First off: Happy Mother's Day! In parts of the World!

I can't quite remember now what more I wanted to mention about Japan not identifying as Asian, so I will instead tell you about their amazing train system. This is actually a timely entry (no pun intended) because the punctuality of the Japanese trains was recently in the news here in the US. Remember the news story about the train that jumped the tracks near Osaka, in western Japan? Well, the current theory is that excessive speed may have been the cause, as the train was late due to conductor error. Exactly 90 seconds late, in fact. Now this may seem like a trivial amount of time to those of us in the US, accutomed as we are to a train system that does not operate with anything near that precision. In Japan, however, 90 seconds could stall an entire network.

I wasn't in the Osaka area, just Tokyo. Tokyo is plenty to keep you interested. Tokyo is HUGE. It houses 10% of the Japanese population, much as New York does for the US, and has a high population density. It also is decentralized in some ways, as it evolved over thousands of years from several smaller towns. So there are many shopping, business, residential and recreational districts scattered around the city. It is large enough that it takes 2 hours to get from one end to the other, and that is on an express train! Coming from California, it was a bit as if the SF Bay Area was all one big city, though still retaining the character of the individual original towns/cities in the form of "districts", and with about twice as many people living there. A city such a this needs a good mass transportation system, and Tokyo has that in the form of it's trains.

Now "good" does not mean "simple".

America has no comprehensive national train system. As in none, zero. Amtrak does not now and never has owned the rail it runs on, and so could not make improvements that would benefit the customer, such as bullet trains. The frieght companies own the track, and neither speed nor comfort is a priority for them. Amtrak is also not subsidized at all (that means $0 for national rail) in the President's proposed budget, while the nation's highways (which for some reason are not expected to be self-sufficient) are due for $35 billion (with a "b"). The government actually spends more each year to dispose of roadkill than it does on the entire national rail service, and that is according to conservative Southern Republican John Robert Smith! Why doesn't anyone expect all the roads to be private toll roads and pay for themselves? They are bleeding money now! If we expect part of our transportation network to pay for itself it should all pay for itself. I'm outraged by this short-sighted budget and plan to write both my Senators and my representative tomorrow, as well as the President, though he has never been a fan of rail innovation or its existence at all. Civilized nations build and subsidize mass transportation. And that doesn't just mean cars and airplanes, especially if we want to survive on our current planet. But I digress.

My point is we have a "simple" plan with a nice, uncluttered rail map, which translates to a woefully inadequate system. The Tokyo rail map, by contrast, looks like a plate full of speghetti. The only recognizeable geometric shape is a thick circle around Tokyo's core. On some maps it doesn't even look like a circle exactly, so the only landmark is missing. It depends on if the map is drawn to an exacting scale or is more of a graphical representation. The latter has the circle and is more common.

Now I am not a complete stanger to modern commuter rail. I've taken the London underground (AKA The Tube) many times, and in some ways it is the Gold Standard for me. I even have a sign with the universially recognized underground symbol, the red circle bisected by a long horizontal blue bar, on which the command "Mind The Gap" is inscribed (their version of "Watch Your Step When Exiting, because there is a Space between the Train and the Platform"). Bought it years ago at their shop, and it hangs on my wall. London is smaller than Tokyo, and so their well-known map (I've even seen it on coffee mugs) is as expected not as complicated as Tokyo's. Likewise with Paris, though theirs more closely approximates Tokyo's because it combines not just multiple lines, but multiple companies (well, at least two come to mind) that may have competing lines.

Tokyo does the Paris model one better. Well, more like 8 better. There are 12 subway lines alone in Tokyo, and another 8 rail companies that each have a number of competing lines. Luckily they generally work together, or it would be too confusing.

How did this system come about? Afte all, the Japanese rail system was governmental before about 1986 when they made it a private company subsidized by the government, as is the case in most of the world now (America excepted; did I mention that?). The rail system was not built by the government, though. Afterall, it is usually the market-place that first takes a chance on bringing new technology to the public.

