement in the
background - is in this case by a real human
being, but (unfortunately) they are recordings
most of the time.
00:12 - Typical view leaving central Tokyo.
00:14 - As the train gets further away from
central Tokyo, there are fewer and fewer people
(on this line in any case - on the Chuo Line, it
is so long and passes through so many areas of
major population, that there are people getting on
just about everywhere on the line, so it basically
just stays crowded all the time, all along the
line).
00:19 - Transfer to another branch of the Keio
Line - the one that goes to Takaozan-guchi
Station, which is right at the base of Mt. Takao.
00:29 - Overhead luggage rack. Empty in this
view, but in the morning in particular, it's
usually full and most of the people standing (far
more than are sitting) can't find space to put
anything on it, even if they can reach it (around
the doors in particular - less so in the middle,
between the doors).
00:31 - Station towards the end of the line -
people who live out here have a longer commute,
but they are the ones who can sit down in the
morning! I was in the last carriage of the
train, so the voice is of the conductor as he
closes the doors.
00:35 - Very few people at this point. It's
a strange thing, but when the train gets this
empty, and there is not the slightest worry about
getting a seat, then boredom tends to kick in,
unless you have an interesting book or magazine to
read.
00:38 - Takao - the last major stop on the line,
and a transfer point for the last part of the trip
to Takaozan-guchi (sometimes, some trains go
straight through to the base of the mountain).
00:39 - Almost completely empty - very few people
are headed to the mountain in the late evening (it
was the best I could do after work on the other
side of town!)
00:44 - Mechanical door latch. Very rare on
newer trains, but all the trains used to have this
type of door handle and latch for the doors
between the carriages.
00:49 - Last stop of the line! From here
there is just a short walk to the cable-car
station and an effortless ride to the top (well,
the top of one ridge - the mountain goes higher
from there).
00:54 - Pulling away from the lower station of the
cable-car line.
00:57 - Going through the first of two
tunnels. Fortunately, the cable-cars are old
enough to have opening windows on the front and
back, so you can look through clear and
clean. (I really hate being sealed into
boxes with windows that don't open - like a fish
in an aquarium.)
00:59 - Passing the cable-car going down.
They are hooked to each other via a cable, and act
as counterweights to each other, so on the last
ride down, when it's packed full, and the one
going up is empty, the first steep hill up at the
top creates a little speed before the grade
lessens).
01:00 - Notice how the carriage is built like a
moving staircase - the carriage is at a fairly
steep angle, but the seats inside are (for most of
the ride) straight. Also note that this is
the only part of the line where there are two sets
of tracks - otherwise, both the up and down rides
use the same rails.
01:04 - The second tunnel - and the steepest part
of the ride. This is the section that
produces some speed going down when the
downward-bound cable-car is heavily loaded and the
upward-bound cable-car is empty.
01:09 - Headed up the stairs to the beer garden
(Takaozan Beer Mount).
01:11 - Y3,300 for two hours of all you can eat
and drink.
01:17 - Yes - just one plate and one beer - I went
there alone, but ended up meeting some people
there and having a drink and talk with them.
01:22 - Back to the cable-car for the ride back
down the mountain.
01:23 - A view inside the cable-car, looking up
towards the back - notice how steep it is.
01:34 - Speeding through the tunnel (in comparison
to the speed of the rest of the ride in any case).
01:46 - Mountain stream - I had originally
intended to use my laptop to write something at
the top, but instead pulled it out at the base of
the mountain, while sitting by the stream.
01:54 - A look at the hanging advertisements in
the empty carriage I was in.
02:03 - The whole carriage to myself. In the
morning crush-rush, it's hard to imagine that
there are times when there is this much space!
02:04 - Looking out the open window before the
train reaches Takao Station.
02:09 - On the JR platform at Takao Station.
The train in upper background is the Keio Line,
and the train coming in is a Chuo Line train.
02:12 - Old style long-distance train.
02:20 - More advertisements - this type of Chuo
Line train is new - while there are still a few of
the older type in service, they've almost
completely phased in the newer type. The one
thing I really hate on the new ones are the
recorded announcements - on the old trains, they
actually have a human being announcing the
stations.
02:24 - What's this? Someone invading my
private coach!
Lyle
2008/09/07
"Fiction-Toxic
People"
Fictional novels. Fictional movies.
Fictional computer space-war games.
Fictional TV science fiction shows.
Fictional news. Fictional speeches (written
by PR agencies; spoken by
politicians-for-hire)....
I wouldn't have believed that anyone could live
with so much fiction, but I have seen it in person
too many times. I guess these fiction-people
need simplicity - and so the fact that truth is
stranger than fiction makes the real world a thing
to reject with fear and hostility.
Shades of GO's 1984, is it any wonder then that
blatant lies & genuine propaganda from
organizations with sinister agendas are more
easily believed by fiction-people than the
truth? Presented with the truth, these
fiction-addicts become hysterical and claim that
the truth is a lie, is "propaganda", that someone
has an "agenda". They use the theme words
their string pullers feed them in daily doses of
fictionalized news. Blind to their mindless
servitude, they call the truth propaganda, ignore
that their string-pullers have an agenda, and
accuse someone genuinely working for the public
good of having an agenda. A murderer walking
away from a crime scene may as well point a finger
at the police and accuse them of the murder - it's
the same concept.
How about the rest of us? Those of us who
find most fiction a simplistic and boring way to
waste a chunk of our lives (periodic escapes from
reality via a good movie seen once-in-a-while are
enjoyed by nearly all of course), and can
(usually) see the truth as the truth, and lies as
lies? Is there any help for the hysterical
people who cling to the lies their string-pullers
feed them and blood-thirstily attack any glimpse
of the truth?
Be fiction-toxic people a majority - we're doomed.
Lyle
September 3rd, 2008 Osaki, Shinagawa
(Tokyo) - 18:30
"Seeking
Connectivity"
Every time (cough-cough) I've come to
(cough-cough) this office complex in Osaki
(cough-cough), I've seen people sitting around
with their laptops happily(?) computing away, so I
thought there might be Free Public Wireless
here... (Phew - the prevailing winds have
shifted and the - cough-cough, uggghh.... grrrrrr
- foul leaf-fire smoke is - slightly - less
intense than it was a minute ago)... but while my
computer is detecting fifteen different
broadcasts, they are all private networks
requiring passwords, etc. The search for
"Free Public WiFi" turned up nothing. Wait a
second... I should check with my provider - maybe
they have a broadcast that I can tune into.
Paper tubes of dried leaves for lighting afire and
inhaling - there must be a new (new to Japan in
any case) exotic type of toxic leaf that is
popular to ingest - one of my apartment building
neighbors torments me with it (when it's more than
I can bear, I fight smoke with smoke by lighting
up a few sticks of Indian super-strength incense),
and one of my....
.... former (with a sore throat and on the verge
of committing murder, I discovered a free seat in
the non-toxic area) seat-mates here in Osaki is
trying to poison himself and those around
him... Okay-okay!! Rant over!!
"Roofed Sidewalk
Tables" (18:50)
The trouble with having outdoor tables in Japan is
that the weather - for one reason or another -
generally isn't all that nice for sitting
outside. It's too cold in the winter, vast
quantities of pollen fly in the early spring, the
raining season kicks in in late spring, humid heat
comes in July and August, typhoons in late summer,
early autumn, and then - after a brief period of
pleasant temperatures and nice colors - the dry,
windy cold (of Tokyo - a different type of cold in
other parts of the country) is back. So it's
no surprise that there are not many outdoor cafes,
etc.
But there is a way - and I'm sitting in it.
There is a large ring of round tables with chairs
a floor above a plaza, which also has the same
type of round tables with chairs in the
middle. The seating is free and there is
only one area for burning dried leaves (I'll try
harder to never sit anywhere near that toxic zone
again). What enables this to work is that
it's inside - with large curved windows looking
out on a green garden (which has some chairs and
tables for the rare days when it's nice to sit
outside). Maybe there are some other areas
like this in Tokyo, but I can't think of them
offhand. There are no end of places you can
pay to sit, but a free place with decent chairs
and tables... very nice, but not the norm.
[Later] - After packing my computer into my
backpack, I went out to the outside part and
discovered that it had cooled down from the day's
earlier heat and was actually pretty nice out -
but I was running shy on time, so I couldn't spend
much time there.
"Living in the
Wonderful Future" (19:02)
Plugged into my Creative audio file player (not an
iPod), typing on a laptop computer, with a cell
phone sitting by the computer with the screen
rotated to horizontal, displaying a digital TV
broadcast (with Japanese subtitles since the sound
is set to off). Technology - in my ears, at
the tips of my fingers, and showing some really
stupid TV show on my phone. (I turned on the
TV specifically to get a Technology Rush, not
because there was actually something I wanted to
see.)
This makes me wonder how these wonderful gadgets
seem to post-twelve, pre-twenty people (oh yeah,
there's a word for those creatures -
"teenagers"). I guess cell phones, anywhere
connectivity, and music in the ears is like rain
falling from the sky and sunlight showing up on a
regular basis to light the world for free.
For those people, allow me to express a different
perspective:
Several decades ago, I would watch futuristic
movies and TV shows and think "That would be nice
- but we'll never really be able to make TV's that
small and effortlessly easy to use" (my family's
TV at the time had a number of "special
instructions" issues such as needing to physically
whack it on a certain spot on the side from
time-to-time to get the picture back), "and
computers will never be quite that smart and
compact all at the same time". And so I feel
a little like I'm dreaming about something from a
science fiction book rather than actually living
it.
About to move on to something else - after sitting
back and contemplating people making fools of
themselves on TV and contentedly listening to a
favorite song - and I suddenly remembered I have a
video camera sitting in my bag. I briefly
considered it placing that on the table to
intensify the Technology Rush, but decided against
it. It would be like one more drink that
doesn't make you feel better, but rather tips you
in the other direction, so I left it in the
bag. I mean... what would everyone in Osaki
think? "Hee-hee! Look at that
Tech-bozo! Trying to show off his
gadgets! Pathetic loser! Ha-ha-ha!"
etc. I mean... not that it matters what
people think really, but there would be no reason
to pull out that technology and sit it on the
table, other than to just look at the
object. The cell phone, music player, and
computer are all out for a reason.
"Out of
Words...?"
All this time wishing I had a laptop to write with
outside and now here I am - with a laptop in front
of me eagerly awaiting as many words as I can type
in in the time I have, and after writing a few
paragraphs, suddenly I'm drawing a blank.
Ah... maybe the aftereffects of the
Tech-Buzz? Take a deep breath Lyle, relax...
let the thoughts settle down and organize
themselves.
[Later] No - that was it. It was just
time to go. As I mentioned above, I then
went outside and noticed how nice it was in the
outside garden, but didn't have time to hang
around, so I went back to Osaki Station and got on
the Yamanote Line.
Lyle
2008/09/01
"Back to the
Ramparts?"
Or maybe "Full
Lifeboat Syndrome"
September 1st,
2008, 22:17 Takao, Hachioji
(Tokyo)
There were two parts to this and I've forgotten
the first part, but here's the second part.
I was in an electronics store in Shinjuku looking
at video cameras. Well... I wasn't just
looking, I was about to buy one - my first video
camera since #4 burned out in 1992. The
first uploaded video from it is here:
In any case, at the electronics store, I asked the
salesperson (I could have said "salesman" - he was
a male biped after all, but... whatever) "how do
you change the menu language?", to which he told
me that they had disabled that function(!).
I looked at him with a "What? In the 21st
Century? Dude!" look, and he explained that
there had been a problem with people buying
cameras in Japan either before they were released
overseas or at a lower price, and then reselling
them overseas, making overseas distributors
unhappy, so... they disabled the ability to use
the new machines sold in Japan with anything other
than the local language, Japanese.
I thought about that, and it seemed significant,
especially when put together with the other thing
I was thinking of.... What was it?
Tougher immigration laws? A renewed
nationalism? Something....
"New Laptop"
I don't have enough text to make an article with
one topic, so here are some other things on my
mind. I have been thinking how I would very
much like to have a laptop to write with while I'm
outside, and so... I bought a new laptop - my
first new laptop since 1996. I bought a
string of used ones that worked for a few years
after that new-in-1996 one burned out in 1997, but
I have gotten along without a laptop for many
years now - waiting until I get home to write
things. Now and again I've pulled out a pen
and paper and written something by hand outside,
which is fun, but then I've had to transcribe it
later, which is no fun at all (in fact I still
have some text from last week awaiting my pounding
it into electrons), so it's about time I got my
hands on a proper portable writing machine.
"Takao Beer
Mount"
No, I didn't make that one up, that's the name of
a rooftop beer garden on Takao Mountain that I
visited tonight, and after coming down off the
mountain (but before getting back on a train for
central Tokyo), I sat myself down by a mountain
stream (on a bench - hey - I'm a city slicker
after all) and pulled out the new laptop to enter
some text. So, as I type this, I'm listening
to the sound of mountain stream water running
by... and it's about time to get a train for home,
so... that's all for now. Laptop computers -
Banzai!!!
Lyle
2008/08/25
"Reactions - August
2008"
Towards the end of the day at work, I began to
imagine myself going out to Mt. Takao. The
closer to quitting time, the more it seemed like a
good idea, so after work, I took a Keio Line
Jun-Tokkyu train ("Limited Special Express"; one
step slower than a "Tokkyu", or Special Express)
out as far as I could, before changing to a local
train near the end that veers off the main line
and goes to the foot of Mt. Takao (Takaozan-guchi
Station), and thus began a string of encounters
that were ordinary in a way, but conveyed a lot on
reflection and in context with the past 24 years
I've spent in Tokyo.
There were a number of people who walked across
the platform from the express to the local, but
after the next stop, most people got off and I
became aware of empty seats and a woman (around
20?) sitting next to me. She stood up and
walked down the car and took another seat. I
thought "I hope that isn't because I smell sweaty
or something..." but then I noticed that we were
the only
two people in that train car, so had to admit that
if I were a 20-year-old woman and found myself
alone with a post-forty man in a train car, I
would either actually move, or at least want to
move, so... I couldn't complain.
As the train began the last leg of the trip, I
turned around, opened the window, and kneeling on
the seat, I contemplated the dark forested
mountain passing by outside. Nearly always
in the unhealthy glow of florescent lighting, the
lack of that much-hated form of lighting (I know -
it's energy efficient - but I really hate the
quality of light florescent tubes generate) is
something I often dream of, but faced with the
concept of walking into that light-less (other
than whatever light there was from the moon) night
forest, I had to admit the attraction of city life
as opposed to something more primitive.
As the train pulled into the last station, I shut
the window and got off as soon as the sliding
doors opened. Exiting the ticket gates, I
turned right and walked up the path beneath the
trees in the night, with the sky above (not to be
taken for granted in Tokyo) to the cable car
station. This path was quite nice - just
enough light to see, without damaging the ambiance
of the night, and just enough other people about
that there was no urge to look over your shoulder
while walking along a lonely path in the night.
