The Psychology of Japanese Train Stations | Hacker News Reader

The Psychology of Japanese Train Stations

citylab.com

245 pointscheeaun151 comments

In my first experience with trains in Japan, I had to take a jaunt that included a leg from Nagoya to Matsusaka. The train ride was about 90 minutes, and I was anxious about knowing which station to exit. I anticipated that the signage would all be in Japanese. So I asked the station attendant in Nagoya how I'd know when to get off. He looked at my ticket and said, "The train will stop at 1:11PM. You get off."

The train stopped at promptly 1:11 PM, and I got off in Matsusaka.

Been living in japan since 2011, you can search when train stops at where exactly now, including emergency info.

And all station attendant have a booklet with all those stuff written, so all he had to do is to take a look at it.

When it comes to government related system in japan they surprisingly works very well with outdated tech

I don't understand, isn't that how trains work everywhere? Otherwise how are the people in the next city supposed to know when they need to be there to board that train?

In many places, the trains are always late, but never early. So you get to the station at the appointed time and just wait. You couldn't tell someone to get off the train at "1:11" in the US.

> isn't that how trains work everywhere?

I live in Midwest USA, and trains and busses here are routinely off schedule. More than say 60% of the time, it will be 5 to 15+ minutes late, and you'll be forced to waste that time just waiting for arrival/transfer. Also, occasionally buses arrive and depart a little bit early, so you can't just arrive on time and be safe either, you have to plan on being at least 10 minutes early to be safe.

If a scheduled departure time is 1:10PM, then a weekly list of actual departure times in the US might often look like : (Monday, 1:15PM, Tuesday, 1:18PM, Wednesday, 1:04PM, Thursday 1:22PM, Friday, 1:11PM, more or less at random). There's no reliable way to plan ahead for that, so realistically you just have to always be 10 minutes early, and expect to wait through to 20+ minutes late, just in case.

This also repeats for every single transfer you might have to make... and most trips require at least one transfer...

That sounds pretty good compared to my Midwest experiences :|

Hourly schedule, literally never fits the times presented so you just go and wait. And sometimes you end up waiting 1.5 hours with nothing, so you call up the station to find out wtf and they have no idea where the bus is. "It should be there soon!" -> it finally comes after 2.5 hours.

This happened at least 4 times in the 30 or so attempts I made to use it to get to college. A mere 3 miles away. Then I gave up and just walked or drove. Eventually attended a town hall, and the higher-ups claimed no knowledge of any of this. Last I heard it was still performing at the same level.

I assume they were either skipping our stops to fake a normal round-trip time, or just disappearing for an hour or two to smoke.

Well, the train says it arrives at 1:11, which means that it will be there at some time past 1:11, because it will inevitably be late, caused by breakdowns or track maintenance or the weather (in Australia, if it gets too hot, the trains have to slow down).

In Melbourne at least it seems like the system is run exactly at capacity. If one train has to stop at a platform for 3 minutes extra because of a signal fault or a sick passenger, every train on that line (and probably 2 other lines) for the next 3 hours is critically fucked.

It seems like there's no leeway in the timetables to make up lost time, and no extra trains parked in the outer suburbs (morning) or CBD (afternoon) to make up services.

The other day my train had to wait for 5 minutes just outside Flinders St station because didn't have a platform to park the train at. Flinders is a real bottleneck, if the flow starts to stutter there, everything falls to bits.

Upon saying that, Melbourne's trains are usually pretty good, over 90% on time. It's the buses here that I have issues with. The timetable at the stop is completely useless, and the app is not much better. Sometimes the PTV app says the bus will arrive in 1 minute, and it arrives 5 minutes later.

> over 90% on time

While true, this is a factoid.

1. Some trains never run. For the commuter this is like a very late train. You need to add the "did not run" numbers to the late trains to get a total effective lateness figure.

2. Some trains run but are so full you cannot get on them. Try catching a train from Prahran to the city at 8am. Nonetheless, this counts as an on time service.

3.On time is defined as anywhere from 1 minute early to 5:59 late. To me six minutes late is not on time.

4. The fraction of late trains is much higher in peak hour, when more people are affected. So the effective late % is higher than it looks at face value.

Anecdotal, sure, but I find about 9 in 10 trains are online and boardable. Frankston and Werribee lines, off peak. I hope the new lines that will bypass the city will help decongestion the network.

> It's the buses here that I have issues with.

There are the famous phantom buses, the App says it will arrive and then at the last moment it just disappears.

I mean there is a time posted, and it won’t leave earlier than that, but it may leave a lot later. Here is the delay distribution for the train I would take to work if it wasn’t so late: https://juckins.net/amtrak_status/archive/html/history.php?t...

> it won’t leave earlier than that,

Except by accident:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-44149791

When people in japan says "the train will be there 1:11PM", they mean, "it'll be there 1:11:00PM sharp, not 1:10PM, not 1:12PM".

