After seventeen years in Los Angeles and one hour in Tokyo, it was obvious that Japan understands
public transportation so much better. While the train lines may own everything in sight, they actually
deliver daily a reliable, clean, safe and inexpensive service. Los Angeles quit trying in the 1940s.
Food. Drink. Medicines. Books. Gifts. Compare this to the Southland, where the streets are dirty
and hot, and bus stops seldom even offer benches.
If a train doesn’t arrive on time, it’s for one of two reasons: there’s been an earthquake or there’s
been a suicide, often a child. A family pays 1 million yen to make ammends for a public suicide,
suggesting that these are final gestures of defiance against the family. When you do arrive at your
station, someone will give you a shomeisho, a little paper excuse from the stationmaster that you
can use to explain away your tardiness, accepted wherever you needed to be.
I never saw the trains so crowded that I couldn’t board. I never saw the fabled crowd-pushers
called to duty. I’m told I was lucky. Typically, the train car carried a handful of riders quietly and
comfortably to their station. After a long day of walking about, I might catch an evening train and
stand for the length of my trip, inspecting the dozens of colorful promotional posters displayed
everywhere; surrepticiously inspecting the other riders. This is how I first became aware of esoterica
like the Tokyo Millienario and Posh Spice’s husband, David Beckham.
Many riders, regardless of their age, step aboard, find a seat, and promptly fall asleep,
Only a few small children and me cared to tick off the stations as they passed.
A rail pass gave me access to all of the JR lines in Tokyo,and let me travel in blissful ignorance
of how to access the rest of the rail and subway systems that service all the neighborhoods.
To be inside Tokyo means to be within the circuit of the Yamanote Line, and I found it could take
me everywhere I wanted to begin my wanderings. Shinjiku. Akihabara. Shinagawa. Mejiro. Tokyo.
Shinjiku. But a few times, I needed to travel on another line and managed easily with the help of
patient station attendants. The ticket machines are impossible if you don’t read Japanese.
Japan Rail plans to insert a chip in newer cell phones that would allow you to make reservations
and simply swipe your phone across a sensor at the ticket gate. There’s talk of being able to pay
for purchases in the stations and at local convenience stores in the same way.
Did I mention, no graphitti or damage inside or outside the cars? Or the stations? Perhaps it happens,
but the station attendants are there take care of it quickly. During the Aum Shinrikyo attacks in 1995,
attendants probably saved thousands of lives by doing their jobs routinely. No one was prepared for
a sarin gas attack on a Japanese subway.
Every station has a platform jingle that announces when the train doors are about to close.