As I neared the cable car station, it was apparent
that the cable car was about to depart - and since
they don't run very often, I hoped to make it to
avoid the wait for the next one. There were
three people in front of me - a man and a
couple. There was only one ticket machine on
(the others turned off because it was late I
guess), so by the time I was stuffing a bill into
the machine, I heard the chain go up behind the
couple, but I grabbed my ticket as it came out of
the machine and ran up to the gate "Dame desu
ka...?" I asked the guy ("No good?") and he gave
me a rather unfriendly look, but wordlessly took
the chain down again, so I gave him a "Sumimasen"
("Sorry!") as I had him punch my ticket.
Slightly wondering about the scowl and the fact
that he had put up the chain after having seem me
behind the others, I was nevertheless happy to not
be left behind, so I ran to the cable car to avoid
any more delay than necessary.
The ride up went about as well as it might - I was
lucky to get a standing spot at the back where I
could look back down the mountain out of the open
window as the cable car climbed. Midway up,
a child sitting nearby wanted to stand by the
window as well, but their parents told them it was
dangerous - which got me to thinking "How?
Leaning out a side window can be dangerous, but
the back window isn't so low that someone might
fall out, and even if you completely hang your
head out the window in back, there's nothing to
hit it." It's an old fault of mine - I like
real reasons, not convenient and lazy lies.
The cable car goes through a tunnel, and then as
it begins to climb more steeply, the lights of
Tokyo appear from over the top of the mountain
that the cable car just passed though. Many
of the people in the car seemed to be taking it up
the mountain for the first time - while I've done
so... ten times? Fifteen times? I'm
not sure, but in any case I'm familiar with the
ride and exactly when it ends, so as it was coming
to a stop, I grabbed my backpack and walked up to
the front of the car so I'd been one of the first
ones off. Once off, I skipped the (slightly
expensive) beer garden and speed walked over to
the free benches which still have a pretty decent
view. I was pleased to see that one of them
was open (on the far right, next to the
pay-binoculars), so I sat there and took out the
food and drink I'd bought on the way (at a grocery
store back in central Tokyo), and put it on the
table-like shelf in front of the benches.
"Perfect" I thought....
Not long after I sat down, a group in their
forties or fifties materialized to my right - and
one of the men wanted to put Y100 in the
pay-binoculars, but was dissuaded from doing so by
someone in the group. I thought "Aw, come
on, let the guy give it a try". I have spent
my life seeing those pay-to-use binoculars, but
have never actually used one (not that I can
remember anyway), so I was sort of hoping to see
one in action. Since the binoculars were
right next to where I was sitting, the man seemed
to notice my radio waves, and he looked over -
seeing a foreigner, he asked me "Good view?", to
which I answered "Tashikani" ("Indeed"), which
produced a laugh from the group, which seemed to
expect me to be a tourist. One of the men
said "Yokeina koto wo shite..." to the man (not
easy to translate, but something like "You should
mind your own business"). They headed off,
and a woman in the group turned around and said
"Have a good time", to which I wordlessly
nodded. She may have intended it to be
friendly, but it didn't feel friendly and I took
it to mean something like "You may have gotten one
of our expressions right, but you are not one of
us." [What's that sound I hear -
groaning? Booing? You think I'm wildly
imagining things? Whatever - you jump in a
time machine, go to 1984 Tokyo, live here for 24
years, and then
see if you still have the same opinion. I've
met all kinds of people here over the past 24
years - and there are good and bad - just like
everywhere in the world.]
After that, I tried to forget about the group who
were young in Japan in the eighties, when it was
more insular, more xenophobic, and more narrow
minded than it is now. As I had some more
wine & dried mangoes (I know - weird - but
they actually go together for some reason), the
happy sounds of a young couple (with the woman
pregnant) sitting to my left drifted over and I
got back into the mountain vibes....
Later on, the couple stood up, pulled out a camera
and proceeded to take their own picture (at arm's
length). I considered asked them if they'd
like to take their picture, but stopped myself
with "They're perfectly able to take their own
picture". They took a flash picture, then
another, and by their third picture, and with the
answer in mind, I said (in Japanese) "You should
turn the flash off" - which produced blank stares,
so I realized they didn't know how. "Is that
an Olympus?" The man continued looking at
me, but the woman acknowledged that it was indeed
an Olympus (it was her camera I guess), so I told
them "It should have a circle of four buttons,
with a button in the center of the circle.
One of the four buttons should turn off the
flash..." The woman found the button, got to
the "No flash" symbol, and I said "Now, push the
middle button..." which worked.
The setting changed, I asked them if they'd like
me to take a picture - which they did, so they
handed the camera over. The resulting
picture showed the two of them in front of the
lights of the city in the background (which the
flash pictures didn't). I briefly explained
that while the exposure was good, since the flash
was off in such a dark place, the shutter speed
was bound to be slow. I got them to expand
the image a bit to see if it was sharp, or motion
blurred. It seemed to be sharp, and they
indicated that they liked it (expressing surprise
at how bright the picture turned out without the
flash). They said their (friendly) good-byes
and headed off to the cable car.
I sat there and tried to piece it all together -
the more relaxed young generation (with some
dangerous hot-head exceptions) and the more
up-tight older generation that I've spent 24 years
here with (who tend to be more responsible than
the current twenties people). Basically, it
must just be a situation where some things get
better and some things get worse. It's a
blazingly-bright obvious concept, but still you
expect things to get better without the good parts
deteriorating, so it's an unpleasant surprise to
discover the loss of an aspect to life that you
thought was unshakably constant and solid....
After a while, I noticed a pair of twenties men
(probably college students) explaining about
camera ISO settings to a group of five twenties
women. After the men left, I could hear one
of the women asking what they were going on about,
and another woman said "something about ISO this
and that..." so I ended up (stupidly) jumping up
and explaining that the numbers tied in with
shutter speeds at f16 (what used to be the
smallest aperture on most proper cameras), thus
ISO 400 would basically mean 1/400 of a second
shutter speed in bright sun at f16. They
politely tolerated my lecture and then went on
there way - joking that the night was full of
camera education. I sat there and thought to
myself, "What you did for the couple was good, but
jumping up to explain the meaning of ISO settings
to the group of five was really a dumb thing to
do...".
By and by, I decided to go back down the mountain,
so I got on the cable car and ended up talking
with a man who was part of a group from the beer
garden (on the roof of a building up behind where
I was sitting). It was a friendly enough
conversation, but he called me a "henna-gaijin"
("strange foreigner") apparently because I spoke
Japanese. I used to get that from
time-to-time (another eighties thing). If
you were comfortable in the culture here and spoke
the language, you were strange. If you
didn't understand the language or culture, and you
bumbled around expecting everyone you came in
contact with to help you in English - well... that
was a normal
foreigner!
Back on a train speeding towards central Tokyo, I
sat down and found myself in one of those
on-a-stage situations that the bench seats against
the windows facing each other generate.
There was a group of about five men across from me
who were interested in who was sitting across from
them - so they were taking surreptitious
looks. Not staring mind you, but the
interest was in the air and I couldn't relax, so
at the next station I casually moved over to
another seat without an audience (late night
trains headed towards
Tokyo are not crowded and you can nearly always
sit down - in contrast to the usual situation of
always standing.
Back in the city... back to normal....
Lyle
2008/08/24
"Hibarigaoka - a
Typical Suburb of Tokyo" (August 1991)
One quiet August afternoon in Hibarigaoka, on the
mid-western fringe of Tokyo, in suburbia, Lyle's
camera flew of his bag, into his hands, and began
recording....
It was a typical quiet afternoon - not what you
might expect if you had only seen the same area in
the morning frenzy of commuters rushing to the
station to get to work on time.
In fact, this highlights a mystery of Japan - how
people seem to have cast-iron ears at some times
(shopkeepers shouting "Irasshaimase!" into customers'
faces), and then are hyper-sensitive to noise at
other times (a woman living next to a park
complained to the city because she could hear the
sound of small children playing in the park!).
In any case, the city is actually quite quiet -
and certainly much more quiet than a lot of people
seem to imagine it overseas.
"Out
& About in Ikebukuro in July 1991"
For someone who is sixteen; seventeen years ago is
the far distant dark ages before the beginnings of
time. For me, it's the other way
around. It doesn't seem like enough has
happened over the past seventeen years for things
to have changed very much, so it keeps coming as a
shock to me to notice how different my
long-sleeping, recently revived video recordings
from 1990-92 (digitized from analogue 8mm tape)
look. Without dwelling on the changes too
much (or maybe too much, we'll see), here is a
description of my video clip (at YouTube) entitled
'"Free Tissues, Crosswalks & a Speech" (July
1991)'.
Coming up one of the narrow stairs from the
underground part of Ikebukuro Station, walking
past a platoon of schoolgirls wearing "sailor"
style school uniforms. This was before
Japanese school uniforms became - in just a few
years - mini-skirts (they had to be below the knee
before), and the sailor style uniforms were
considered to be the most stylish (and generally
used by private schools, while public schools were
more conservative).
The most striking part of this section of the clip
for me, was the fact that I'm taking pictures
while walking up public stairs. Two things
have made this an overly dangerous thing to
do. Cell phones & mini-skirts.
There were several very public incidents of people
with cell phones caught taking (or attempting to
take) pictures up young women's skirts as they
climbed stairs. Several things happened -
among them; cell phone manufacturers made cell
phone cameras so that they make a rather loud and
obnoxious artificial shutter sound form the
phone's speaker when a picture is taken; and there
was a university professor caught, who was
publicly and professionally ruined for his idiotic
actions. So I never take any pictures while
going up stairs any more (unless the whole flight
of stairs is empty)! Best to be on the safe
side.
The free packs of tissues (with advertising on the
packs). Those haven't changed much.
They still pass them out, and they still target
certain people when passing them out. Most
are for loan companies (or real estate companies)
and - generally, not always - they will give them
to anyone. The man who reluctantly handed
over a pack I later saw very energetically passing
them out to women. I don't remember exactly
what it was - I have some other video I took of
close-ups of tissue packs I'd been given - I'll
try to find that and see what they were exactly.
Right where the over-amplified man giving a speech
says "Ittai, Nippon wa do natte'ru daro?!" ("What
in the world is happening to Japan?!"), I walk
past a... monk(?) who is ringing a bell and
awaiting donations. You used to see one of
these guys pretty regularly, but it's become
rather rare. I did see one in Shinjuku a few
weeks ago.
Speaking of the over-amplified speech (coming from
a loudspeaker truck parked in front of the station
- not visible in the clip - with the shouting man
standing on a platform built onto the roof), there
used to be a lot of those, and they were generally
right-wing people urging the country to move to
the right. That you don't hear these people
in public much these days may have something to do
with things having gone to the right somewhat -
just as they wanted - so maybe they see no need to
make public displays now? I can't quite
catch most of what the guy was saying, but there
is the sentence very clearly heard that I
mentioned in the preceding paragraph, and later on
he's saying something about the military.
What else? Fashion and hairstyles I guess -
mostly evident with the women. Oh
yeah! Many people in 1991 in Japan actually
had black hair! So many people (especially
women) dye their hair now, that when you see
someone with jet-black hair, it's actually
striking! "Wow! Look at that!
Actually black hair!" If you don't believe
me, take a look at the dozens (hundreds maybe?) of
shades of hair dye sold in drug stores, and then
take a close look at the color of women's hair out
in pubic. Another thing you didn't see in
1991, was men with plucked eyebrows and
makeup. No comment on that one. Here's
the link to the video: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=sUWhaozphY0
Lyle
2008/08/16
"Hiroshima
- Visiting in 2007 and Looking Back to 1945 (and
beyond)"
Last year, when I posted a story about my trip to
Hiroshima, someone asked if there were pictures,
and I replied that I was working on it and would
post something later. I finally have, and
the new page about Hiroshima is here: http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/PhotoGlryMain/pgc/Hiroshima01a.html
Some of the text repeats a little, but mainly it's
new text, with some outside historical quotes
added as well. Writing about historical
things is time-consuming! I spent a lot of
time looking into things and still feel like I
would like to spend more time researching this -
but there are other things I need to be spending
my time on, so I'm calling it a wrap.
Lyle
2008/08/08
"Casual
World? (Beijing Olympics Opening
Ceremonies)"
I just got through watching the opening ceremonies
for the Beijing Olympics (about three hours
worth). They were pretty interesting... with
lots of fireworks and cultural scenes, music,
etc. And then the athletes were introduced
at the stadium. It was the usual deal with
them parading out in different uniforms/costumes,
and waving to the crowd. I was watching
absentmindedly when I noticed that one of the
athletes was videotaping the stadium with their
left hand while waving with their right! And
then there was another - and another! Some
countries' athletes looked more like camera crews
than athletes! In other groups, there was
not a camera to be seen. And... what's
this? A cell phone! "Look at
that! That athlete is walking along like
he's in the park, having a conversation on his
cell phone! - Hee-hee!" Another athlete came
out with a big single lens reflex camera, pausing
to focus on things and take pictures!
Ha-ha! So much for solemn ceremonies!
And then there were the crowd scenes! As
expected, they focused on world criminals... er...
leaders... from various countries as "their"
athletes walked by, but then there was a large man
who stood up, the camera zoomed in on him, and he
adjusted his trousers up higher - probably not
imagining that he was doing so on countless
screens around the world! Another group the
camera focused on looked blankly back at the
camera, and there was the boy who looked like the
long ceremony was almost more than he could bear
as his parents got him to (reluctantly) wave for
the camera, etc.
So - my first impression was that the world has
become loose and sloppy. Partly this seems
like a good thing - why not relax? I like
taking pictures and I probably would have liked to
take a camera out there myself if I had been in
their place. But... there's something
disconcerting about everyone taking pictures of
everything all the time.
Also possibly worth pondering, is regarding the
lingering camera close ups on athletes talking on
their cell phones, or walking staring into their
camera's viewscreen (which most didn't do actually
- they just blindly aimed it while looking up at
the crowd), makes me wonder a little at whoever
was in charge of choosing which camera images to
use during the live broadcast, and also at the
camera operators who zoomed their cameras in on
some of those scenes. Maybe that's what you
get with a live broadcast if you put it together
with so many cameras? It's no big issue - I
had just thought that the opening ceremony would
be slightly more formal than that, and that the
camera operators would have chosen a different
aspect to emphasize. (You don't suppose
they're trying to show the world what a relaxed
and fun place Beijing is?).
Another thing that occurred to me is that we'll
probably be seeing a lot of those personally taken
videos on YouTube! Some will be really hard
to watch - with the screen at an angle and
bouncing up and down.
Well, it's late.
Sore dewa!