If you ride in the first car and look at the timetable the driver uses, you can see the timetable is accurate to the second.

Here's a photo showing a driver's timetable. In the second row is a 20 second stop at Hazama, the train arrival time is 13:25:05 and departure 13:25:25.

http://livedoor.blogimg.jp/asianrailroad/imgs/f/a/fa9e3956.j...

That timetable looks like it's on 5-second granularity, not 1-second. Which is still pretty tight -- the UK's working timetables are half-minute granularity. (The UK also demonstrates that it's not merely a matter of having an exact timetable, you also need to be able to keep to it in practice :-))

For the most part in developing countries. But remember that in Japan, most train stations are minutes apart. So getting off at 1:11 is absolutely stunning.

Also, they have a national radio broadcast that broadcasts time. I think most of their clocks are built to read info from the radio channel and sync to it. So you are usually advised to see the myriad of clocks displayed everywhere.

In India, this is not how it works usually.

I mean if a train is late by 5-30 minutes, the train is said to be on time.

In Japan there was an apology because a train left 20 seconds AHEAD of schedule:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-42009839

This is not unusual:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-44149791

Trains in Japan run very regularly, much more so than in other countries I've visited. Only yesterday I was on a Finnish train and it was delayed by 15 minutes, which lead to some confusion when it did turn up over whether it was the correct train.

Here's the live arrivals board for Manchester Victoria station in England. At the time of posting, the next five trains scheduled to arrive were 15 minutes late, 14 minutes late, 25 minutes late, 8 minutes late and cancelled. This is not atypical.

http://ojp.nationalrail.co.uk/service/ldbboard/arr/MCV

Running a railway to time is remarkably difficult, because a single delay can cascade through the entire network.

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.648...

In India, trains being right on time is considered a rare occurrence. Usually trains are late 5-30 minutes and sometimes even hours.

Moscow subway has a train every 2 or 3 minutes most of the time, so there's no timetable anywhere visible to the passengers - you just wait for the next train. In rare occurences where trains have different destinations (about only 2 lines have those), you just look it up at the train windshield or listen to the announcement.

This is how trains are supposed to run...

High speed typically takes single track. One delay causes countless more delays.. domino effect. By using single track, any deficiency is immediately visible. So by moving to the surface any potential for error which could be hidden or diluted, each part of the machine is forced to move at the same rate. This increases system wide efficiency.

In a very magical place called new york, there are trains also, but legend has it that they have NEVER been on time!

Spooky!

Yes! When I first visited japan I used the same method. Every train trip, all I had to do was look at my ticket for the arival time, and look at the clock and, to the minute, it never failed to help me get me off at the right stop.

That's pretty awesome. I hear often how perfectly on time the trains are there, which is usually true. However, I've experienced some train delays in Japan, mostly in Tokyo. One was so bad I ended up doing something else for a couple hours to wait until it got resolved.

Here's an article that reviews info from a report on rush hour delays in Tokyo for those interested.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/01/16/national/japans...

Here’s a short video about the Tokyo Metro which shows in a nutshell why Japanese trains are pretty much always on time:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=_rtxm30NULU

I didn't exactly use this line when visiting Japan last year, but I never had trouble with leaving at the correct station as everything was announced in latin writing as well (even Nikko and Hakkone wasn't a problem).

However in Tokyo I took a picture of every station sign I stepped over in order to find my way back :-).

I was ashamed of Germany (where I live) when visiting Japan especially when comparing public transport.

Nowadays most stations are also subtitled in Latin writing

I witnessed a group of 20+ Latin American tourists boarding at some station and then getting off at Shinjuku the other day. One of them held the train door with his body while all 20+ of them strolled in the train nonchalantly. Then the same door blocker proceeded to scream out instructions to the rest of the group. They did the same thing on the way out.

Usually there's a smooth flow of people entering and exiting as everyone seem to know where to go (left or right) because there are maps of train car # to every other station's exits on the line. While they were figuring out whether to go left or right on the platform, they were blocking everyone on that side of the platform right at Shinjuku (literally the busiest station on Earth).

There are dozens of lines criss-crossing the city and every one of them is running accurate to the minute. We take it for granted living here. But boy, when articles like this come around every so often, mind blown. I never gave the crowd behavioural aspect of this system much thought. But this article reminded me of that incident with the tourists. It's impressive how behavioural quirks of the commuters are critical to the overall efficiency of the system. (obvious in hindsight)

Thanks for sharing!

There is so much here that couldn't work as it does, without the implicit assumption that everyone is going to behave politely. Hell the polite queuing after a major earthquake for water and food is absolutely astounding.

The foreigners who don't try to live up to the social standards while living here should be shunned by the local gaijins.

