Trainspotting
Yesterday a woman fell asleep on the train and slowly collapsed on my shoulder. Coming to, she muzzily shook her head before lapsing back onto my shoulder twice more. I didn't shake her off but left her there, scared to move lest she wake, a butterfly alighting on my shoulder. A small, meaningless thing, but coupled with my joyful toddlers, it felt like the beginnings of openness.
----
Error fixing: I said Osaka was the second biggest Japanese city, but apparently that honour goes to Yokohama. Sounds like semantics though - Tokyo and Yokohama joined forces long ago in everything but name. Perhaps the time of the 'city' is passing, replaced by conglomerations, loose associations of highrises.
---
I just remembered that I haven't as yet extolled the virtues of the Japanese rail system, something as obligatory as hunting geishas and gaping at Shinjuku fashionistas. Let me rectify that, and pretend you haven't heard it before. So:
In Japan, you define where you live by what station and line you are closest to - everyone uses public transport, all the time. The roads are still full, but there is much bureacratic hoop-jumping required to get a licence or car, and the tolls are huge - to drive from Osaka to Tokyo means you spend about a hundred bucks on tolls, nearly as much as the Shinkansen.
The sheer varieties of express trains is gawk-worthy and enough to drive the sane into trainspotting. On my line, the privately owned Keihan Line, there exists a rare and highly sought-after beast, the K-Limited express. In peak hour, people queue up at the station in designated areas well in advance of its arrival. It goes about a hundred klicks (I've always wanted to use that word) and disdains most stations between Kyoto and Osaka except mine, thankfully. It overtakes its slower relatives with a gloating toot, and if you're unlucky enough to be in an inferior train when it goes past, the doors go wham!, rattled by the pressure of the gleaming K-limited. It's like the Shinkansen for urbanites. Next, there is the red limited express, my personal conveyance of choice. Then, the orange normal express, then the green sub express, then the blue semi express, and finally, the scorned and feared local train (stopping allll stations to Yodoyobashi). This system introduces an element of choice sadly lacking in Connex. In the mornings, I jump into the first train that comes along and stand poised at the door. Often a red express will steam in, promising speed in exchange for closer contact with strangers, and I dash across to the better train, casting smug backwards glances.
If you want my hot stock tip for today, invest in Keihan. The railway conglomerate has got it all worked out. Not only do they have an extensive private line stretching between Osaka and Kyoto, and probably others around the country, but they take advantage of the fact that the station is the central hub of any city-within-a-city (suburban tribalism is pretty high here - you can eat, sleep, party and shop damn close to where you live. Hirakata is lit up like a mini Tokyo at night). So the great Keihan minds decided to put ruddy great (overpriced) Keihan supermarkets where they polish the strawberries around their stations, in a wonderful demonstration of vertical integration. Everywhere you go on my line, you see Keihan tattooed in red, devilish neon on the side of buildings.
And Keihan is but one of many, many lines servicing Osaka. Osaka bills itself as being home to 2.5 million souls, but that is a big fat lie worthy of the Chinese Bureau of Statistics. I suspect that for the sake of appearing slimline, they cut the outer suburbs out of the counting. God, Melbourne is meant to be what, 4 million? Osaka is probably around the same size as we land-rich sprawlers, but it's built up every step of the way. Again, the definition of central Osaka is largely arbitary. The buildings are a titch larger, but that's about all. There are 20 storey apartment buildings scattered around where I live. For that matter, the demarcation between Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe is increasingly artificial, but I'll stop being pedantic. An Osaka train map looks like one of those webs that spiders create when they're given speed. (How do they do that, by the way? Hype a fly up on amphetamines?) Colours carve swathes through the white suburbs in long lifelines; closer in, the JR Loop circles the city (now there's an idea, Melbourne) and that's before the subways kick in. There is a very useful website which, if you tell it where you are coming from and going to, will give you a neat little diagram of what trains to catch at what time. There's no difference between public and private lines; they all run on time, and I find myself getting impatient if I have to wait more than thirty seconds for a train now. It's absolutely incredible, an amazing feat of engineering and efficiency. We could learn from this, although I think that our unshiftable addiction to cars is largely because of the luxury of space - we need a readily available form of private transport to be able to get around our dispersed cities.