Lyle
2008/08/05
"Defective
Learning In - Bad Actions Out"
Watching yet another Nintendo Wii advertisement on
the train this morning (one of the two over-door
displays runs soundless TV advertising - along
with made-for-the-train ads), I contemplated
scenes of people standing on a board, playing
virtual soccer, walking a virtual tightrope,
balancing virtual this or virtual that - and it
occurred to me that people are basically giving
their bodies & minds defective
programming. Standing on a board that is
very nearly motionless, they watch a screen
showing a soccer ball come zooming in - which they
virtually hit by moving their head as though they
are knocking it back out onto the field on the
screen (no impact, no pain); or virtually ski or
perform virtual balancing acts, watching the
screen indicating steep angles (while their feet
are in fact resolutely parallel to the firm floor
of their living room); etc. etc.
Great fun, sure. But what happens to people
over time when they have ever less interaction
with the physical world and ever more interaction
with a heavily flawed virtual world? If kids
are on a swing set, they learn what happens when
they jump off of a moving swing - how far up they
go, how far out, how hard down
(Gravity-101). If they climb on a jungle
gym, they learn how much time they have to grab a
bar if they begin to fall. They learn the
pain of hitting their heads on actual steel bars
(hopefully not hard enough to be actually
dangerous), and they learn a whole range of
physical facts related to motion and
balance. All real and applicable to other
physical things in the world.
Another example of defective learning so obvious,
that it is simultaneously laughed off and
underestimated - TV & movies. I hadn't
thought about this for most things, but a couple
of events prompted me to give the concept some
serious thought. First there was the
incident at Shin-Otsuka Station some ten to
fifteen years ago in which a drunk man fell off
the platform. A train was approaching the
platform and there was no time to do anything, but
a man jumped down to help the man who fell, and
another man (a friend of the second man) also
jumped down. There wasn't time to get out of
the way of the train, and all three men were
killed under its wheels.
While it's admirable that they wanted to help the
man who fell, you have to wonder if they would
have committed suicide with him if they had known
there was no possibility - even remote - of
actually saving him. I have grown up seeing
movies in which people are remarkably saved from
being hit by a speeding
train/truck/bus/car/skateboard/explosion(!)/bullets(!)
at the last possible moment. Sometimes it's
clear that with the speed of the train/car/bus,
whatever, the person would be dead - 100%
dead. But no! Rejoice movie
viewers! For the laws of physics have been
suspended once again, and our hero is saved!
Aside from the fact that I very greatly detest
that sort of dishonest trick in movie-making (how
much happier the audience is to discover the hero
alive after having given them up for dead), after
seeing that for two or three or four decades, what
sort of answer does your brain throw back at you
when you suddenly find yourself in a similar
situation, when you need to make a microsecond
decision about what to do - as the man who jumped
down to save the other guy did? In his case,
his brain - in pre-thinking automatic mode no
doubt - went with Hollywood screenwriting, and now
he's dead. Who knows, maybe the guy had
never seen a TV program or movie in his life
(coming from a modern society, there's a very slim
chance of that), or maybe he would have done it
anyway, but you have to wonder.
There was a news story about a man in a parking
garage who saw a couple of car thieves beginning
to drive off in his car. What to do, what to
do.... But of course! Jump on the
hood! It always works in the movies!
"But wait... these criminals don't look upset that
I'm on the outside of the car, looking through the
windshield at them... they're laughing at
me! Speeding up! Turning on the
windshield wipers and washers!
Laughing! Swerving and speeding up still
more! Oh no...." And the guy ended up
pleading for his life - telling them they could
keep the car, but please let him live!
There was a hijacking in Japan something like
fifteen years ago, in which a man who had spent
long hours virtually flying a game airplane took
the controls of a 747. The pilot tried to
get him to make the necessary actions to keep the
plane in the air, so the idiot with the virtual
brain and real knife, stabbed the pilot to death
and kept on operating the real plane the way he
had learned to fly the virtual plane (which was
too slow to actually keep a real 747 in the
air). Fortunately, there were two off-duty
pilots on board who realized that the plane was on
the verge of stalling and falling from the sky, so
they forcefully broke into the cockpit and
wrestled the real idiot with the virtual brain
away from the controls, and then flew the plane as
it needed to be flown - saving the whole planeload
of passengers and crew from certain death (except
the murdered pilot).
From live news shows - in helicopter views of real
car chases in which someone is trying to speed
away from the police in Los Angeles, I've seen
several where the car tries speeding straight
through a red light and then hits a car in the
intersection. Could the adrenaline decision
to speed through the red light be influenced by a
lifetime of watching heroes speeding through red
lights in the movies (and miraculously just making
it, while the pursuer doesn't)?
Admittedly, those are mostly extreme
circumstances, but my point is that with ever more
virtual reality exposure, people are going to be
making ever more misinformed and bad decisions,
performing sloppy actions that work on electronic
sensors in games/machines but don't fly in the
real world. Perception is reality?
No. Reality is reality. Some reality
bites and some doesn't, but what's real is still
real, even if people don't realize it.
Lyle
2008/08/03
"The
Shinkansen Super Express Trains"
The Shinkansen train system in Japan - for a long
time, known only as "the bullet train" - is
finally beginning to be known by it's proper name
"Shinkansen". The name itself is better
sounding than it's translation - "new main/trunk
line". (Even in Japanese, "Shinkansen"
conjures up images of the train, not the mundane
component parts of the name.) Initially, the
"bullet train" name made some sense, as the first
version of the train looked like a bullet at the
front, and was fast like a "speeding bullet" (in
comparison to other trains).
I bring this up, because I posted a video at
YouTube of one of the original type Shinkansen
trains pulling into Tokyo Station in 1991, and
then one of the newer (at the time) Shinkansen
trains leaving the station. The video also
takes a quick walk inside one of the old type
train cars and looks into the cab: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=EhXCAjZxiWk
"Ebisu
Station - 1991 & 2008"
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: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=wanxYIwsdDs
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
2008/07/21
"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.
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
2008/07/16
"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
2008/07/14
"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
2008/07/10
"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
2008/07/08
"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
2008/07/05
"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 in 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.
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.)
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 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
2008/06/28
"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
2008/06/21
"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.).
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
2008/06/14
"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
2008/06/07
"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:
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
2008/06/06
"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
2008/06/02
"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:
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 the 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:
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
2008/05/31
"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
2008/05/27
"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: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saqj-zxndeQ
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.
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
text 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 train
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: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ScexNfYbBQ
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: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IkMETDZkLU
See?
It's all quite civilized. Crowded, yes, but
working very well.
Lyle
2008/05/19
"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
pushes/pulls 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
2008/05/19
"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 alone 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 employees
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 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
2008/05/17
"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.
"Shakujikoen Sardine
Run"
More
morning crush-rush commuter train fun from 1991
(it's a little less crowded now, thanks to
flextime). Both this one and "Actually Full Train
in 1991" were taken by me. "Actually Full Train in
1991" has been relentlessly copied and even
labeled as being from China! It's not! It's from
the Seibu-Ikebukuro Line in Tokyo.
"Actually Full Train in 1991 (Why Flex Time is a
Good Idea)"
Morning
commuter rush in Tokyo in 1991. Pre-Flextime,
everyone needed to get to work
by 9:00 a.m. sharp. Now, in 2008, it's a little
less crowded.
Incidentally, this video has been relentlessly
& ruthlessly copied from my Google posting.
Some of the posts even say it's China, but - shock
& surprise - Japan and China are two different
countries! I took the video myself... and don't
quite understand the shameless audacity of people
who steal it and claim that it's theirs!
Mutter-mutter.
Lyle
2008/05/17
"More Stolen Copy
Versions than the Real Thing..."
Only the
top one is the correct one - the rest are
stolen. The numbers speak for themselves...
apparently there are a lot of shameless theives
out there:
-
without even mentioning where it came from.
This is dirty and foul behavior, as if they wanted
to display it, they could have (and should have!)
linked to the video's proper home, which is here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5127313249780524359&hl=en
Does
anyone know anything about www.snotr.com? Is
this typical behavior for them? I've just
posted this comment there:
Reading
the other comments - I can answer all the
questions. Why am I able to do this?
Because I took the video! It was stolen
and posted here without my permission, name or
website. Check out "Actually Full Train"
to see where it was stolen from.
Nevertheless
- a couple of answers:
The video was taken in 1991, as its original
title makes very clear: "Actually Full Train in
1991 (Why Flex Time is a Good Idea)".
No, it was not an unusual situation - it was
like that every day! I know because I was
usually one of those sardines myself!
(Some spots of the train tended to be slightly
less crowded but you still had to force your way
on).
To whoever posted the video. Please don't
steal other people's material! You're
welcome to post it by using the code provided,
which directs viewers to the site with the
proper title, my name, and my website.
Just stealing it and posting it this way is
wrong.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
To add insult to injury, there is this bit of
fiction posted at the site (under the inane title
"Crowded Japanese train"):
"So you think your
train or subway is often crowded? In Japan it's
even worse, check out this video of a train
departing during rush hour (6:30 AM)."
It wasn't taken at 6:30 - it was taken about an
hour later than that, around 7:30 a.m. The
6:30 trains were not nearly that crowded.
Remember, the *reason* it was so crowded is that
it was before flex time and everyone *needed* to
get to work by 9:00 a.m. Of the course the
thief wasn't there that day, or any other day, and
doesn't care about accuracy....
And it
gets worse - after stealing it from me, they have
the gall to embed their bloody logo in it!
And then that stolen version is posted at this
site:
http://www.lesmotsontunsens.com/sncf-fin-de-la-carte-famille-nombreuse-c-est-tant-mieux-video
I also
e-mailed them this message:
To: copyright@snotr.com Subject: Stolen Video "Actually Full
Train"
Date: Friday, May 16, 2008
I
recently ordered some historical DVD's of material
from the 1930-1955 time frame, and the color
material is fascinating to watch. The type
of material I grew up seeing from that era tended
to be (nearly always was) in black & white,
and so the border between what looked like the
"black & white era" and color seemed to fall
right between my generation and the generation
proceeding mine. But switch that older
material to color, and add in the new factor that
a lot of it was taken with privately owned small
cameras loaded with color film (that had been
sleeping in closets for decades - only recently
becoming publicly available), and the double...
not punch... the doubly strong effect of a more
personal viewpoint combined with color, suddenly
brought those black & white people from the
past into the color world of the present. I
felt I could probably step through a time machine
and get along with the individuals with no problem
at all. (Many black & white newsreels
taken by professionals from previous eras seem
otherworldly and out of reach in time &
viewpoint, and... factor-X!)
This
makes me wonder if there would have been less of a
generation gap in the sixties if those children of
Technicolor realized that their parents hadn't
inhabited a black & white world in the past,
but had actually lived among color as vibrant as
at any time. Naturally there were far larger
causes for the rift of the day, but the pictures
representing the young period of those who came
before me being mostly black & white didn't
help. They had the effect of making the past
look boring and - figuratively and literally -
gray. With my own pictures, when I've taken
things in black & white and I know what the
scene looked like in color, still it's
hard to imagine the scene in color when looking at
the black & white print - even though it is
something I saw in color with my own eyes.
"Seeing is believing" even if it's an illusion?
Speaking
of black & white film. My first several
years of photography were mainly with black and
white film for financial reasons. Color film
was a bit more expensive than B&W and
processing was a lot more expensive, so color was
saved for special occasions. In San
Francisco I also liked the effect of black &
white, but still there was that financial thing
hanging over me. If color had been the same
cost, I'm sure I would have done some things at
least in color.
The
other thing that was a constant barrier to just
doing what I would have liked to do, was the
limitation of typically going out with three rolls
of 36-exposure film, so once my 111 pictures (I
always got 37 pictures per 36-exposure roll of
film) were taken, I had to stop for the day.
I drooled when I read about 300-exposure film
packs, and then, when I finally got my mitts on a
digital camera with a large memory card, it was as
though I'd found a genie in a bottle who had
granted me unlimited photo-taking ability.
It's great to be able to get going in the morning
on a photo-acquisition day, and be able to take
around 1,500 pictures in a single day.
And so
now - when I see people who have never experienced
the day when black & white was the cheap film
and almost no-one used it instead of color because
they wanted to; and film is seen as artistic,
instead of a limitation to free image making... I
half shake my head and half reassess the
advantages of black and white film taken with an
old camera. The main advantage is just that
you try harder with each individual image with
film and then place a higher value on any given
image (double exposures and some other technical
things can also be nice). But if I assign a
percentage to which I prefer - analog photography
or digital photography, I would say 99 for digital
and 1 for film (if that). For the film
enthusiasts, I would say do whatever you like, but
I have a difficult time sharing your enthusiasm
for chemical photography. To use an
expression I generally despise - "Been there -
done that".
Lyle
2008/05/06
"Larger TVs &
Smaller Movie Screens..."
I was
given a free ticket to see "I'm Not There", the
bizarre movie about Bob Dylan, and I went out to
see it yesterday evening. I didn't know much
about Bob Dylan (except that I liked some of his
music), until I read about him on the Internet
following seeing the movie. I would say to
anyone thinking of seeing the movie, that it will
likely only be interesting if you are thoroughly
familiar with Bob Dylan. If you're not, it's
probably not going to make much sense.
Personally, I like autobiographic and documentary
material, and tend to despise biographies and
docu-dramas. So, for me, the movie wasn't
one I was happy to have invested my time on,
particularly when there is a lot of documentary
material available on the man. I did enjoy
the soundtrack however.
Next
issue. The movie theater! It was one
of those new ones where they pack 8-16 theaters
into a spiffy new building, and in the case of the
theater I went to last night, they double up
movies in the same space (making sure to kick
everyone out after each showing, so you can't see
two movies), with one movie playing around noon,
another movie playing once or twice after that,
and the noon movie showing again in the
evening. So with 10 theaters, you can pack
in 20 movies. Just the sort of thing that
would look great in a suit-driven PowerPoint
presentation, but the genba result is pretty
bad. At the same time home TV's and sound
systems are getting larger and better, movie
theater screens are getting smaller and sound
quality is getting worse.
Details
of the theater I went to last night:
- The
theater had a nearly flat floor, and to help
people see, they had very uncomfortable seats that
force you to slouch (tall people no longer get in
the way - they just ruin their backs while
suffering through the movie in an uncomfortable
position) - although there was enough leg room
(there had to be - otherwise the forced slouch
wouldn't work).
-The
smallish screen wasn't so small as to call it
tiny, but as I looked at it from the pain of the
uncomfortable seat I was in, I thought "This isn't
vastly different than watching a large screen
high-definition television hooked up to a decent
sound system - what's the point in going to a
movie theater to suffer in bad seats when you
could actually enjoy the movie at home from a
rented DVD?"
- There
was no surround sound, but at least the
from-the-front-only sound quality wasn't
bad. It should have been much louder for
that movie though, but they have to keep the
volume down in order not to disturb the other
theaters packed onto the same floor.
So I'm
left with my thought originally generated by the
badly designed seats and the small screen - what's
the point in going to a movie theater? I
certainly never again want to visit that one I
went to last night! I'm willing to go to
some expense, time and trouble to see a movie from
a comfortable seat, with a huge screen, and
surround quality sound played at the proper
volume, but otherwise, I'd just as soon they shut
down movie theaters altogether.