Re the polite queuing after earthquakes: I happened to be in Sendai the day of the big earthquake/tsunami/nuclear reactor breakdown. I had no place to stay because I had a flight booked for later that day, which obviously got canceled. I started walking around downtown. There was clearly a lot of nervous energy, and there were hundreds of aftershocks in the first 24 hours, but people were behaving calmly and orderly. I wandered into a hotel to see if I could book a room. They were fully booked, but were letting people who were stuck without a place to stay to sleep in a ballroom. They provided free sheets, pillows and food to about 100 people, many of them stranded foreigners. Some local volunteers brought in gas powered generators so people could charge their phones. The next morning, I went out for a walk, as it was still not possible to get out of town. At 8:00 in the morning, the supermarket in front of the central train station had staff, in uniform, handing out perishable food for free, rather than having to throw it away (there was no electricity so freezers were down.) The word was only starting to trickle in about how serious the damage was farther north. People were universally calm, generous and polite.

I walked around for a few hours, not knowing the town. Many sites of severe structural damage, but some businesses were already open. I passed by a noodle shop run by a young guy. He called out to me and said "You look hungry." (I speak Japanese). He offered me a free bowl of noodles. I finally ended up getting out of town two days later by finding a cab and riding all the way to Fukushima Airport, for the last flight to Tokyo, and then back home to Kobe.

The order, decency, and humanity I experienced those few days still make me tear up when I think about it (even right now).

It's really nice to read about the best side of humanity showing itself. Thanks for sharing.

That was uplifting to read. Thank you for sharing your experience.

> local gaijins

Isn't this an oxymoron? I don't really know Japanese, but as far as I'm aware this means something along the lines of "local foreigners".

Aka expat community. Those who have already moved there should work to try to help newcomers integrate.

Aah, I guess they're still considered gaijins.

You're considered gaijin even if you're born in the country. My half-Japanese children (born and bred in Japan) get called "gaijin" all the time.

I understood it as referring to non-Japanese people living in Japan, who should make sure that the clueless ones among their ranks behave.

That's exactly it. I try and help foreigners who look lost at stations when I can, and while I'm a foreigner myself, I have been here 8 years now.

"Gaijin" is any non-ethnically-japanese person, so non-japanese long-term residents are still gaijin, even if they've been here for 15y, have a long-term job and married a japanese.

"Local gaijin" are thus simply people living in the area but not of japanese ethnicity. Mostly expats.

Shunning as pseudopunishment is silly. If it's not a problem, let them be. If it is a problem, fine them or arrest them.

If it's not a problem, let them be. If it is a problem, fine them or arrest them.

This is very American way of thinking. Japanese society is like it is precisely because it follows different norms than American ones.

More on the shisa kanko Point-and-Call system here:

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/pointing-and-calling-j...

I've heard of people doing similar things with small children for safety reasons, things such as point both ways before crossing, and the old "fingers on noses before the door closes" for car doors.

This is such an awesome system. It completely makes sense that your mindfulness will increase when you integrate your full body with a task, using your eyesight, gestures, and voice.

It's quite similar to jotting down notes using pen-and-pencil and enunciating the object of study in order to remember it well. It is even similar to prayer and meditation, where incense and singing increases your own awareness.

It's also used in the factories in Japan to reduce errors (I worked in one as part of my training there)

That was the most interesting takeaway.

I was really wondering if train and tram conductors are practicing a low level version of kung-fu or so.

Now I know why they do that.

Very interesting & thanks for the link.

The NYC subway operators do this as well.

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/mta-conductors-point-sto...

I've been through mass transit systems in at least fifteen countries by this point. Japan (Osaka) didn't leave a huge impression, as plenty of countries in Asia have similar systems. Yesterday I caught the first inter-city mass transit in China from Guangzhou to Foshan, part of the aggressive infrastructural beginnings of the Pearl River Delta (PRD) megacity.

The two cities' systems were evidently conceived and funded independently, with an interconnecting station design that terminates both systems in a big mess. Hauling a kid and luggage we first had to climb two huge flights of stairs (no lift), go through a stupid ineffective security screening, interface with a horrific UI to buy tickets, walk a substantial distance, descend, negotiate more stairs, walk a substantial distance again, and finally stand on a squashed platform. I did note they had anti-suicide barriers, but the lack of space made them more like anti-accident barriers. (Shanghai by contrast has full height doors on the platforms.)

The actual metro ride was very pleasant and fast however and despite a crowded train (it was evening rush hour) and some ill passengers nearby we managed to emerge unscathed. Total cost from Guangzhou to Foshan: 6元 (about USD$1).

IIRC I think John Young of cryptome published or shared something years ago on "the architecture of control" specifically discussing the physical environment of train stations. I remember it changed my perceptions of train stations even in the comparatively vacuous venue of Sydney's system. I just had a search but unfortunately couldn't find it.