This system makes it possible for a lot of people to get around at high speeds and reliability. To get to work, I have to brave the true Osaka rush hour, the time of the morning where men in green coats cram you into your fellow stranger's armpit with immaculate white gloves. The first day was terrifying. Subway stations are generally part of the same building as the normal train stations, but shifted 90 degrees. This means that you have to walk about five hundred metres between stations. There is a particular stretch in Umeda station that I have to tackle each morning that deserves description. Pillars run in long lines down the passageway; shops hang about hopefully at either side. But the main attraction is the people, a sea of people, more people than you think possible - people walking twice as fast as I usually walk, people darting deftly across streams, grandmothers steadily negotiating the traffic, lunatics who step out into into oncoming torrents, forcing them aside. Usually, in negotiating Japanese stations, I use democratic principles and follow the majority, which is usually right. This passageway has many shifting majorities, many flows. Some salarymen creep along the wall next to an opposing flow, hoping vainly for a break so they can break across to the ticket machine. The first day I encountered this place, my mind pared back to survival mode. Person on left going through - break now! - in new, faster moving stream - ticket machine spotted - dart left, avoid swinging briefcase, hide briefly in eddy behind a pillar, wait, wait, wait - go now! It was exhilarating. The next day, I had more confidence and started taking risks, boosting my personal speed up to the limit, overtaking on blind corners (sumi masen!), weaving through the outlying trickles at high speed, only occasionally half-stopping on someone elses heel. It's a real buzz, immersing yourself in this Darwinian stream. It's like a large-scale version of Frogger.
---
There are no poor people in Japan. At least, that's what you could conclude by assessing the train passengers. While transport is expensive, it's essential. But everyone dresses well - muted colours (even the teens only risk colour on the weekends), stylish, impeccable. The Japanese place a heavy emphasis on outward appearance (another manifestation of the idea that you keep your real self submerged until you are in private places; your house, amongst friends). Perhaps that goes some way to explaining it - the poor still dress well. There are no irritating bogans.
There is such strong resonance of the inward/outward division here. My newly acquired mentor, D___ was talking about this today. You wear house slippers in the house and outside shoes when you leave. They can even own inside dogs and outside dogs. You rarely invite people into your home. Similarly into your self. It takes a long while to make true friends here, I hear, but once you do, it is a lifetime commitment with significant responsibilities, beyond the nature of friendship in Western countries. What happens in the home is private, strongly so and hence the strength of family. A Japanese/American woman I interviewed for my Cub Story wrote that this division is even represented in their flag; a red sun, a circle of homogeneity and strength outlined and defined by the massive white other. The word for foreigner is gaijin; gai is outside and jin is person. The implication is that we outsiders will never become insiders, ever.
----
Girls here do their makeup on the train. Not just a quick touchup of lipstick or mirror check, but full eyelash crimping, mascara application. Today I watched as a girl deftly negotiated the train's swaying and lurching as she curled her eyelashes. A nice inversion of public and private. On the male side, it's absolutely fine for men to read porn on the train. Most of them read manga porn - wide-eyed girls accomodating implausible cocks, men with dark eyes and overwhelming desire, towering over the women. It's not all like that though. (I picked one up at a 7-11, thinking it was 'normal' manga. Not so). The artists toy with fantasies; inversions of power - a young man tied up by wilful laughing women, toyed with, forcibly fellated. Overall though, it's mostly the same old story - you know, innocent girl crosses the path of a strong male, male desire becomes overpowering, male ravages innocent girl, male achieves loud groaning satisfaction. The look on the girls faces suggests a wavering line between rape and consensual sex - pain, guilty pleasure, pain.
My new favourite entertainment is watching important businessmen flick through pages of manga porn without varying their outwards face - the same impassive face that approves loans, conducts interviews. I mean, is it arousing? Is that the idea? Do you cultivate an erection on the way to work and then let it dissipate at the morning meeting? This is puzzling. Oh - cocks aren't allowed to be drawn in detail, but only outlined with dots. The overall effect is kinda comical - it looks like a dirty join-the-dots. What could it be?