Lyle
2008/05/01
"Banana Song in
Colombian Bar" (Tokyo-1991)
I used
to go out for a beer or two from time to time (here
and there in Tokyo, but mostly in Shibuya) with a
friend from LA, and one evening he took me and a
few other people to this Columbian bar run by a
Columbian man he knew (who later appeared in a bit
part in a very bad movie here that I can't
remember the name of). Visiting a place like
that isn't as big of a deal now, but in 1991, bars
run by foreigners were rarer, so it was
interesting to go there on novelty value
alone. We had a good time it seems - judging
from the 10-15 minutes of video I took there
(typically, I can remember standing with my video
camera, focusing on the guy as he performed behind
the counter, but I can't remember much of anything
other than my time behind the camera. The
conversations must not have been too
interesting...) The video clip starts out on
the street, then goes up the stairs, and once
inside there's some... some... not "footage"...
there are a couple of clips of the guy singing and
playing a keyboard behind the counter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0rlW457R-o
My
friend had shown up late that evening (he was
pretty habitually late, come to think of it), and
then we ended up staying past the last train, so
we walked over to his place (he lived nearby,
fortunately) and I slept there for a few hours and
then I took the first train (5:00 a.m.) towards
home in the morning.
How can
I remember those details after seventeen
years? I can't! Or more precisely, I
couldn't, until I saw those parts again - in the
video. There is a scene looking across a
train station platform. My arm appears in
the frame as I and the camera look at the time on
my wristwatch as my friend walks up late &
apologizing. Later on, there are video clips
of going to a convenience store on the way to my
friend's place; me looking very tired there before
catching a few hours of sleep on the tatami; me
half-asleep in the morning when I got up (I
actually went to the trouble in the morning of
setting the camera on a bookshelf, aiming it at
myself, and videotaping myself sitting on the
tatami, half-nodding off to sleep for a minute
before finally getting up); the early morning
streets; the trains back... I used to videotape
everything. While watching the tapes, the
memories are roused.
Lyle
2008/04/27
"Kubuntu v8.04"
Another
weekend working for the computer. Typical
deal - you figure you're going to spend a couple
of hours upgrading an OS, and that couple of hours
turns into a couple of days. There's always
something. In this case I stupidly thought
I'd do the lazy and quick [sarcastic and
hysterical laughter] thing, and do an upgrade
install from v7.10 to v8.04. I knew better
than to do such a thing (I'd tweaked the system
too much for that to work, and it's not a good
idea in general to do upgrade installs that
(attempt to) take the OS across a major
generational line anyway).
The
result? It could have been worse. When
the upgrade install failed (as I should have known
it would), the system was a bit mucked up, but
still functioning. I (belatedly) thought
"Okay - no prob! I'll plug in an external
USB hard drive, drop the files into that, and then
do a clean install" - reformatting the hard drive
and putting in v8.04 on a squeaky clean slate.
One
problem though... the system no longer detected
USB devices! "Uuuu......." I think, while
looking at my computer - knowing the files are
sitting in the steel box, but not knowing how to
get them out. I fleetingly considered
abandoning everything and just going ahead and
wiping the hard drive, but irrational/impatient
passion subsided and I decided to put the stuff I
really wanted (needed?) to keep onto dual-layer
DVD's in 8GB chunks and dump about 90GB of the
100GB of data (stuff that was already backed up -
.tif images from Hubble, etc.).
If I
hadn't put that DVD drive into the box after
bringing it home from the used computer shop, I'm
not sure what I would have done (learned command
line stuff no doubt), but all's mostly happy that
ends mostly happy I guess.
Next
multi-hour batch of fun involved a glitch with the
Adept Package Manager, which wasn't pulling in the
list of available application software like it's
supposed to. It just unhelpfully showed the
things already installed. To make a too-long
story a little bit longer, I finally figured out
that was due to it's trying to pull in the file
list from a bad source (or maybe not trying at all
due to garbled text?).
After
that was sorted out (it took me much longer than
it should have to figure that one out), I had some
setup problems with some applications I use, etc.
etc. Now I'm up and running, but there are
still a number of things that I want to get set up
and so the machine will continue to burn up time
over the next week or so I imagine.
So how
is Kubuntu v8.04? Seems good so far. I
need to spend more time with it to know exactly
what's what though.
Lyle
2008/04/23
"Lining-up
Progress"
Continuing
to look around in 2008 Japan and compare it to
1984-1992 Japan, another issue that comes to mind
is standing in lines. When I arrived, I was
shocked and dismayed to discover that at banks and
fast-food places, there were several parallel
lines, rather than one central line that fed to
the next open teller or order taker. So you'd go
to the bank in a hurry and pick a short line, and
if you were lucky, you'd get out before people who
had been waiting longer. If you were unlucky,
you'd get in a line and - noticing that it wasn't
moving - you'd take a closer look up the line and
there would be a time-machine visitor from the
deep dark ages who didn't know how to interact
with machines, or someone who brought in a stack
of bank books to update (for colleagues?), or some
such thing, and you'd be standing there in
frustration watching people who had come in after
you, smoothly gliding up to another machine,
completing their banking, and leaving while you
stood there.
What to
do... getting out of line at that stage would mean
getting in the back of a line twice as long, which
might contain its own glacially slow biped... etc.
etc. So I imagine that you can imagine my
happiness spike when they finally got around to
setting it up so there was only one line, and
people at the front of the line just went to
whichever machine was open first.
Same
thing with escalators - they would immediately jam
up and they were good only for the effort saved in
not walking. If you were in any kind of a hurry,
the only way to zoom ahead was to use the stairs.
Don't believe me that people jammed them up? Have
a look at this video from 1991:
And
um... yeah, that's it. I need to get some sleep
now!
Sore
dewa, mata,
Lyle
2008/04/22
"Spontaneous
Dual Lines"
For
about twenty years I lined up on one platform
after another and another-n'-another-n'-another,
and the lines were always three people across. I
remember hearing recorded announcements early on
at some stations asking people to line up three
across, and it occurred to me that it hadn't
always been that way, hence the announcement.
After that, though, I don't remember hearing that
announcement. Either it was one of those things
that is always in the background, so you just
automatically tune it out, or they stopped making
the announcements since everyone was dutifully
lining up three across?
The only
problem with standing three across, is that when
the train comes, and the three-across line has to
split to let people off the train, that middle row
of people have to get in one or the other new line
on the right or left of the opening doors, so the
process ends up interfering with equal access to
the train (on some lines, at some stations, the
first people in can actually - gasp!- sit down!!)
- this doesn't, on the other hand, interfere
whatsoever when people are getting onto an empty
train at the first station.
Jump
through the years from 1984 to around 2005 or so,
and one day I saw two people standing at one of
the door marks (where the doors will be is usually
marked on the platform, and the train operators
pride themselves on stopping at precisely the same
spot at the station every time), so I walked up
and parked my standing bipedal form next to them,
forming the third person. They looked over at me
and I felt disapproval/irritation radio waves...
"What?...." I thought, as I assessed the
situation.... Reconfirming that I was the third
person; not the fourth or fifth, I looked off into
the distance and broadcast anti-disapproval waves
and thought "Hey! I'm not being pushy! I'm just
doing the regular thing! What's with you?"
(Naturally no words were exchanged.)
Since
then, I've seen people standing in pairs more and
more until it's gotten to the point lately, that
it almost seems official to stand two across.
Equal access to the inside, etc. is great, but
what's not great is when it's overcrowded (like
every bloody day on a couple of the trains I line
up for), and then you have a handful of people
leisurely standing at the front edge of the
platform, and - by the time the train is about to
arrive - a huge mob of people unable to be in any
kind of line at all at the back, and in danger of
dropping off the edge of the other side of the
platform, which becomes a real mess when a second
train arrives on that side. Adding to the fun,
there are actually people trying to walk along the
platform (which they must - lest there be disaster
at the junction of the stairs and the platform),
and they have to physically force themselves
through the mob.
Then -
earlier in the evening, as I'm waiting for a train
in Shinjuku, I notice the recorded announcement is
asking people to line up three across.... Either
it's new or I've been missing it all these
years... I think it's new. What I'm wondering now
is whether the urge to line up in pairs instead of
triangles is a natural phenomenon?
Lyle
2008/04/17
"Old
Style Y500 Coffee Shop"
On the way home over the past couple of years,
I've periodically looked out the train window
(when I'm standing at a door that is - the seats
face the inside of the train) and noticed an old
style (previously ubiquitous) coffee shop, and
idly thought I'd like to go in for an over-priced
cup of coffee for old-time's sake.
And here I am sitting in said shop writing this by
hand (enjoying the experience of writing by hand,
but also realizing that each word will have to be
reproduced on the keyboard before I can get this
through the wires to the screen).
Okay, this is getting in the way - I'll just make
short notes from here out and fill in the text
later directly on the machine:
These
old style coffee shops are fast disappearing, to
the point where the only remaining ones will exist
on nostalgia alone, rather than their original
reason for existing. For quite a while,
Japan's coffee shops were famous for their
overpriced (compared to prices for coffee in other
countries anyway) coffee, but I'm not sure people
understand what was being bought with Y500 for a
cup of coffee.
The deal
is, not only are free places to sit down in Tokyo
few and far between, but most of the year, the
weather tends not to be ideal for sitting
outside. The winter is cold, the spring is
wet, the summer is hot & humid, and although
autumn tends to be nice, it's also often visited
with typhoons. Then you're back to cold
winter. So, if you want to meet someone and
sit and talk, where do you go? Coffee shops
used to be the best option, since you could sit in
one talking with a friend for a few hours, after
which the Y500 didn't seem so expensive, since it
amounted to seat & table rental time out of
the weather and in a cozy atmosphere (assuming
smoke didn't cause you grief).
Then
cheap coffee shop chains caught on, and the
expensive places lost customers to them and began
to disappear. The cheap places are
convenient and cheap, but - like fast-food
restaurants - generally soulless.
Observations
of the Y500 place in which I now sit - which fit
for most of the similar-style coffee shops I've
been in over the past 24 years:
You sit
down, and either exchange a few words with the
person you've come with, or else look around the
coffee shop or out the window. (Before cell
phones, they were also good places to wait for
someone when you had to prearrange a place to
meet.) Often the menu is already at the
table, but sometimes it's brought, and water and
hot wet towels are brought. You ponder the
menu for awhile, and order, and then talk (or look
out the window, or read, etc.) while waiting for
the coffee to arrive.
Coffee
is brought in style. Like in a classy
restaurant, the delivery of the coffee is
considered an important element. The person
who brings you the coffee sets it carefully in
front of you in a nice cup (never a paper cup),
with the handle facing to your left at
90-degrees. I never bothered to find out the
exact proper procedure for turning it 180 degrees
before beginning to drink, but (sort-of) enjoyed
the ritual of turning it anyway (shades of the tea
ceremony here), and then pouring in a little cream
& sugar and stirring it with the small spoon.
One
time, I went with an acquaintance who was really
into the correct rituals, etc., and was told that
you're not supposed to stir it right away, but
rather watch in fascination (said mostly in
seriousness, with a little bit of sarcasm in the
background) the patterns formed with the cream in
the coffee. Immediately stirring it into a
uniform mud color is considered very
uncultured. (I've forgotten, but I think the
ideal thing is to stir the black coffee, and
carefully drop the cream into the still swirling
coffee after the spoon is out of the way - in any
case it looks pretty interesting & artistic
when you do it that way.)
There are always two kinds of sugar on the table -
in glass containers with wooden lids, and metal
spoons with small wooden knobs on the end (the
spoons rest in the sugar, with the handle passing
through a cutout in the lid). One is regular
white sugar, and the other is a brown sugar in
large crystals. I don't remember what the
deal is with the large brown-crystal sugar.
Either it's a taste thing, or one or the other is
more suited to ice-coffee? (They would bring
a liquid syrup for the ice-coffee, come to think
of it.) I have no idea. Personally, I
always used the large brown crystal sugar in hot
coffee.
There was (is) an ashtray on each table, as
leaf-fire burning and inhalation for nicotine drug
addicts is/was allowed. StarBucks was the
first place that didn't allow smoking anywhere in
the entire store, and it was instantly popular
with non-smokers who weren't happy about being
forced to smoke with the smokers in smoke/coffee
shops. (Probably not a great time or place
to visit this issue, but for those who bring up
alcohol and people who drink as an argument
against banning leaf-fire smoke - the comparison
only holds if you physically grab someone and
force alcohol down their throats - otherwise the
comparison is just sophistic inanity. The
air is common to all in the same space - what
people drink is not.)
Back to the specific coffee shop I'm in:
-
Between myself and the window are cake... ads?
(they're not menus exactly, but perform that
function) sitting on a wooden rail. One for
"Milk Crepe", one for "Chocolate Cake Cake Set"
and one for "Cheesecake".
- Old style wooden chairs.
- Wood-pattern linoleum floor.
- Two small square wooden tables pushed together
to form the rectangle of each four-seat
table. (Easily adjusted for an extra person
here or there.)
- Small tables mostly, one larger table (with
eight chairs) in the middle of the room. A
sort of bar-style counter, although at the same
height as the tables, where people can sit in
regular-height chairs.
- Daily (coffee) special on A4 card tacked to
wall.
- Unobtrusive background music.
- Incandescent lights (no florescent tubes
anywhere that I can see - unusual in most spaces
in Japan, although classy restaurants have been
trending towards warmer, more subdued lighting).
- Exhaust fan in the wall (for leaf-fire smoke).
- Magazines and comic books in smallish bookcase.
- People talking in Y500 coffee shop style.
Is that sound due to the acoustics; the background
music; or do people actually speak in a different
way in these places? From past experience, I
would say it's a way of speaking. It's not a
library, but the concept is similar. (Note:
That last sentence began as Japanese and is
basically a translated sentence - does it fly
smoothly in English, or does it feel like an oddly
translated string of words that doesn't quite come
together in a cohesive meaning? It's common
in Japanese to say that something "isn't
something, but...".
I look out the window and ponder the people coming
and going from the station. There is the
muffled sound of trains coming into and leaving
the station, and the "kong-kong-kong" of crossing
bell sounds generated by speakers.
Time to leave - I pick up the bill on the table
and note that its height is A6, with a narrower
width.
As I
leave, I think I would like to return before long,
but the first thing I think of when contemplating
doing so, is the time it costs. Perhaps this
is what has really killed off most of these types
of shops - the fact that people can communicate
with anyone via e-mail now (with cell phones), and
don't need to arrange a physical meeting to talk.
So
saying, a scene comes to mind. Later in the
say, as I walked past a StarBucks in Shinjuku, I
looked in the window and saw a woman sitting alone
at a table for two (not four, as would be the case
in the old-style shops), talking on her cell phone
while she was doing something with her laptop at
the same time. Multitasking - why waste time
meeting someone in a settled atmosphere and having
a leisurely talk when you can do three or four
things at once? Quantity is more important
than quality? For everything gained,
something is lost?
