The Even Greater Tokyo Region

Time to stop giving Jr. all the love.

Most people, mostly correctly, believe that Japan is a punctual country. An efficient country. A country which will stop at nothing and let nothing stop it from being on schedule. Everything is timed down to the precise minute, even in the countryside where the leaves sway to their own internal clocks. It is baffling that very few people have watches; they always check their cellphones.

A good example of the dependence on time and schedule happened the other day. I have my own special ALT schedule, which means I can show up at school a half hour later than everyone else. I usually come in just after 8:15, the very latest time that students have to be inside school. At this end of term 1, I have lost all creativity for preparing classes. On this day, I had nothing prepared, and needed to come to school early to plan. As I neared school, at 8:05, I passed a student. His expression was priceless. Of course, cellphones are prohibited for our students, so he relies on natures patterns and his instincts to tell the time. Seeing the ALT drive past him, he thought, (conveniently in English): "Oh crap, I'm so late. I'm in big trouble", and he began sprinting as fast as his heavy school bag would allow. I truly disrupted the time-space continuim that day.

The usual example of Japanese punctuality are the trains. I've had some bad luck travelling with the trains, as you may remember (massive delays caused by human error, a suicide and heavy winds), and you may have seen this item of news from the weekend:

It was 10:13AM, and I was on a Japan Railway train in Osaka. The earthquake was in Niigata, about 2 hours north of Toyama, which is 3 hours from Osaka. I wasn't completely aware of what happened, but the trains had been stopped, so I was going nowhere. The announcer announced, as they do, a reccommendation to catch a different train line. They were handing out refunds to everyone and leading them to their competetor.

Now, it strikes me as odd, but why is one train company (the governement owned one) stalled by an earthquake hundreds of kilometres away, while the competitor goes on unaffected?Moreover, JR is about twice as expensive as the privately owned train lines.

Logistically for me, I was delayed for 2 precious hours for a BBQ on lake Biwa with a bunch of friends. Such a brilliant day, until raindrops the size of rotten fruit began falling from the sky. I didn't mind too much, I was going to swim anyway. Lake Biwa is the biggest lake in Japan (and uninterestingly enough, the world's third oldest lake), and I was going to swim it. Compared to the beaches on the Japan coast, this was a pristeen, untouched part of nature.

There were apparently 2 more earthquakes, and on my reluctant return to Toyama, more JR delays. It wasn't so long to wait, but the trains had been backed up for hours. It was impossible to get a seat. But finally, I got my revenge on JR. I hadn't bought a ticket yet, and was going to buy one from the JR conducter who checks tickets and tells me to get out of reserved seats and sit infront of the doors. He never came. It was so exciting. Normally I would be miserable after such a long trip, but when the train rolled up to my station, I was jubilant.

I had saved myself US$70, and taught JR a lesson. He will get no special treatment from me.