In Tokyo, the "market-place" was not some amorphous capatalistic free market, but rather a literal market. Yes, department stores built the first trains. To this day, lines are named after department stores and travel from the outskirts to their main highrise department store, which is really more like a vertical mall. This building may or may not be in the middle of downtown or near any tourists spots or government buildings and such. To the train company, their only goal was to get customers to their store, and that has been accomplished.

Luckily for the traveler, other train companies set up shop at the department store terminus of one line and take you to the next department store. By leapfrogging from store to store you can get anywhere, especially since each store sends out branching lines to get as many people as possible. Now, these lines were built this way years ago by private companies serving their own interests, but the track laid by them is still used today, and many of the same companies are in business. The tracks are elevated, so the platform is on the second floor of the building, and it is often impossible to get to the street without walking through part of the store. Good way to snag customers.

When I stayed with my friend, or local stop was small, so we would travel one stop in toward central Tokyo and then get off to catch the express, which didn't stop at her home station. So that necessitated one more transfer for every journey, which added to the several already required to make it to a Shinto shrine or restaurant or whatever our destination might be. I found it quite intimidating, and was grateful I had Mihoko-san to lead me through it. Luckily most of the signs had small English translations below the Japanese (English is often the default foreign language nowadays, lucky for me), so I was able to make a short no-transfer run on my own to meet her once. In general, though, it is fairly confusing if you are only there for a couple of days.

The system may seem incoherent, but it actually works together well to form a comprehensive network. When you buy a pass it is good for about 15 companies, a fact that is reinforced by the small cartoon carictures of each company's distinctive engine that march across the card. All the companies have entry and exit machines that share a network, and they dole out ticket revenue accordingly. In the end it becomes a fairly seamless system for the consumer. Only the circle line requires a separate ticket, as well as the ultra-express to the airport.

Even multiple transfer don't slow down the passenger much, as trains run every 3 minutes, and are coordinated between companies. Each station has two or three platforms and about 6 tracks, so trains are whizzing by all the time. Expresses hurtle through on side tracks while other trains are stoppping to pick up passengers. So you see why 90 seconds would make such a difference. That means the train behind you is nearly on top of you. Besides, the express trains run on an extremely well-orchestrated time-table, and for this to work all other trains must be in the station at the scheduled time, so the trains can pass. There are not 6 tracks outside of the station, of course. It is all carefully timed, and the volume is at near capacity, so one delay fould up everything. The stations are close together and pick up intervals are short under normal circumstances, so there is very little cushion that can be easily shaved off to make up time.

Some people I know here were surprised that the derailed train crashed into an apartment building mere yards from the track. Sounds like a dangerous way to build a train system, so close to high rises. In the US we are used to railroad setbacks.

Well in Japan, the notion of setbacks in construction in general is very different. As an island with a large population, Japan does not have miles and miles of open country. The have no "Montana". In some ways Tokyo is like Amsterdam, which also tends to build on top of itself, even draining huge lakes and the ocean for more land. Tokyo, especially in the center, takes it even further, with highrises cheek by jowl with elevated freeways that skim between them. Often the buildings will have pedestrain bridges between upper floors, so you could get off an elevated train and move across a neighborhood without ever touching the ground. From my friend's living room window (I meant to take a picture and neglected to), I could see about 5 or 6 houses, just on our side of the street, to the left of her house. Most had no yard and a roof garden instead. Tokyo has no extra space.

Trains in Tokyo are elevated and sometimes smack up against a building. When conducted properly this is not dangerous. After all, the street comes right up to the high-rises in downtown New York, discounting a narrow side-walk, and cars aren't even on rails! Trains can go much faster, of course, but most sections of modern track in Japan, including Tokyo, have safety features that limit the speed automatically if it becomes unsafe, such as if they are too close to the next train. Some sections even have to ability to detect absolute speed and slow the train without input from the conductor. The bullet train from Kyoto is almost all automated, simply because at those speeds, human reaction time to warning lights is too slow to avert disaster. They still have conductors to guard against total system failure or other rare unexpected events. But as far was crash risk mitigation it is all automatic.