Lyle
2008/04/14
"Cherry
Blossoms Mostly Gone"
I might
just as well have titled this "Finally it's
Getting Warm". The cherry blossoms always come out
when there is no trace of new leaves on other
trees (or the cherry blossom trees - the leaves
come out after the flowers), which is their
attraction, but it's always really cold when
everyone goes out for the hanami drinking
parties under the trees. By the time the weather
is feeling a little comfortable, the petals are
all gone. It's a good scam those trees have going!
Just a week or so of flowers and they're given
pride of place all over the country. Not so lucky
fruit trees, which are considered bad outside of
commercial farms, since they include the
possibility of attracting (gasp!) insects!
Watching
one of my video tapes from August 1990, I was
surprised to see myself pointing out a security
camera that had been installed over the train
station platform. Trying to think of something in
the news that prompted a stepped up security
diligence, I looked up the gas attack on the
subway (I was here, but had forgotten when it
happened exactly), which turns out to have been in
1995, so it was either something else, or just the
flow of time towards the odd age we live in now.
And in
the video department - a view of the famous (or
maybe infamous) Shibuya crossing near the Hachiko
Plaza. Wait a minute.... Hmm? In the upload, the
aspect ratio was destroyed and it looks
extraordinarily horrible now! I should delete it,
but I'll leave it up as an example of what happens
when the aspect ratio is ruined:
There was a special on
a weekly news program last night about how sales
of manga magazines
(typically weekly publications with ongoing bits
of several different manga) have been falling.
Apparently books sales of specific manga- like the
long-running "Conan the Detective" - are still
selling well, but people seem to be losing
interest in the formerly hugely successful
weekly magazines (printed on very cheap paper
and looking almost like small phone books).
Maybe this ties in
with dismal book sales in general - people are
getting used to getting reading material off
the Internet, and many don't buy any books at
all. Whatever - I just felt sort of vindicated
when I saw the report though, as I've been
thinking that newer mangahave gotten worse,
so maybe others agree....
Somewhat
related in how time relentlessly flows on, for
both good and otherwise - here is a video showing
both the modern face of Gotanda and a narrow
backstreet from the past:
As someone who is kept from going stark raving
mad on the sardine run commute to-and-from
work by audio recordings (usually there's no
space for a book, so listening to something is
all I can do), I look at my title sitting up
there on the screen and feel as though I
probably shouldn't say that about something I
use and appreciate on a daily basis, but the
flip side of listening to a favorite song or
book, is listening to something that sounds
like fingernails on a chalkboard, and hearing
the exact same irritating sound
again-and-again-and-again-and-again.... and
again-and-again-and-again-and-again-and-again-and...
Aggggghhhhh!! Stop already!!!
What do you do when you've got a vast and
complex train system with an incredible number
of stations, and you want to have a recording
telling people what the next station is?
A coupe of options might be:
a) Have someone read through a list of
stations, reading "The next stop is Tokyo
Station"; "The next stop is "Yurakucho
Station"; "The next stop is Shinbashi
Station". The resulting recordings would
differ slightly from one station to another -
a shocking concept - almost like real speech!
b) Have someone make a single recording saying
"The next station is....." and then give them
a list of stations to read "Tokyo";
"Yurakucho"; "Shinbashi". Use the single
recording for all stations; just dropping in
the relevant station name at the end. A
"benefit" of this is that all the recordings
will be uniform. The disadvantage is
that it sounds unreal, because... well... it
*is* unreal! And then this Frankenstein
creation gets worse; 'Frankenstein monster,
meet Dr. Clone!'
The "B" route seems to be what JR has done
with its English announcements, although that
single template sentence may be different for
different lines... (the recordings that
torment me on a regular basis are the ones on
the Yamanote Line and the Chuo Line).
What prompts this rant? I took a video
clip of the station display screen (there's
also one displaying ads, news & weather)
over one of the doors (there are a pair of
displays over every door), including the audio
file that was playing at the time I made the
clip. After ranting up a storm about the
recordings, I played back the video clip,
thinking "I wonder how this will sound to
someone who hasn't yet been tortured with this
recording..." as the clip began.
How did it sound with that mindset? Not
so bad! But - and this a very large
"but" - keep in mind that the announcement is
likely played quite a bit more loudly on the
train than you're hearing it on your computer,
and also that (except for the station name
part), as you ride the train and it stops at
one station after another, you're forced to
listen to that same recording over and over
and over....
And by way of contrast, here's a video clip of
a Toyoko Line train, which very sensibly skips
an English announcement and lets the clear
bi-lingual display over the doors do the job: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4626557474586894517
It would have been nice if JR had done the
same!
Lyle
2008/04/06
"English
Train Announcements - Why?"
In newer
trains in Tokyo, they have bilingual (Japanese
& English) displays over the doors on the
inside of the train, as well as bilingual displays
on the outside of the train (on the front, rear,
and sides), not to mention bilingual signs on the
station platforms. Great stuff - the long-term
citizens of the country get to see their own
language, and hapless tourists &
businesspeople get an International language more
widely recognized than Japanese.
What's
not so great is the horrible audio; recorded
announcements relentlessly assaulting everyone's
ears before and after every station. What's wrong
with English language announcements on Tokyo
trains?
- First
off, they are unneeded. "Shinjuku" in Japanese is
also "Shinjuku" in English, "Nakano" in Japanese
is "Nakano" in English... except when you get some
mono-linguist who can't speak the local language
to say it - like they have done for the JR
announcements - and they pronounce it "NaKAno".
Grrrrrr..!
- Bad
education! When people ride a train every day,
week-after-week, month-after-month, and
year-after-year, and every time, their ears and
minds are assaulted with the very same badly
pronounced station names - I wouldn't be surprised
if children here start calling Yotsuya "YoTSUya"
like the bloody announcement on JR trains! And
even if it's not bad education, it's disgusting to
listen to! It's sound pollution! Yamete
kudasai yo!
- The
English parts of the announcements, although said
with an irritatingly hard and twangy voice, are at
least pronounced correctly (with an American
accent). BUT - they are said at one-third speed,
as though an over-eager kindergarten teacher is
trying too hard to super-pronounce every single
word, and to leave miles of space between each
word for easy comprehension. I think even if
English was my seventh and most poorly understood
language, that way of "speaking" the language
would still be highly irritating to listen to! Kanben
shite kure yo!
- The
audio assault English announcements (unneeded
& unwanted) are played louder
than the Japanese announcements!! Why??? Is it
some kind of mental torture cleverly devised to
ease crowding a little by getting people to walk
or cycle to work, rather than face the horrible
sound waves broadcast on the trains?
- In one
of the announcements (about smoking, or babies or
something), it sounds as though the woman badly
needs to clear her throat... and you stand there
on the train - involuntarily clearing your throat
- and you think "Over time, millions - millions
of people are going to hear the announcement and
they couldn't be bothered to rerecord a bad
spot?!? Incredible!! Astounding!! Outrageous!!
Unforgivable!! And - oh so amazingly irritating!!!
Grrrrrrrrrr!!!!!"
And...
that's basically it. I realize the announcements
are intended to be helpful, but they're really not
needed (or wanted), and if they must be there, it
sure would be nice if they could turn the volume
down on them and rerecord them in a more natural
sounding way. But really - they're not needed!
They really aren't! Even tourists would rather
take in the ambiance of a foreign country -
enhanced by listening to cool Japanese
announcements. Who is happy with those profoundly
irritating English announcements? Maybe one person
out of 333,333 - or less! Arigata-meiwaku
desu!
Rant
over....
Lyle
2008/03/30
"Oh
Yeah... That's How it Was..."
Being
with someone over a period of years, you know they
(and yourself) are changing, but it doesn't seem
like so much - until you take a look at a picture
taken fifteen years ago, and suddenly the contrast
is quite stark. The first reaction is a kind of
shock, and then as you stare at the photo, the
previous time drifts back into present day
consciousness and the huge change between then and
now is inescapable, not to mention the way the
forgotten ambiance of the old "present" time comes
back to haunt you.
And so
it is with the many videos I'm watching that I
took from 1990-92. In the flow of time from 1990
to 2008, many momentous things have happened, but
on a day-to-day basis, it was just time flowing
forward, and major change is something I
abstractly imagined for the future, but never
perceived in the way a time machine blast to the
future would put the changes in stark contrast to
what was (or "is" if it's the "future").
Not by
way of illustration, but just because it happened
to come up today - here's a video clip of a
railway employee punching tickets by hand.
I don't
how soon (or late) other countries automated their
ticket gates, but with the trains in Tokyo,
automatic ticket gates started appearing at one
station after another in 1991, and the only line I
can think of off-hand that still does it by hand
is the Chichibu Line in Saitama, although I'm sure
there must be branch lines here and there away
from the major city centers that still get by
without modern machinery for taking and issuing
tickets.
Lyle
2008/03/26
"Dust
& Pollen... Sniffle"
For the
past few years, every spring the media cranks up
the "the tree pollen this spring is worse than
before..." reports, and - this year in particular
- I do believe they're right. Pretty much non-stop
for the past three weeks or so I've had itchy
and/or sore eyes, runny nose, sneezing fits, etc.
The story is that after the war, they planted a
fast-growing type of pine tree ('sugi' in
Japanese) forming near-mono cultures in the
mountains, and now these trees dump massive
amounts of pollen into the air every spring.
And
something I hadn't picked up before, but hear
isn't new - apparently, there is an increasing
amount of dust blowing in from China's deserts -
and one sand storm I even witnessed myself. I
wouldn't have though that sand from deserts in
China would ride the winds all the way to Japan,
but the winds are strong, the sand particles are
small....
And so
it was that - on the way home - I dropped by a
park to see the cherry trees in blossom, armed
with a towel in one hand and a camera in the
other. It was a typical experience for this time
of year, except for one detail.
At the
entrance to the back side of the park (where most
of the cherry blossom trees are) , I noticed a
sign saying that cherry blossom viewing ("hanami")
was only allowed until 9:00 p.m., and it warned
people not to sing karaoke (good, good) or play
music, and - get this - not to talk too loudly! I
looked over at the large pricey houses bordering
the park and thought "What's this? Did one of you
guys complain to city hall about the noise? Do you
think this park is your personal property or
something?".
An
over-reaction I suppose, but I remembered an
article I'd read about a park in Nishi-Tokyo-shi
that had some sort of sprinklers for kids to run
around in the summer. Great idea. But they shut
them down. Why? One neighbor complained that they
could hear the sound of children playing and it
disturbed them.(!!) What blows my mind is that one
deranged lunatic is listened to and the sentiments
of thinking people are ignored. A person can't
stand the sound of children playing in a park?
They should move to the Sahara Desert, or Mars, or
something.
Lyle
2008/03/21
"Iikagen-ni-shiro!"
Just
when I'm trying to be careful and quietly get
myself safely to work without incident, I get on
the Yamanote Line and suddenly there's someone
pushing against the right side of my back as I get
on - and as the doors close, they're still pushing
away. Meanwhile, there's a man to my left and the
closed doors straight ahead - no where to go! The
person keeps pushing in a strange way - the way
someone might if they are from Mars and they're
used to riding completely empty trains and don't
understand what the Tokyo morning crush-rush
consists of.
I tried
to ignore it, but as the person kept pushing at
me, I started thinking about it... it seemed less
like someone really in a pinch and needing space
than someone being weird, so I looked back and
discovered a very mean looking woman in her
fifties with one of those profoundly ugly brown
bags from one of the "brand" bag sellers (good gig
- I wish I was in on the money generated by those
things - so long as I didn't have to look at
them!), who has enough space for two people and
has her bag arranged sideways so it pokes into my
back, and is holding out a book to read with one
hand and shoving at me with the other....
Gentle
readers not intimately familiar with Tokyo's very
high-density train system, you may even think
that's normal behavior. No. It's not. Not in
general, and certainly not during the morning
crush-rush. As I took in that scene - 1)
mean-spirited obatarian, 2) hideous brown
bag being used not only as a visual eye-sore, but
as a physical weapon, and 3) enough space for two
people... something snapped and I spun around
(knocking her off balance, since she was pushing
on me with all her might) and told her "Iikagen-ni
shiro!" (something like "That's enough!" or
"Stop it already!"). (The expression is stronger
in Japanese than that translation makes it seem).
Her snarling expression changed to one of shocked
surprise, and I turned around and faced the window
again - getting off at the next station.
Agggghhhh....
I don't want to be be in conflict! This is what is
typically (and relatively recently) called "kireru"(to snap, or
lose control). Even in the cool of
several-hours-later tonight, I still think that
obatarianneeded to have someone tell her that
(she wasn't behaving like a civilized human
being) - I just wish it was someone else and not
me! I want to peacefullycommute to work! I
don't want to battle my way there! Mattaku!
Lyle
2008/03/19
"Anti-Mobile
Phone Fanatics"
When
mobile phones first got small and cheap, it was
pretty common to hear a new user talking on one on
the train - typically saying something like "Guess
where I am right now? - On the Yamanote Line!! I
just got my own mobile phone!", or just talking
loudly & proudly - suddenly having the freedom
to talk on the phone anywhere!
The next
step - after cell phones were becoming commonplace
- was to encourage people not to talk on the phone
on the train unless they really needed to, as the
noise could disturb other passengers. About this
time, cell phone e-mail kicked in, so was well and
good.
Then...
they reported that there was a possibility of
someone with a cell phone causing interference
with a pacemaker and killing someone dead. I don't
think there has been so much as a single incidence
of this actually happening at any time or any
place in the country , but this gave some
anti-mobile phone nut cases ammunition to go
around verbally attacking people for having a cell
phone in their hand. There are even two
individuals that I've run into several times (the
chances of this happening in a mega-city of
30,000,000 people are not so strong!), who are
really wacky.
One is
this woman in her late forties or maybe early
fifties who - each time she sees someone with a
cell phone in their hand - goes over to them and
says with a life-or-death urgency "Yamete! Yamete!
Yamete!" ("Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!). This might
even be okay (sort of... if said in a more
human-like manner) if it were in the priority seat
area, which is the official area to turn the power
of your mobile phone off, lest people start
falling over dead left and right, but this
attack-creature strikes all and sundry in any part
of the train she's in (I've seen her two or three
times on one line and once on a different line).
The
other attack-biped I've seen several times, is
this short, thin man in his twenties, who verbally
attacks anyone he sees with a cell phone out in
their hand ("What are you doing?! You could poke
someone with that!"). Certainly there are some
people who will jam their cell phones into
people's backs while they're text-messaging on an
overly crowded train, but every time I've seen
this guy, the train hasn't been especially
crowded, so I don't think there was any issue that
a normal biped would feel driven to loudly
complain about.
What
prompts me to bring this up? On the Sardine Run
home this evening, an argument broke out half-way
down the train car. One (older-sounding) man
loudly accused a (younger-sounding) man of poking
him with his cell phone. The younger man less
loudly denied the accusation, to which the older
man accused him of it again in a still louder
voice.