---
Yesterday a woman fell asleep on the train and slowly collapsed on my shoulder. Coming to, she muzzily shook her head before lapsing back onto my shoulder twice more. I didn't shake her off but left her there, scared to move lest she wake, a butterfly alighting on my shoulder. A small, meaningless thing, but coupled with my joyful toddlers, it felt like the beginnings of openness.
----
Error fixing: I said Osaka was the second biggest Japanese city, but apparently that honour goes to Yokohama. Sounds like semantics though - Tokyo and Yokohama joined forces long ago in everything but name. Perhaps the time of the 'city' is passing, replaced by conglomerations, loose associations of highrises.
---
I just remembered that I haven't as yet extolled the virtues of the Japanese rail system, something as obligatory as hunting geishas and gaping at Shinjuku fashionistas. Let me rectify that, and pretend you haven't heard it before. So:
In Japan, you define where you live by what station and line you are closest to - everyone uses public transport, all the time. The roads are still full, but there is much bureacratic hoop-jumping required to get a licence or car, and the tolls are huge - to drive from Osaka to Tokyo means you spend about a hundred bucks on tolls, nearly as much as the Shinkansen.
The sheer varieties of express trains is gawk-worthy and enough to drive the sane into trainspotting. On my line, the privately owned Keihan Line, there exists a rare and highly sought-after beast, the K-Limited express. In peak hour, people queue up at the station in designated areas well in advance of its arrival. It goes about a hundred klicks (I've always wanted to use that word) and disdains most stations between Kyoto and Osaka except mine, thankfully. It overtakes its slower relatives with a gloating toot, and if you're unlucky enough to be in an inferior train when it goes past, the doors go wham!, rattled by the pressure of the gleaming K-limited. It's like the Shinkansen for urbanites. Next, there is the red limited express, my personal conveyance of choice. Then, the orange normal express, then the green sub express, then the blue semi express, and finally, the scorned and feared local train (stopping allll stations to Yodoyobashi). This system introduces an element of choice sadly lacking in Connex. In the mornings, I jump into the first train that comes along and stand poised at the door. Often a red express will steam in, promising speed in exchange for closer contact with strangers, and I dash across to the better train, casting smug backwards glances.
If you want my hot stock tip for today, invest in Keihan. The railway conglomerate has got it all worked out. Not only do they have an extensive private line stretching between Osaka and Kyoto, and probably others around the country, but they take advantage of the fact that the station is the central hub of any city-within-a-city (suburban tribalism is pretty high here - you can eat, sleep, party and shop damn close to where you live. Hirakata is lit up like a mini Tokyo at night). So the great Keihan minds decided to put ruddy great (overpriced) Keihan supermarkets where they polish the strawberries around their stations, in a wonderful demonstration of vertical integration. Everywhere you go on my line, you see Keihan tattooed in red, devilish neon on the side of buildings.
And Keihan is but one of many, many lines servicing Osaka. Osaka bills itself as being home to 2.5 million souls, but that is a big fat lie worthy of the Chinese Bureau of Statistics. I suspect that for the sake of appearing slimline, they cut the outer suburbs out of the counting. God, Melbourne is meant to be what, 4 million? Osaka is probably around the same size as we land-rich sprawlers, but it's built up every step of the way. Again, the definition of central Osaka is largely arbitary. The buildings are a titch larger, but that's about all. There are 20 storey apartment buildings scattered around where I live. For that matter, the demarcation between Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe is increasingly artificial, but I'll stop being pedantic. An Osaka train map looks like one of those webs that spiders create when they're given speed. (How do they do that, by the way? Hype a fly up on amphetamines?) Colours carve swathes through the white suburbs in long lifelines; closer in, the JR Loop circles the city (now there's an idea, Melbourne) and that's before the subways kick in. There is a very useful website which, if you tell it where you are coming from and going to, will give you a neat little diagram of what trains to catch at what time. There's no difference between public and private lines; they all run on time, and I find myself getting impatient if I have to wait more than thirty seconds for a train now. It's absolutely incredible, an amazing feat of engineering and efficiency. We could learn from this, although I think that our unshiftable addiction to cars is largely because of the luxury of space - we need a readily available form of private transport to be able to get around our dispersed cities.
