Jim Grisanzio

Which track to take? They all go somewhere …

Everything entering a space changes that space …

Rain, sleet, or snow …

Why do people in cities rush all the time? Train stations in Tokyo are utterly frantic places. It’s difficult to walk slowly and mindfully among the cortisol-soaked masses buzzing by in every direction. But why? Out in the country among the trees no one worries about saving two minutes – literally — by diving on to that express train. Why the hurry? Are we that inefficient that we can’t take it easy getting from place to place?

They were really packing them in today. There was an accident further up line so thousands and thousands of people were dumped out at Futakotamagawa to wait. I did not want to hang out for the clean up of the accident, which is usually a suicide, only to be stuffed into a train like this an hour later on a blistering hot summer day. So, I just walked since my office at Yoga is only one stop away. Good exercise.

I saw it happening. And I really wanted to see the outcome. It was going to make my day. An old lady slowly walks onto the train. There are no seats. So she stands next to me and this gigantic body builder and she holds on to the rail. She smiles. We smile back. No one sitting down even looks up to offer her a seat. This is normal behavior on Japanese trains — the only exception being when women are around they usually have a clue and get up. And it is always wild watching the 80 year olds getting up to offer their seats to the 100 year olds while the big strong salarymen in the prime of their lives sleep or bury their sorry faces in a flipping comic book. I am exaggerating a bit. Men do get up occasionally. But women always get up first if they are around. Anyway, back to my old lady today. Next the body builder dude looks around the train as if he were checking out where he could make some space for this nice old lady. He was getting pumped. I could see it. Oh, I have to see this. I have to see this guy toss a few suits out of their seats! But then, sadly, the lady notices what he was about to do (she was getting nervous) and said that she was fine and getting off at the next stop anyway. He looked disappointed Me too! At the next stop she slowly walked off. No none even noticed her. She did thank the big guy, though.

I got home late tonight. Another “personal injury” on the train a couple of stops ahead of me. That generally means suicide. Someone just jumps in front of a train. I didn’t check the details of this case, though, so maybe it was just some sort of accident.

You know you are in for a long night when your train slows down and pulls into a station and they tell everyone to get off. Then you watch the train go backwards the other direction. Then another train full of people crawls in and everyone gets off and you watch that train go back the other direction as well. After a few of these maneuvers (which is actually pretty interesting to observe), there are easily several thousand people standing on the platform. It seems that the accident occurred just 10 minutes earlier, so I knew it would be a while before they cleaned everything up and got the system functioning normally again. The trains in Japan run on a mind-numbingly tight schedule, so when something really breaks the flow it can take hours to get things moving again. Fortunately, I was in Saginuma, so I could just walk to the pool and then home. No sense waiting for a packed bus or trying to find a cab for one stop. Besides, there were too many people. The lines were spilling out of the station into the street already.

The Japanese take these things in stride, though. I suppose they are used to it, sadly. But people just get on their way with almost no obvious complaining and acting out — which most certainly wouldn’t be the case in similar situations in the U.S., especially given the frequency and the population density. This was the second time this week on this one line, in fact. The first one was a 17 year old girl who killed herself and brought the system to a halt for hours. Both times it was an inconvenience for me (and thousands of other people, of course), but some family lost a loved one and that’s more important. Our lives go on. Their lives are forever changed.

Here’s an excellent program on suicide in Japan (Aokigahara: Suicide Forest). It’s well worth a watch. Very professionally done. Very tasteful. But sad. And also a recent news report from CNN. About 30,000 people kill themselves in Japan annually, so this is a big deal for this society. Thanks, Darrin, for the links.

If you are thinking of killing yourself, don’t. Reach out to someone. People will help. You are not as alone as you think. And if you are thinking of judging people who kill themselves, don’t. Not unless you’ve been there.

I ride the trains in Tokyo all the time, and I rarely see such rude behavior as sleeping full length on the seats. Well, sometimes on Friday nights things get messy when people get drop dead drunk, but I have only seen this bed behavior one other time. This particular train below is actually full, but everyone got out of the way when I got my camera out and started taking images of the sleeper. And although people always sleep on the trains in Tokyo, they generally have the courtesy to sleep while sitting or standing. But at least this guy didn’t put those fancy shoes on the seat. That would be really bad.

Interesting video about Kunihiko Tsuji, who photographs Japanese bullet trains. Getting a good shot of a Shinkansen in the wild is difficult (just look at my crappy attempts here and here), but Tsuji-san has captured some beautiful images over the years. He freezes his bullets completely (note the trains travel at 300 km/h), he gets the entire train in a single frame, and he takes one shot. No rapid-fire auto drive. Now, that one-shot bit is probably not too difficult when you are far away, but you must check out how he shoots a bullet flying out from a tunnel from just 15 feet away. Nice. That’s at the 4:51 minute mark of the video. Tsuji-san’s photography appears in this three part NHK series on the Japanese Shinkansen: 1/3, 2/3, 3/3.