I had
gotten on the train at its first station, so I was
able to wait for an empty train and thus grab a
seat. Sitting in my seat comfortably reading a
magazine, I and my seat-mates (and nearby standing
passengers) looked towards the direction from
where the sounds were coming (we couldn't see
anything from the seats - maybe the standing
people could) with just a very slight sense of
minor alarm. Even if things became more heated,
the train was crowded enough that the two warriors
wouldn't be able to move down the train car.
So how
did that turn out? After the heated exchange,
presumably the younger man backed down, as there
were no more battle noises over mobile phones for
the rest of the trip.
Lyle
2008/03/17
"Memory
Corruption"
I've
been looking at several hours of video tape I took
(from 1990-92) that has been sleeping in one
closet or another unwatched over the past 16-18
years. Somewhat expected has been the sensation of
coming face to face with several of my own
personal experiences that I had forgotten
happened. While watching these experiences again,
most of them come back, but some seem strangely
missing.
That's
not too big of a deal, but what was almost
completely unexpected and a bit dismaying are some
experiences I have often remembered over the
years, that - now that I'm watching them exactly
as they happened, enshrined on the tape - I'm
shocked to discover that the version in my memory,
which I had believed to be spot-on accurate, is
often slightly different than the version on the
videotape, which I must believe - especially since
I took it myself! But more on that aspect
later....
Back to
forgotten memories. One example is three hours of
tape I took in and around Tokyo Station on a
single day in 1991. I had obviously decided to
focus on Tokyo Station and I spent an entire day
and evening there walking the platforms, diving
into trains for a few minutes before they began a
new journey (Tokyo is a terminal stop for some
lines, so there's enough of a lag between arrival
and the next departure in the opposite direction,
to have a quick look inside), walking in the
hallways of the Tokyo Station Hotel (now defunct),
and walking around the surrounding station area a
little.
A bit of
time and effort went into that, and yet I can't
remember making a decision to do it... well...
wait... after thinking about it for the past 36
hours or so, I seem to remember deciding to focus
on something in detail instead of doing my usual
deal where I would get off at one station, walk
around all day in one direction or another, and
then, late in the evening, look for a train line -
any train line - to begin the journey home on. But
it's a faint memory and I can't quite remember
myself doing what I see myself doing in the video
images taken that day. Obviously, spending a day
exploring Tokyo Station wasn't interesting enough
to me to warrant thinking about again after I had
done it. And so the memory was lost, and I find
myself looking at myself (I used to periodically
record myself at arm's length making commentary)
and the very things I saw from my own vantage
point, and it almost seems like it's another
person doing what I'm watching. (In one sense it
was - 17 years have wrought a different man in
some ways.)
Now...
for the really disturbing aspect to looking again
at my life recorded on videotape in 1991. In
watching the things I have remembered and thought
about over the years, I kept wondering why my
memory didn't hold on to a precisely accurate
recording of what happened. It was fairly
accurate, but why not spot-on 100% accurate? In
the middle of reviewing the tapes, I listened to a
radio interview with a researcher who has been
studying how people's brains work, and there was a
fascinating thing that came up in the discussion
about how memory works. Apparently the researchers
discovered that, rather than the brain
re-accessing a static recording of an event, when
it is recalled and thought about, it is overwrite
re-recorded! So just recalling it, thinking about
it, and remembering it, alters it! Revelation!
Shock! Dismay! No wonder PR and advertising work
only too well! Hammer away at people and give them
an altered, inaccurate version of the truth
(otherwise known as lies) and the brain will have
a tendency to believe the story as fact after a
while.
Groan!
We're doomed! Well... wait. There is recording!
Writing, cameras, video.... By way of (frivolous)
example, thanks to my videotape, I can now give
you a far more accurate view of 1991 than I could
have before revisiting 1991 via the tapes (and
there are a lot of them - 20 hours for June
alone). Modern TV shows and movies here in Japan
now portray the "bubble economy" years as a time
of living it up, but that was only true for a very
tiny percentage of the population. When I see kids
playing on a shitamachi street in my 1991
video, it brings to mind how inaccurate modern
portrayals of the time are. And I was there! Even
though I was in Japan for every single day of the
bubble years, the modern movies still influenced
my memories of the times! History from previous
generations? I have to wonder how accurate it can
be if very recent history is already distorted!
The
conclusion must be that recording things (by
writing them down, taking photos, etc.) is
absolutely vital to maintaining some kind of
accuracy in history.
Lyle
2008/03/16
"Video
Clips from 2008 & 1991"
This
area was peculiar as it wasn't on my street map -
it was just blank! Walking around, I discovered
that half the houses were vacant, so could this
have been one of the areas of Tokyo where
squatters just threw up houses after the
devastation of the war? In any case, it's probably
a safe bet that this is completely gone now -
sitting under high-rise apartment towers no doubt.
(I'll go for a look when I find time.):
Modern
view - taken just a couple of weeks ago - of the
Shibuya Station platform as the Yamanote Line
train left for Harajuku. As the train crosses a
bridge just out of the station, there is a view of
the famous scramble crosswalks - with people
walking in all directions at once:
Pulling
away from Shibuya Station - Shibuya Crossing
View
of the old Marunouchi Line. More interesting
than the visuals of this train are the sounds
- the air compressors kicking in (sounding
quite different from modern trains) and the
old-at-the-time station announcement which was
changed several years ago. Incidentally, these
train cars are now being used in Argentina!
(See: http://halfzero.sakura.ne.jp/en/subte1.htm),
and for my video clip, see:
Old
Marunouchi Line Red Train at Ginza Station
(1991)
Visually
interesting to me personally, but maybe not to
anyone else.... Of some historical interest is the
old type bus (some of which are still in use) and
the fender-mounted mirrors on a passing car:
Yesterday
at work, I was feeling like it was as hot as the
Sahara Desert, so I checked my thermometer and
confirmed the sensation with the scientific
information that it was 28 degrees (28C - 82.4F).
Being a modern building, none of the windows are
openable; and being the era in which we are
currently living, all doors are security lock
protected, so the doors to the emergency
stairwells (which do have openable windows) must
be kept shut at all times (other than momentarily
being opened for entry and exit).
The
result is that not only is it very uncomfortably
hot (something that could be adjusted, except
there are several sickly people on the floor who
act as though they will drop over dead from
frostbite if the temperature drops below about
25C), but the air is very stale and so the
combination of hot and stuffy makes it feel even
hotter still. Add to this the fact that the
approximately 120 people sharing the same space
are all consuming oxygen, and you have a fairly
hellish workspace air-quality wise. It's a shame
too, because otherwise, it's a good group of
people and it should be a pleasant place to work.
If only I didn't have to work while fighting off
the sensation of approaching death from heat and
lack of oxygen.
This is
something I really envy past generations - who
were able to work in buildings with openable
windows. ISO energy savings are a good thing, but
the amount of oxygen in the air and the general
quality of the air should also be taken into
consideration - if there are to be oxygen-fueled
bipeds working in the space that is. Fill it up
with machinery and keep the bipeds out, and
there's no need for oxygen, but if people are
working there... please give us some more
live-giving oxygen!
It's the
same thing with new trains - they've done away
with the roof vents, and made half the windows
unopenable. Even the openable ones people seem to
be afraid to open. Here's the other thing - not
only is new design putting us into sealed boxes,
but too many people seem to think that's just
fine. I guess they have special low-oxygen demand
bodies? Or... they're getting sicker and sicker
and don't even know it? When I see someone sitting
in 27-degree heat with a blanket on because they
feel cold, I can't believe that they're healthy.
Lyle
2008/03/14
"White
Day"
March
14th, "White Day" in a Japan. A holiday reportedly
begun by confectionery companies wanting to cash
in on more chocolate sales following Valentine's
Day. On Valentine's Day, women give men chocolate,
and on "White Day", men give women chocolate.
Westerner's living here don't necessarily go along
with this however, so on Valentine's Day, you'll
see a long line of women buying chocolate with a
lone western man in line. On "White Day", the
stores are pushing chocolate, but I never see
lines (of any kind of biped) the way there are on
Valentine's Day.
The idea
seems to be that a woman will give a man she's
interested in a Valentine's Day chocolate, and if
the man is interested, he will follow up by giving
her a "White Day" chocolate. I'd always heard that
the "white" in that came from white chocolate, but
a quick look at a Wikipedia entry says that it may
have started with a marshmallow manufacturer and
then spread to chocolate from there. Seems sort of
plausible, although certainly not widely known!
I'm a little skeptical, come to think of it. Why
would you want to give someone marshmallows?
Lyle
2008/03/11
"You
Don't Get Used To It"
I was
nearly knocked over by this man while getting off
one of the four trains I take to work every
morning. Feeling that it wasn't necessary, and in
an anger flash that bypassed reasonable thinking,
I reached out my fist, placed it against the very
top left corner of his chest (his shoulder
really), and pushed with a "Hey you!" intent. It
wasn't a punch, and it wasn't a strong push.
Certainly it's a good thing I didn't go
stark-raving-mad and actually punch him, which
would be considered assault. What's bad though, is
that if he decides to lie and say that I
punched him, and he gets someone to say that I
used my fist, he could make a lot of trouble for
me.
I was
depressed all day about this, thinking that I
can't let myself lose control of absolute reason
when in a situation like that. I mentioned it to a
guy at work and he said "I would think you'd be
used to that sort of thing by now".
Yeah...
you might think so, but generally that's not how
it works. The more bad experiences you have, the
more hypersensitive you become to them. Twenty,
ten, or five years ago, I would never have done
that. But the unpleasant things that have happened
to me over the past 24 years of being out on the
public transportation system have built up to the
point where I think I'm either going to have to
arrange to come in earlier to work (to get myself
into a lower pressure commuting time zone), or
else move within walking distance of the company.
Tomorrow
morning... I probably should get on a completely
different part of the train. An obvious solution?
It's not that simple. Losing around thirty seconds
at the disembarkation transfer point of that train
could make me miss the next express, and then end
up being fifteen minutes late for work. I need to
be near the exit.
Something
needs to change. Punching people is no answer. But
then neither is laying down and being trampled on.
How to remain civil and still retain a tiny bit of
dignity and self esteem.....
Lyle
2008/03/09
"The
Sardine Run (Tokyo-1991)"
The
Tokyo train system is a fantastic system, and it's
constantly being improved upon. Nevertheless,
moving 30,000,000 people about, leads to some
crowding on some lines at some times..... This
video was taken in 1991, but when a train is
really packed, the situation is the same today.
So, to
my Japanese friends, please believe me when I say
that I have nothing but the greatest respect for
for the Tokyo Train system. I think it's the best
in the world. The reason I'm posting this, is that
when I say to my foreign friends that I'm tired
from the trains, and that the morning trains are
so crowded... I don't think they believe me! So I
want to show them what I'm talking about!
The
video is of the Seibu Ikebukuro Line, which has
implemented some track and train improvements
since the video was taken. The system in fact, has
never stopped growing for about six decades now.
It just grows and grows! Still, I am nearly always
(to one degree or another) basically in the same
position today as the commuters in the 1991 video.
Let me
know how that seems to you and how it compares to
your own city's train system.
Lyle
200803/04
"Closer
to the Process"
Part of
what it takes to run an efficient train system is
the constant replacement of older trains with
newer ones. All well and good, but there are some
drawbacks to the newest class of railway car -
chief among them being less ventilation than the
older ones (they've done away with the roof vents
in the newest ones), and then there are things
like motor noise....
A
quieter train should be a good thing, but quieter
is only good if you can relax. When you're packed
in as a vertical sardine with a few hundred other
sardines in the same train car, then distractions
like wind noise and motor noise can be quite
welcome as a distraction and indication of speed.
And...
something else. The old type trains are manually
run, with a throttle lever and a brake lever. The
train is taken up to speed with the throttle, and
then the throttle is cut back to zero and the
train just coasts for a while, until it's lost
enough speed that the throttle is thrown back on
to get the speed back up. For braking, there's
motor braking where the motors are basically
turned into generators and some power is pumped
back into the lines, and then the regular brakes
are used towards the end of the stop.
I bring
this up, because I go out to Mitaka from time to
time on the Chuo Line and they've been phasing out
the 1982 trains over the past year, to the point
where there are only a few of the old trains left
and soon those will be gone. Last week, I got on
one of the old ones, and since it was running just
about ten minutes in front of an express, the
operator was racing between stations as fast as
the train would go so as not to hold up the
express (which passes the slower train at Mitaka).
I was standing looking out a door window,
listening to my MP3 player (Creative), and I could
perceive how the operator was running the
machinery (motor noise heard over the voice
recording I was listening to). They got full on
the throttle right out of each station, and left
the throttle on full until the train was up to
near its maximum speed (about 100km/h I think), at
which time they cut the throttle and let the train
coast for just ten seconds or so before starting
fairly heavy braking for the next station.
So - big
deal I guess... but there really is something to
be said for sensing the speed of the train through
the motor noise, wind leaking through the rattly
windows a little, the sound of the metal doors
rattling back and forth in their old worn tracks,
etc. The more isolated we are from understanding
how machinery works, the more numb & ignorant
we become. Or not? I hope not.
Lyle
2008/03/03
"1991
Tokyo - Expensive Umbrellas & Long Hair"
In the
day-to-day chain of living one day to the next,
the world changing is not often striking, and so
it has been with a bit of a shock that I've
started watching my old videos taken in 1991. I
didn't realize just how much things have changed
since that time. It's not in the details so much
as the feeling between the frames, but the details
are connected in an obvious way, so that's what
I'll focus on until I can come up with some sort
of (hopefully) coherent bit of text that will at
least hint at what it felt like to be walking the
streets of Tokyo in 1991.
Why
focus on 1991? Because I have about 200 hours of
video from 1991! At the time, I nearly always
carried a video camera with me wherever I went,
and I had the thing fired up most of the time,
taking a stream of pictures every minute or so. (I
always carried several batteries, an extra
two-hour tape, and in heavy usage from 1990 to
1992, I burned out four cameras.)
So - on
to a few obvious detail differences in 1991:
- Many
young women had long straight hair that reached
halfway down their backs. This was most common
among single women in their early twenties, but
some high school girls also had it. Now it's
practically unheard of.
- Y100
clear plastic umbrellas had yet to make an
appearance, so umbrellas were more varied and more
interesting when any crowd opened up a sea of
them.
- It was
right around this time that schoolgirl uniforms
first began appearing as mini-skirts, but it was
still unusual. In fact, this is something that was
shocking at the time! You got used to school
uniforms for girls always being long, and so the
first time you saw a group of schoolgirls in
mini-skirt uniforms, it seemed sort of... I
hesitate to use the word, but it fits the feeling
at the time: outrageous & almost shocking.
(Not that I was distressed by the sight...).
- The
vast majority of the ticket gates were still not
automated, so you gave your ticket to an actual
living human being. From this point forward
though, they steadily installed automated ticket
gates and now there are hardly any stations
anywhere without the machines.