This system makes it possible for a lot of people to get around at high speeds and reliability. To get to work, I have to brave the true Osaka rush hour, the time of the morning where men in green coats cram you into your fellow stranger's armpit with immaculate white gloves. The first day was terrifying. Subway stations are generally part of the same building as the normal train stations, but shifted 90 degrees. This means that you have to walk about five hundred metres between stations. There is a particular stretch in Umeda station that I have to tackle each morning that deserves description. Pillars run in long lines down the passageway; shops hang about hopefully at either side. But the main attraction is the people, a sea of people, more people than you think possible - people walking twice as fast as I usually walk, people darting deftly across streams, grandmothers steadily negotiating the traffic, lunatics who step out into into oncoming torrents, forcing them aside. Usually, in negotiating Japanese stations, I use democratic principles and follow the majority, which is usually right. This passageway has many shifting majorities, many flows. Some salarymen creep along the wall next to an opposing flow, hoping vainly for a break so they can break across to the ticket machine. The first day I encountered this place, my mind pared back to survival mode. Person on left going through - break now! - in new, faster moving stream - ticket machine spotted - dart left, avoid swinging briefcase, hide briefly in eddy behind a pillar, wait, wait, wait - go now! It was exhilarating. The next day, I had more confidence and started taking risks, boosting my personal speed up to the limit, overtaking on blind corners (sumi masen!), weaving through the outlying trickles at high speed, only occasionally half-stopping on someone elses heel. It's a real buzz, immersing yourself in this Darwinian stream. It's like a large-scale version of Frogger.
---
There are no poor people in Japan. At least, that's what you could conclude by assessing the train passengers. While transport is expensive, it's essential. But everyone dresses well - muted colours (even the teens only risk colour on the weekends), stylish, impeccable. The Japanese place a heavy emphasis on outward appearance (another manifestation of the idea that you keep your real self submerged until you are in private places; your house, amongst friends). Perhaps that goes some way to explaining it - the poor still dress well. There are no irritating bogans.
There is such strong resonance of the inward/outward division here. My newly acquired mentor, D___ was talking about this today. You wear house slippers in the house and outside shoes when you leave. They can even own inside dogs and outside dogs. You rarely invite people into your home. Similarly into your self. It takes a long while to make true friends here, I hear, but once you do, it is a lifetime commitment with significant responsibilities, beyond the nature of friendship in Western countries. What happens in the home is private, strongly so and hence the strength of family. A Japanese/American woman I interviewed for my Cub Story wrote that this division is even represented in their flag; a red sun, a circle of homogeneity and strength outlined and defined by the massive white other. The word for foreigner is gaijin; gai is outside and jin is person. The implication is that we outsiders will never become insiders, ever.
----
Girls here do their makeup on the train. Not just a quick touchup of lipstick or mirror check, but full eyelash crimping, mascara application. Today I watched as a girl deftly negotiated the train's swaying and lurching as she curled her eyelashes. A nice inversion of public and private. On the male side, it's absolutely fine for men to read porn on the train. Most of them read manga porn - wide-eyed girls accomodating implausible cocks, men with dark eyes and overwhelming desire, towering over the women. It's not all like that though. (I picked one up at a 7-11, thinking it was 'normal' manga. Not so). The artists toy with fantasies; inversions of power - a young man tied up by wilful laughing women, toyed with, forcibly fellated. Overall though, it's mostly the same old story - you know, innocent girl crosses the path of a strong male, male desire becomes overpowering, male ravages innocent girl, male achieves loud groaning satisfaction. The look on the girls faces suggests a wavering line between rape and consensual sex - pain, guilty pleasure, pain.
My new favourite entertainment is watching important businessmen flick through pages of manga porn without varying their outwards face - the same impassive face that approves loans, conducts interviews. I mean, is it arousing? Is that the idea? Do you cultivate an erection on the way to work and then let it dissipate at the morning meeting? This is puzzling. Oh - cocks aren't allowed to be drawn in detail, but only outlined with dots. The overall effect is kinda comical - it looks like a dirty join-the-dots. What could it be?
---
posted by Doug @ 3/13/2005 01:32:00 pm
<< Home