Stuck on a Train
It took about 2 hours to get home tonight. It’s a 40 minute trip. Gigantic delays due to "personal injury" as they say here in Japan. That generally means someone jumped. Suicide. It happens all too often here. Very sad. But who knows the real reason. The point is that I was stuck on a slow moving train that eventually just stopped. And there I was. Me and hundreds of Japanese. Waiting. And standing, of course. It was rush hour. Fortunately, I had my phone and some reading material (I was reading about Bernanke and his Federal Reserve, believe it or not). From time to time I peeked at the women on my right since she was watching TV on her cell phone. Nice reception. And the guy on my left was watching TV on his phone, too. I need sound to keep my attention, though, so I couldn’t follow it. Not that I could follow much of the Japanese, anyway. And others were just reading or sleeping. One guy was studying Korean. Beautiful typography in his textbook.
But what got me was the silence. We all just stood there. There was very little talking and no complaining. Yet there were hundreds of people stuck together quite literally inches apart. Some people called home to say, "Go ahead and eat dinner," and such, and I was able to pick up bits and pieces of various conversations. But when people talked on their phones, they got off the train and stood on the platform and cupped their hands over their mouths. The two girls behind me were talking a bit, but they clearly knew each other. Other than that, it was dead quiet. Total silence. For 2 hours. Amazing.
Wow. That strikes me as such a cold society. Is it?
UX-admin
January 25, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Having ridden trains / metros all over the world, the Japanese and Koreans tend to be really quiet. Americans and Chinese seem to be the loudest. But even in US, when you commute on the train or bus, I have noticed that it’s generally unusual for people to talk to each other in the morning, a bit more likely in the afternoon.
David Stewart
January 25, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Ooops, I mean Japanese and Thai. I don’t know that I ever rode a train in Korea. Sorry about that…
David Stewart
January 25, 2008 at 1:40 pm
UX-admin … that’s an obvious conclusion to make based on what I wrote. And it’s actually accurate in many instances but way off in most others. And *that* is the key here. Japanese culture seems to be very much situational and it’s also very structured. That’s why I have *new* experiences every day here. I keep finding new situations.
Plus, keep in mind that non-fluent foreigners miss virtually all of the communication going on that you and I wold take for granted if you were talking the same language in the same culture (you can never separate language from culture). So, it’s a combination of factors. But the bottom line is that Japan is different from the US (where I grew up). Very different. I find the behavior on trains as worthy of the Twilight Zone, but I’m judging it from my perspective. I’m sure they think I’m nuts, too.
Jim Grisanzio
January 25, 2008 at 5:55 pm
David … that’s interesting about Thai. I would think Korea would be somewhat similar to Japan, but I have no direct experience on Korean trains. What got me about this situation, though, was that we were stopped in an *unusual* situation. Generally a train stops at a station for a minute or two. Not an hour where both tracks in both directions were dead. In the US, conversation would have been breaking out all over the place. Here the cross-conversation was very limited. I can understand that they couldn’t talk to me since there is very, very little English in Japan (and of course the other way around for my Japanese!), but I would have thought that there’d be more Japanese-to-Japanese communication. Nope. I’m reading a book on Japanese linguistics right now, and it goes into some of this stuff. Judging it from my western perspective is faulty at best. It has to remain a personal observation from a foreigner who knows very little about Japan. Me.
Wild, though, really wild.
Jim Grisanzio
January 25, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Hi Jim!
What do you mean by "situational"?