This was
taken in the Oku-tama area of Tokyo, up near the
mountains. It may not look like Tokyo, but it is.
Probably by design, the western part of Tokyo
reaches into the mountains, making it easier to
lay claim to part of the watershed there.
Lyle
2008/03/02
"1991
Tokyo - Hibarigaoka Rain (July 1991)"
1991 -
It was just before video camera manufacturers came
out with stabilization technology, so there is
some camera shake at telephoto lengths, but I
tried to hold the camera steady and it's fairly
stable at wider angles at least. I just figured
out today how to pull a small bit out of a
two-hour digital transfer from 8mm analog tape, so
it's more haphazard than anything, but the rain
seemed sort of interesting (to me anyway), so I
grabbed that as a test. I'll try to find more
interesting bits for the next video post....
The
out-of-sight opening on the right of the frame
that people are running to, is the side entrance
to Hibarigaoka Station on the Ikebukuro Line in
Tokyo.
The ride
into work today wasn't overly bad, but Mr.
Foot-Kicker was standing next to me and he kicked
my foot about twenty times on the way into town.
The first five or six times I thought he was just
accidentally acting like the big sub-human
neanderthal bear he looked like, but after being
kicked (and fairly hard, not the usual light
accidental tap) about fifteen times, I had to
consider the possibility that it was intentional.
The
train finally reached my station, and as I got off
(receiving a final parting kick from that low-life
critter), I walked over to the next train and
pondered what to do about it if the beast
assaulted my foot again tomorrow. Visions of
hitting the emergency door release and throwing
him off the train at speed leaped to mind, but
that's what bottled up frustration does to the
imagination. Getting back on an even keel, I could
only think of talking to him - something like this
(in Japanese):
"Hi
there. How are you today? Is there some reason
that you have to haul off and kick me every 90
seconds? Would you mind stopping that please?"
If I'm
lucky, the beast will have crawled back under a
rock or gone back to its cage at the zoo, and I'll
never have to see it again, but no - I see that
bugger from time to time on the train, so it'll
likely be (shudder-shudder) back.
Lyle
2008/02/27
"Three
Mysteries Solved?"
I used
to (still do actually) wonder why bright lights
(overly-bright in my opinion) are so beloved in
this country. Another of the many mysteries I've
sought an explanation for, is how people manage to
stay up studying or working so late without
falling asleep. Still another mystery is how kids'
study desks have florescent lights mounted in such
a way that the light not only illuminates the
study material, but also shines directly into the
eyes of the person studying.
Suddenly,
the three seem interconnected! Bright florescent
light shining directly into your eyes has got to
have some effect in keeping sleep at bay! And then
it becomes a lifelong habit, and people vastly
overuse artificial lighting. The popular theory is
that in the bad old days, things were dark (and
this is true enough), so people developed a
passion for light. That probably is also true, but
there's more, and anyway, the current crop of
twenty-something people are pretty far removed
from the proverbial bad old days....
Lyle
2008/02/22
06:58
"A Desire for Space - 43,200 Rides &
Counting"
Growing up in the western area of the US, I didn't
like the desert very much - I always preferred
lots of trees in the wild on one hand, and lots of
buildings and excitement in the city on the other
hand. But after 12 years in Japan, I went to
the US desert in 1986 and it was just so
wonderfully empty! No people! No
cars! No trucks! No noise! No
buildings! No smoke! Just wonderful,
glorious space! And stars! Lots of
stars seen through transparent (as opposed to
translucent) air!
With this in mind, I sometimes find myself
standing in a sardine-packed train - dreaming of
sitting in a car, listening to music I like on the
car's stereo. That image seems like pure
paradise. It wouldn't matter if the car was
a traffic jam - it would just feel so nice to have
that space all to myself.
There's another element to train travel in
mega-city Tokyo that should be explored.
Namely the Russian roulette nature of it.
The overwhelmingly vast majority of people who
ride the rails are decent human beings, who just
want to get from point-A to Point-B without
molesting other innocent souls, but there are
(inevitably in any society on the planet) some
unfriendly elements out there in the crowd.
Think of this way - take a two or three hour walk
around your city, walking through a park, through
a department store, etc. Have a good look at
all the people you meet and imagine how it would
feel to have them physically pressed up against
you.
Ah-ha! You may well have recoiled in horror
already just at the concept, without having even
gone through the mechanics of really imagining
it. Go ahead and imagine it, because to
comprehend the Russian roulette game of becoming a
sardine every morning and every night to get to
and from work, you must do this thing. Look
at everyone and imagine how it would feel with
them up against you. (Guys, I know what
you're thinking, but forget it! It's not
like that! Also, there's a "Women Only" car
for the rush times, and aside from that, women
work pretty hard to avoid the horror of RRST -
Russian Roulette Sardine Time.)
Also keep in mind the time factor and laws of
increasing probability as you spend year after
year on the system. With different jobs and
whatnot, I think it's averaged out to about
two-and-a-half hours (round trip) per weekday,
which would mean the following tale of woe and
pain:
Five days per week
20 days per month
20x12= 240 days a year
240 days x 24 years = 5,760 days
2.5 hours per day x 5,760 = 14,400 hours
14,400 hours divided by 24-hour blocks=...
600 days in the trains
600 days - more than a year and a half of my life
spent on the Tokyo trains. That's bad
enough, but what makes me look into the distance
with a feeling of something having gone wrong, is
that 14,400 hour figure. Go back to your
two-hour walk and an inevitable character or two
that you would definitely not like to be in
physical contact with. You can keep a watch
out for unpleasant bipeds, but you can't always
spot things in time to avoid them. It's a
low percentage of the total - out of 14,400 hours,
really bad experiences probably only amount to...
say... a few hours, but those few hours out of
14,400 were pretty intensely bad, so the lingering
desire not to have them repeat stays with you.
Actually, hours isn't the right unit to look at
here. I've both lived and worked in a number
of places in Tokyo, not to mention going here and
there for one reason or another, and daily train
rides have ranged from two minutes (the typical
distance between stations on most of the subways),
to an hour. The average train ride overall,
would probably work out to twenty minutes
(although if you take away the hour-long rides,
that would fall to fifteen minutes).
So, for the total number of train rides so far,
multiplying 14,400 by three should be somewhere on
the playing field: 43,200. A relatively
small number of those rides have been really bad
(very many have been at least mildly unpleasant -
probably more than half), but the bad ones have
really been bad - some examples:
- While waiting to board a train, someone
spit on my backpack from behind - which I
discovered as I was taking it off as I got on the
train
- I was thrown up on. Not
intentionally, but I was still thrown up on!
And then I had to transfer to other trains
smelling like I had crawled out of the sewer, with
people looking at me like "Man! I knew
foreigners smelled bad, but this is too much!"
(the evil brew seemed to be a mixture if cheap red
wine, grilled meat, and stomach acids).
- Back in 1986 this old guy who probably was
in WW-II, harassed my wife in front of me (while
we were in Kyoto). It could have been worse
- an Australian friend of mine nearly throttled a
guy who was more persistently harassing his wife
in front of him on a train - and in a more
obnoxious way than the experience my wife and I
had.
- On Monday of this week, as I was part of
the mass of people flowing off the train, this
powerful neanderthal standing beside the door
opening, put his knuckles into the middle of my
back, exactly on the spine, and gave a mighty
shove - four days later, I still have back pain in
that spot and I'm about to arrange a hospital
visit to see if my spine has been damaged.
The people on my side who stumbled with me away
from the mighty shove on my spine are probably the
only thing that prevented that beast from breaking
my back.
Sitting here right now typing with my back still
in pain, a car interior seems like a blissful
paradise of surrounding sheet metal - keeping
neanderthals at bay and away from my spine.
Some things you wonder if they are accidental or
intentional - this could only have been
intentional. After all my years riding
hellishly crowded trains, I have never even
remotely come close to doing to another human
being what that neanderthal did to me. It
couldn't have been an accident. (If you're
skeptical, keep in mind that in recent years there
have been widely reported cases of passengers
actually murdering other passengers - like...
dead, you know? No more train rides for the
dead body left on the platform.)
Many more things have happened, but of a minor
nature - being elbowed in the face (not often),
being elbowed in the back (all the time!), verbal
insults (not often, but also not forgotten), etc.
etc. etc. etc. etc. Enough things have
happened over 43,200 train rides, that I now
approach morning and evening rush hour trains with
a feeling of dread and foreboding.
Lyle
2008/02/18
"A Land of Extremes?"
There is far too much of the picture in mind to
get it cohesively on the screen, but I'll try for
a tiny piece of it - focusing on one example.
Public school grades and school hours.
In the early eighties, when there were books and
articles in the west about the "Japanese Economic
Miracle", they invariably mentioned the country's
weak point being a lack of originality and
inventiveness, which would be necessary if Japan
were to begin to - not just effectively implement
and manufacture technology invented elsewhere -
but to invent and lead the world in technological
advances.
There are any number of angles that could be taken
in exploring this concept/issue, but to focus on
just one of the steps that was taken:
The public education system was rather drastically
altered (private school haven't changed
much). Two of the most substantial changes
being:
1) A five-day school week was phased in, giving
kids not only Sunday, but also Saturday off from
school.
2) The grading system was changed. For the
first year or two of elementary school, instead of
regular grades, there were only two (and if this
isn't word-for-word accurate, it's very close -
I'm basing it on actual report cards I've seen):
"Yoku yarimashita" (You did well!), and "Motto
ganbarimasho" ("Try harder").
The idea was get kids away from being
overly competitive based on a contest for higher
scores, so they could relax, be more imaginative,
and become more inventive.
I've forgotten the precise
progression, but the number of grades was (is?)
gradually increased with later grades, with the
next step being three - something like: "Taihen
yoi" (Very good), "Yoi" (Good), and... I'm not
sure, but maybe "Ganbarimasho" (Try harder).
If this had been a system-wide change, it would
have brought about a nearly instant change in the
next generation, but private schools didn't change
along with public schools, and since compulsory
education is only through middle school; high
school and university entrance tests were still
*the* hurdle to clear on the way to a respected
education. (Sometimes respected for good
reason, and sometimes not....)
So - people in private schools just did what they
had always done, and the parents of people in
public schools sent their kids to juku's (usually
translated as "cram schools") on Saturdays (and/or
after school) in an attempt to keep up with the
private schools, all focused on doing whatever
they could to get past the entrance test hurdle.
Nevertheless - there definitely are fairly large
numbers of a new group of people, within the 18-24
year-old crowd, who act substantially different
than previous generations of people in this
country... but that's been the story for around
the past 150 years, so I guess it's just the
normal flow of time.
Probably a bigger society-changer was companies
giving their employees Saturday and Sunday off,
and not just Sunday. Having two days off -
people can have more of a life outside the
company.
But back to the... strange?, innovative?, system
of "Well done" and "Try harder" grades. Hard
line politicians and nationalistic groups are
pushing to get things back to how they were.
One of the slightly scary things they've managed
to implement is required singing of the national
anthem, required bowing to the flag by each and
every student in a ceremony (bow to person-A, bow
to the flag, bow to the watching parents,
etc.). They are also pushing for a six-day
school week and more rigid... everything in
general.
Well, that's barely coherent, but I need to get
some sleep!
Lyle
2008/02/16
"Slashed Bicycle Tires... ('Deru kui
wa utareru')"
When I walked past the bicycle parking area of my
apartment building yesterday after work, I noticed
that the rear tires were flat on a few of the
bikes... including my own. A closer look
revealed that they had been slashed with something
- probably a box cutter. Some details:
- It's not the first time my bicycle has
been sabotaged in this apartment building, but
nothing (nothing serious anyway) had happened for
a couple of years.
- The only bikes with their tires slashed
were the type with a lean-type kickstand - as
opposed to the big, heavy, cumbersome U-shaped
stands that lift the rear tire completely off the
ground and whose sole virtue is that the bike can
be parked exactly straight, since it's not
leaning. (Actually, when there are a lot of
bikes to be packed into a small parking area,
there's something to be said for this design, but
it makes the bike heavier and slower.)
- Taking the bike to a local bicycle repair
shop today, the repair guy commented that he had
just fixed another customer's bike that also had
the tire slashed.
- Reporting it to the police, they also
commented that I was not the first one (today) to
report that my bicycle had been illegally
sabotaged.
Thinking back to the bike I had before that was
most often sabotaged (there have been numerous
things happen to a couple of my bikes since moving
to this apartment building - from punctured tires,
to torn-off bell, to various gouges, bends, etc.,
maliciously inflicted on the defenseless
contraction); it was a strangely modified bike
(weird handlebars) that had been given to
me. I theorized at the time about the
unseen/unknown criminal who kept attacking it,
that it was some extension of Japan's infamous "Deru
kui wa utareru", which is typically
translated along the lines of "The post/nail that
sticks out gets knocked/hammered down", apparently
based upon the concept of a fence with its neat
row of uniform posts - when one is at an angle,
it's straightened out to put it in line with the
others. When one is sticking up higher, a
hammer is applied to it to pound it into the
ground to the point where it's level with the
others... you get the picture. Nice neat
posts, all in-a-row, deviation is bad.
Great, except people aren't fence posts!
That one bike stood out so much, that I eventually
gave up and threw it away. I don't have the
resources to hire a 24-hour secret security detail
for my bike, and/or set up hidden cameras in order
to catch the criminal and put the sorry excuse for
a human being in jail, where it belongs, so I got
a new bike, making sure to get the most common
color at the time, gray/silver. As an extra
precaution, as much as possible, I only parked it
when no one else was in the bicycle parking
area. When someone was there, I rode around
the block and came back later when I could slip
the bike into the parking area without anyone
seeing which bike was mine. (I'm not a
regulation-appearance biped in this country, so I
didn't want my appearance to cause "Deru kui
wa utareru" psychotic behavior being
inflicted upon my new bike.) That seemed to
work, as I was able to use my bike without it
being molested and/or damaged for... about three
years I think... until yesterday.
So, I can't be absolutely sure (you almost never
can be), but after being on this spot of the globe
for nearly 24 years, I think I understand what
form of mental illness generated this latest
attack on my - and others - bikes. Some
looney feels grievously injured & personally
insulted that all the bikes are not identical, and
so, for God & Country, is waging war on
non-standard issue bikes. And
(unfortunately) I'm not even exaggerating (much?
at all?)... consider these points:
1) Beginning several years ago, it became normal
for bikes to sell at from around Y7,000 to Y12,000
(when the cheapest ones used to be around
Y30,000). These new cheaper bikes came with
the lean-type kickstands and were all - or nearly
all - made in China.
2) About a year ago, there was an ad on TV showing
a wholesome, pure, innocent housewife riding her
bike - she applies the brakes, but -
horrors!! The brakes don't work!
The voice-over, with wholesome
nationalistic fervor, then admonishes the TV
audience to only buy bikes authorized by some
national bike association. (Incidentally -
have you ever had catastrophic brake failure on a
bike with it's independent front and rear brakes?)