The tracks in the town outside Osaka are older and are not equipped with all the latest advances. Also, the conductor was inexperienced and might have made it worse in a way no track could compensate for - he used the brake. By speeding into the turn and then pulling on the brakes too hard and too late, he caused the train to derail and at least one car to flip. This comes from the sensors; the conductor himself, sadly, died in the accident at the yound age of 23. May he rest in peace.

Hate to leave you on that note, though! What else can I tell you about the Japanese trains? Well one thing I mentioned in another entry is how tall you feel. But let's see, what else?

Oh, here's something! There are folks who work for the train lines whose job it is to gently help push people in so the doors can close on the train. Passengers can get packed so tightly that this is necessary. These people wear uniforms and neat white gloves, and usually only work during rush hour at the big central stations. There are simply so many people at one time that every available molecule of space is taken up, and it may be impossible for people to smush any further on their own. The train automatically won't leave the station until the doors seal, and they can't close easily with the glut of people. So the white-gloved men are employed to compress the flesh of the passengers just a fraction of a centimeter more so the doors can slide shut, at which point the people inside take a breath and so expand against the door.

This even happens to a lesser degree on off-peak times at popular station. I once got on a fairly crowded train, intending to stand close to make room. Judging by where people were standing when I got on and making allowances for my personal space needs I figured I'd end up standing almost at the center, but closer to the door I entered. I ended up almost all the way to the far door. People just kept coming in and you had to keep walking and compressing or you'd lose your footing. I haven't been in such quarters since I was on a bus in Rome!

The Italians, though, are very gregarious, while the Japanese are more reserved. I spoke in my "ode" entry about how much they value privacy, to the point of prefering a tea-room to themselves for restaurant meals. Which is lovely, but not something normally expected at a nice restaurant in the US. In comparison to them we pack into restaurants, but not trains and buses. I remember the year I met Mihoko-san, when she was an exchange student at my University. The city buses would often get "full" (at least to American eyes) and simply not stop to pick up anymore passengers until someone got off. So it would pass us by. She would often indignantly observe that they were NOT truly full. Often I was quick to agree, as standing passengers didn't always move back enough so there would be space in the back the driver couldn't see. Sometimes, though, it DID seem full to me. The passengers weren't actually touching, though, so in her mind there was plenty of room.

I didn't entirely understand this until I visited her home in Japan and saw how much closer the natives stand on the bus and train. Maybe it is because America is such a car culture, and we are used to having our own seat for transportation. We extend this attitude to mass transportation, where it doesn't belong.

In Tokyo, though, often the quickest way to get across town is by train, and cars are not as common, so they have no built in "car space" feeling. Trains have simply always been packed. The next train will be as packed as this one so you might as well squeeze in.

This squeezing is so at odds with the love of privacy and space during meals that I asked Mihoko-san to clarify. She replied that privacy is just as desired on the train, but is simply not possible if you intend to get on any train in the next 4 hours, given the population density. Instead, most rail passengers will close their eyes, or look up, anything to avoid eye contact and maintain a sense of separate space. They mentally remove themselves from the unpleasant situation.

It is a little akin to a crowded elevator, one of the few times in America that we do shrink our boundries a bit. There are unspoken rules about elevator behavior, this temporary enforced closeness, that are really designed to make it easier for everyone to pretend they are alone. And such is the case with the Japanese on trains. After she explained, all those people I had thought we dozing standing up suddenly made sense. Obviously I was unknowingly breaking the rules or I wouldn't have noticed. Ooops!

Well, that's enough for tonight. So late! I hope this long entry makes up for the lack of one on Saturday. This counts for Sunday, and I'll try to do another later today as it is now Monday already. Take care, and eat more rutabagas!

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Sources for the bit on Amtrak:

Overview with good links (scroll down to see the Amtrak entry)
http://www.motherjones.com/news/blog/2005/02/MB_2005_07.html

more indepth and full of helpful facts:
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0209-30.htm

Source to verify numbers for Tokyo Trains:

http://www.geocities.com/TheTropics/Harbor/9128/system.html