UX-admin
January 26, 2008 at 1:39 am
UX-admin … All people react differently in different situations to various degrees. But with the Japanese, it seems that they react *very* differently in different situations. In the situation I was in, there were hundreds of people on train stuck at a station for more than an hour. Most were men returning from work or going out after work (which is a part of work here). I’d say there were, maybe, 20% women there. If that much, actually. No kids. A few teenagers. That was the mix. So, you could argue that that is how men behave, right? Nope. Take those very same guys and put them in a festival at some shrine the next morning and their behavior radically changes. It’s like you are on a different planet. The distinction is nothing short of gigantic. Take those same guys and change the day to Saturday and they change. Put them in a park and it changes. Put them back at work and it changes again. Do *anything* outside that train and it changes. Or, put more teenagers in the train — like a football team or something — and they affect the behavior of the older guys (and by the way the kids change their behavior radially based on their situation, too). Or (gasp!) add more women to the train. They, too, would act differently with the men than they would without the men. Heck, add some non-Japanese "foreigners" as we are called. Etc. Again, all people change their behavior based on the circumstances, but here it’s almost as if there were exact lines and rules separating those circumstances. I’m used to more of a blending of things. This is reflected in the Japanese language, too. It’s highly structured based on things like gender, rank, situation, etc. I see examples of this stuff all over the place.
Jim Grisanzio
January 26, 2008 at 7:05 pm
Wow. It’s like they’ve implemented "slotted behavior" – every situation is a "slot" and in that "slot" one is to behave in such-and-such a way.
I don’t know. Sounds awfully cold and mechanical to me. I’m sure it’d be something to experience for oneself.
BTW, how are you dealing with the "after work drinks" situation?
Do you pull straight home from work, or do you fulfill your "duty" to go out with colleagues?
And, how does your environment react to whichever of two you do?
UX-admin
January 27, 2008 at 3:34 am
Wow. It’s like they’ve implemented "slotted behavior" – every situation is a "slot" and in that "slot" one is to behave in such-and-such a way.
I don’t know. Sounds awfully cold and mechanical to me. I’m sure it’d be something to experience for oneself.
BTW, how are you dealing with the "after work drinks" situation?
Do you pull straight home from work, or do you fulfill your "duty" to go out with colleagues?
And, how does your environment react to whichever of two you do?
UX-admin
January 27, 2008 at 3:34 am
That sounds like a typical Chuo line day, though it could be something
like den-en-toshi since I think SUN is out in Setagaya-ku.
Just think, soon it’s march and jumping season.
As it’s much harder to jump on the Marunouchi line, they just have the
emergency stop buttons short out or the brakes fail "on".
Happy Aether Bunny
January 27, 2008 at 7:25 pm
UX-admin … I don’t participate in all the drinking after work. That’s very much a sales-customer sort of thing. And besides, I have a family.
If there is an event, sure, I’ll go out, but that’s true anywhere. My actual job is global, and so I do about 5% of my work specifically in the Japan market.
Happy Aether Bunny … I work in Sun’s office in Yoga. By the way, another "personal injury" happened over the weekend on another line near my apt.
Jim Grisanzio
January 27, 2008 at 7:38 pm
Stumbled across your blog by accident. How different your train experience is from a Chinese one. My train often rolled to a halt for hours at a time, and for no apparent reason. None that I could see, but I couldn’t really ask either. Trains in China are never silent. I would have given a body part, a time or two, for some serenity.
Leah
January 30, 2008 at 8:36 pm
Stumbled across your blog by accident. How different your train experience is from a Chinese one. My train often rolled to a halt for hours at a time, and for no apparent reason. None that I could see, but I couldn’t really ask either. Trains in China are never silent. I would have given a body part, a time or two, for some serenity.
Leah
January 30, 2008 at 8:36 pm
Leah … wow that is different.
My goodness. Generally, Japanese trains are very quiet. We were stopped for an unusual reason, obviously. And the trains here are not more than 2 minutes late, too. 
Most times they are right on schedule. Wild.
jim grisanzio
January 30, 2008 at 10:33 pm
Leah … wow that is different.
My goodness. Generally, Japanese trains are very quiet. We were stopped for an unusual reason, obviously. And the trains here are not more than 2 minutes late, too. 
Most times they are right on schedule. Wild.
jim grisanzio
January 30, 2008 at 10:33 pm
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