3) Almost immediately after this ad appears, the
price of bikes goes up and suddenly they all have
those big, heavy, cumbersome, but (I must admit)
practical-for-parking, kickstands. (No
difference in the brakes, which never were the
real issue.)
4) The lean-type kickstand bikes begin to
disappear rather rapidly (I remember thinking "How
can this happen so fast? Do people really
trash their bikes so quickly?").
5) My bike and others - all with the lean-type
kickstands - are sabotaged in the bicycle parking
area of my apartment building.
I bought a new tire for my bicycle today for
Y4,000... but if it's sabotaged again very soon,
I'll either have to invest huge sums of money to
hire 24-hour guards for the bike, or else throw in
the towel by trashing it and getting a regulation
clunker with the heavy-type kickstand. "Deru
kui wa utareru" rules it seems. But it
sure would be satisfying to see the scum who is
out attacking people's property apprehended,
beaten, fined (to pay for the damage), and thrown
in jail.
Oops. I guess I shouldn't say that?
But why not?
One final detail - while the stand-straight
kickstands can be good, they're only good when the
lock tab they come with is locked (which people
almost never do) after the bike is lifted up to
set the stand under it (holding the rear tire off
the ground). When the lock isn't set, if you
very slightly bump into the back of the bike, it
rolls forward off the kickstand, triggering the
double-springs on the kickstand (part of its
rather excessive weight) to pull it up, and the
(suddenly kickstand-less) bike falls to one side
with no support at all. If the bike next to
it is a lean-type bike, there is often enough
force to hold it, but when you have a row of
ramrod-straight bikes on the heavy stand-straight
stands, the entire row will spectacularly fall
down like so many dominoes. Come to think of
it - I take back my comment that the
stand-straight stands make some sense. They
don't. They suck. The only thing that
really was bad about some of the lean-type bikes,
were the ones with oversize baskets in front
(nearly all bikes in Japan come with baskets in
front), which took up so much space that they
caused some serious parking problems when a lot of
bikes were packed together.
Phew! Rant over!
Lyle
2008/02/14
"Reading Books with Nintendo-DS"
I mentioned before that I hadn't seen anyone
reading a book with a cell phone (based on direct
observation of the screens of my fellow vertical
sardines on the crush-rush trains), but today I
saw someone reading a book with an electronic
device. Not a cell phone, but a Nintendo-DS,
which seems to work quite well for reading
Japanese, as with it turned sideways, it even
resembles a book with text on both the left and
right screens, similar to the open pages of a real
book. I'm not sure how well the very narrow
screens would work for horizontal English, but the
vertical Japanese I saw looked fine. Easy to
read (if you understand all the characters that
is) lines of text running from top to bottom.
Considering the narrowness of the screen, for
English, it would probably be easier to read with
the screens horizontal. It looked pretty
cool being held with the screens vertical though -
rather like a real book! It did occur to me
though, that the backlights in the screens must
keep battery life on the short side. If they
make a folding two-screen device that utilizes
incident light instead of backlighting (which they
should be able to do just for displaying text -
something like old digital watches), and the
screens are a little bigger... *and* if the device
runs an open-source software like Linux, then I'll
rush out and get one.
Seeing a book displayed on the Nintendo-DS, it
seems like something I would like, but only if I
could drop in my own text files. (The
screens of most cell phone are too small to work
very well for this application.)
I think I've figured out what's what with recent
articles outside Japan about cell-phone books
here. There have been articles outside Japan
about "cell phone books" in Japan, and I think
it's being assumed that people are reading books
on cell phones. It could be that this is
also happening, but what I've seen on the local
media over here are stories about books *written*
with cell phones, and then printed as regular (on
paper) books.
To understand why someone would even attempt to
write a book with a cell phone instead of a device
with a proper keyboard, consider a few things:
1) the vast majority of people here get around by
train instead of car (in the cities in any case -
the countryside is another matter), so they have
travel time to stand (not very often sit) and
write with a pocketable device. (I've seen a
couple of loonies who harass people for using cell
phones in any capacity on the train, but
generally, writing text with one is considered
okay (in contrast with talking, which is
considered very nearly absolutely taboo now).
2) In a practical sense, for a lot of people here
(and everywhere, or is there something unique
about this?), their cell phone is their computer,
and so all their personal e-mail and writing is
done with the one device.
3) When writing in Japanese with a standard
keyboard, people go through two conversion
processes with their text. First from
"romaji" (western A-Z characters) to hiragana (a
Japanese phonetic script), and then from hiragana
to kanji (the complicated characters originally
from China). With cell phones, they just go
directly from hiragana input to conversion to
kanji, so while they're losing speed with thumb
input, they're gaining it in a simpler input
process. (There is also the option of direct
hiragana input with a standard keyboard, but for
touch typing, it makes more sense to just learn
one input method, which can then be used for both
English and Japanese.) People who can touch
type can still write more quickly with a full-size
keyboard, but for someone who hasn't learned to
type well, it can even be faster to input text
with a cell phone via direct hiragana input.....
Lyle
2008/02/14
"General Moods"
I dug out, and have been watching, some video
tapes I took in 1991. At the time, there
were news stories about worsening economic
conditions, and 1991 is listed as the year that
the "bubble economy burst", but for most people
living here, it was just headlines and not
something that directly affected their lives
personally. Actually, the land price and
stock price rocket ride was also just a TV story
for most people (what percentage of the population
was actively buying land and/or stocks?)
Now - writing this from 2008, the repercussions of
the excesses (the peak seems to have been in
1989), have long since sunk in and are still being
felt, and it's something that has directly
affected a lot of people by this point. What
is striking to me as I watch the 1991 video
footage (many hours of it all taken all over Tokyo
and in the surrounding countryside), is how the
main body of the population was still awakening
from a more austere Japan around 1986-91, and how
- in 2007-08 - the seriousness of things is just
starting to sink in for many people. Simply
put, in one sense, during the "good times", people
were in more of a mindset of struggle-to-survive,
and in the current semi-bad times, people are
still riding a richer lifestyle?
I'm not verbalizing the thought very well, but
(one more try) there seems to be both overlap-lag
(carryover from the preceding era) and
realization-lag (it takes a while for a change to
sink in). Add to that the opposite....
Last night on the train, I was feeling melancholy
about the commute (I don't really like becoming a
vertical sardine for three hours every day), and
since I had gotten on last at one station (I had
to get off to allow biped flow from the inner part
of train away from the doors), I was standing next
to one of the eight (four per side) doors. I
leaned against the door (doors actually - two per
opening) and idly looked into the window;
simultaneously seeing the outside flowing by and
the other people in the train. I noticed
that people seemed to be feeling the same subdued
feeling... almost a foreboding of worse times
ahead? Has the two-decade long string of
often bad economic news sunk in to our bones, or
are we feeling an air change brought on by a
coming storm (hopefully not tsunami)?
Lyle
2008/02/12 23:48
"A Typical Day"
It was a typical day today - nothing amazingly
good and nothing amazingly bad happened. The
train ride in (rides I should say) went without
untoward incident
......... [Several hours later - at 4:00
a.m.] .........
Great... also a typical day in that I couldn't
stay awake long enough to do anything, and fell
asleep in front of the computer. This is
probably the worst aspect to working long hours -
you don't have enough time to do much after you
get home, eat, and take a shower.
Had an electronic exchange with someone regarding
how things are here. It went like this: 1) I
made a statement. 2) The correspondent made
a comment about Japan. 3) I commented that I
thought it was a little different than that, and
asked them if they were here or, if not, how long
it had been since they were here, because things
were changing. 4) They said they haven't yet
been here, but have a friend living here. 5)
I stopped and thought about it, and realized that
it may be that I've changed more than the country
has. I've been here for 24 years now....
Lyle
2008/02/11
"Nearly Full Circle..."
There
was
a time in my life when I thought that trees
and sky above were ordinary things, and I
sought out the excitement of big city
life. Exciting skyscrapers! Trains
running underground! Excitingly shaped
glass & steel everywhere.... Now all
those big city things are ordinary, and trees
and sky above are the new sought-for exotic
component to life! There really is
something to be said for balance - a balance
of big city and multiple forms of life.
Mono-culture in society and elsewhere is
profoundly soul-killing and boring.
Friday's are always nice, but this past Friday, it
seemed like the women in my section were more
electrified than usual. "Hmm... I guess
they've got something planned" thought I.
Feeing like doing something to unwind a little, I
stopped by Ebisu on the way home and looked around
- idly noticing happy-looking fashionable women to
the right, to the left, behind, in front, all
around! "Hmm... it must just be one of those
things - like a full moon or something" I mused.
The next day - it finally hit me what's going
on! The day before had been the last Friday
before Valentine's Day! Keep in mind that
Valentine's Day here is not the same as in the
West - here it's the day when women give chocolate
to men. (A month later - on March 14th, is
when men give chocolate to women. For more
details, see your friendly Google search engine.)
I did notice that the shop I bought some things at
was selling chocolate in front of the store, and
there were several women looking over the display,
but it wasn't until Saturday that I began to
wonder if the more-festive-than-usual atmosphere
the day before was due to the coming romantic
day? I'm still not sure, but it seems like
it might have something to do with it - a last
chance to get together with friends and discuss
what/who/where/how/etc?
Lyle
2008/02/09
"Are Two Spaces Illegal?"
I'm migrating away from Netscape Composer 4.0
(from the deep misty reaches of ancient time - for
those of you who don't know what that is) to newer
software (non-MacroBucks of course) and I'm coming
upon my original complaint with MacroBucks Word
7.0, back in 1996. MB-7.0 had this weird deal
where you could have one space between sentences,
or you could have three, but the bloody program
would not allow two!!
Now why would they do that? Did they have a
meeting and in the meeting some typical, but truly
horrible, mid-level management bozo came up with
the wonderful idea of eliminating
double-spacing? (Probably not for that
reason, but it's truly amazing how much damage is
inflicted on the world by mid-level management
trash!) In any case, what happened is that
you got one space by hitting the space bar once
(breath-taking concept, that) but then, when you
hit it a second time, you got two more spaces, for
a total of three spaces for two hits on the space
bar! Maybe someone thought that "Three for
the price of two!" was a spiffy sales phrase, so
they went for "Three spaces for the effort of
two!"? It doesn't make any sense.
Anyway, this unforgivable behavior pushed me to
using text editors to write with and I only used
the horrible MacroBucks program Word when forced
to at work. (Some later versions of Word
were less obnoxious with the spacing than version
7.0, come to think of it.) Now, with HTML,
I'm finding that my double spaces between
sentences are being reduced to single
spaces. Why?! Who sat down with the
programmers and told them "Look, we have to do
something about double spaces between
sentences. It must not be allowed!
Program the application so that it eradicates one
of the spaces every time someone puts two of them
between sentences."? Grrrrrr....!!
Hate that as I do, I can still live with it.
And then there's the spacing between
paragraphs! when I hit the Enter key at the
end of a paragraph, the application gives me a
line space down... so I'm already to go with the
next paragraph. Okay... irritating (it
should take two hits of the Enter key to get
there), but also something I can live with.
But then if I want to have two line spaces between
paragraphs, I get (shades of MacroBucks Word 7.0),
three lines spaces when I hit the Enter key again
- "Three line spaces for the effort of two!"
Why?!
Since the programmers for these HTML programs I
use seem to have been infected with Mid-level
management disease, I realized that I would have
to look at my old HTML pages and get into the code
to fix modern damaged HTML. I'm not sure of
the cause of the extra spacing between paragraphs
yet, but I think I've discovered the cause of the
space-killer between sentences. It seems to
be this: """. Proper double-spacing
can be had via " ". I'd rather not
have to go on search & replace missions in the
code for everything I write, but bad programming
is forcing me in that direction.
People can write however they want to write, but I
really resent programs forcing me into someone
else's style! ...... Well... anyway.
Lyle
2008/01/25
"Writing (& Reading?) Books on Mobile
Phones"
A couple of weeks ago, I saw a news report about a
recent series of books published that were written
with cell phones. The report featured one of
the writers; showing her walking down the street
and inputting text on her cell phone with 90% of
her attention on the device and the remaining 10%
on navigating the street... saying that she always
takes her cell phone wherever she goes and she
always writes with it. I watched the smiling
"Isn't that wonderful!!" reporters and couldn't
help thinking "That's cute... think what she could
have done with proper tools!".
And then I received this e-mail from an e-pal in
the US:
"I read that Japan is caught-up in reading
books on their cell phones. Sure, why not
wear out one's thumbs. It's just like I've
said, 'Young people don't read BOOKS' - they are
reading cell phones."
And I thought of the extension of the "Isn't that
wonderful!!" local reporters: "Isn't that
bizarre!!" (what those people in a foreign land
are doing) reporters overseas. There is some
truth to both reports, but it's like a workmate
said when I brought this up: "You know the media's
motto - 'Never let the truth get in the way of a
good story'!"
So - on to the truth:
1) Writing books with a cell phone is an
extraordinarily inefficient way of writing.
In the case of the woman who is perpetually
walking around Tokyo with her eyes, thumb and mind
glued to her cell phone, if she used proper
writing tools, she could write the same amount in
a fifth of the time at home, and then be free to
actually enjoy life outside instead of being a
slave to her beloved tiny electronic gizmo.
(Taking electronic notes makes sense, but writing
whole books that way?)
2) There probably are some people out there on the
Tokyo trains reading books on their cell phones,
but I've yet to see a single solitary soul doing
so - and I spend three and a half hours a day
riding eight different trains (with some extra
trips, it comes to around 20 hours per
week). I always glance at the many people
around me and I see people using their cell phones
all the time, but the only two activities I see
are sending and receiving e-mail and playing video
games (talking on a phone is nearly unheard of now
on the trains).
3) Of the people on the train who are reading
books (ever fewer it seems), I'm sure some of them
might like to read them on their cell phones if
they could (overcrowding on the trains makes it
impossible to hold a book much of the time), but
availability, DRM roadblocks to free use, etc.
make paper-based books the easier & better
choice for most people. (PDA's with larger
screens are another category - but there is
overlap between cell phones and PDA's now, so are
future devices even cell phones really, or should
they be considered full fledged computers with
voice capability?)
Anyway - the real issue here is how can you get
accurate news? For local news you either get
"Isn't that horrible!" or "Isn't that
wonderful/cute!" (to balance the "Isn't that
horrible!" parts). For foreign news, you
either get "Isn't that horrible!" or "Isn't that
strange?!" The bland truth in the middle is
studiously ignored. The tragedy here is that
truth is actually stranger that fiction, but it
takes perception and effort to see it. The
stuff that passes for "news" is like fast food -
entertaining at the moment it's consumed, but of
no value.
Lyle
2008/01/05
"Two-Thousand and Eight / 20"
The year 2008 in most of the world, including
Japan, although Japan also has a secondary
numbering system (used on currency, etc.) in which
this is the 20th year of the Heisei Emperor.
So many projects, so little time... I'll try to
get something meaningful put on this page...
soon! In the meantime, see the "blog-L
Archive" for previous blog material.