Your comment made me look. I haven't read all of the following.

http://observer.com/2010/12/the-original-wikileaker/

This may not be specifically what you had in mind, but perhaps it pertains:

https://archinect.com/features/article/149956364/the-whistle...

The Whistleblower Architects: surveillance, infrastructure, and freedom of information according to Cryptome (part 2) Nicholas Korody By Nicholas Korody Jul 7, '16 12:15 PM EST 0 Credit: Cryptome Credit: Cryptome

This is the second half of a two-part interview with Cryptome, an online repository of leaked government secrets and other documents relevant to contemporary surveillance and its infrastructure. Cryptome is run by the architects Deborah Natsios and John Young, who live and work in New York City (any use of the first person is from Natsios' perspective). Part one, which you can read here, delves into their backgrounds and motivations. Part two deals more with their views on the contemporary city and the politics of information access.

I was hoping you could draw something like a sketch of the city as you see it today, perhaps using New York, where you both live and work, as an example. How does surveillance operate in the city? How does information become a mechanism of control? I'm thinking a bit about your recent postings on Twitter of surreptitious surveillance cameras.

Our place of work overlooks a long stretch of historic Broadway, the city's oldest north-south thoroughfare and a former native trail. Broadway charts a diagonal exception to the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, which famously overlaid a rectangular grid as a rationalizing technique to discipline wild Manhattan's island topography.Vibrant democracy has to make public space available for the unexpected, the creative, the dissenting without fear of reprisal

Broadway's everyday percussion of taxis, fire engines, ambulance sirens, garbage trucks, barking dogs and toddler tantrums that reach our windows confirms that, in spite of the grid, eruptions of near-chaos have always been part of the creative hardscape. It's only when we join the anarchic materiality of street-level democracy as autonomous, anonymous or social pedestrians that we feel truly embodied in the living city. Vibrant democracy has to make public space available for the unexpected, the creative, the dissenting without fear of reprisal.

Not visible from our upper aerie is the concealed architectonic of municipal grids superimposed in recent decades onto legacy disciplines of 1811. We cannot see vast information infrastructures that encode processes of worldwide economic restructuring whose capital, symbols, goods and bodies flow through the local interests of our relentlessly global city. Harnessing informational flows falls under the trending rubric of municipal 'smart' policies.

Metropolitan governance has widely embraced market-driven best practices derived from global risk management approaches, as David Lyon notes. Their privatizing regimes are anticipating and controlling urban outcomes through risk calculations that mine big data from myriad sources. Most provocative are analytics gleaned from ubiquitous watching and tracking of bodies that make up the city's far-flung, mobile and diasporic populations. We are increasingly visible to invisible regimes. Cryptome's library for information equality works in small, daily increments to invert this diagram.We are increasingly visible to invisible regimes.

As part of modest efforts to do our part to help shore up the diminishing public domain, Cryptome has been documenting in recent weeks the block-by-block smart upgrading of New York City's obsolete public telephony system. Trenches are being chopped along the street, rope pulled through underground innerduct, rebar placed to receive poured concrete, galvanized steel pedestals positioned with orange power cable and fiber poking out of conduit.

Credit: Cryptome Credit: Cryptome

Installed onto the legacy footprint of the city's former sidewalk payphone system, 7,500 to 10,000 'Structures' of the dispersed LinkNYC system will broadcast 'relevant' ads on 55” HD screens to subsidize the kiosks' free gigabit-speed Internet service, free public wi-fi, free domestic phone calls, free USB phone-charging outlets and a 911 emergency call button.

Assemblages like these undergird smart cities that are consolidating around us, with boosterish zeal, for the supposed benefit of municipal efficiency, convenience and social equity. Big data collection technologies that enable the Internet of Things (IoT) are embedding into larger scale urban infrastructures towards that end.

But can smart space be democratic public space when speech and acts are ubiquitously recorded and reported? Are apps 'free' when they harvest vast troves of personal data without consent? can smart space be democratic public space when speech and acts are ubiquitously recorded and reported?Wi-fi hotspots are notoriously insecure. Smartphones exude communications trails and geolocational clues. LinkNYC's multiple onboard sensors include microphones and concealed pinhole cameras that capture ambient data for 24/7 delivery to downstream analytics.

Surveillant practices capture and process our digital traces as abstracted New Yorkers, fragmenting personal data into simulated identities stored in various databases or resold to data brokers. Jury pool lists, marriage licenses, voting records, civil disobedience misdemeanors, rifle permits and police dossiers––analog bureaucratic records that constituted an earlier idea of civic modernity––are now logged electronically. They coordinate with other databases, both commercial and municipal, through powerful data-mining analytics that reinforce the social partitions and economic divisions of the inequitably stratified city, as Lyon warns.

During the 1960s, Jane Jacobs advocated 'eyes on the street' as a citizen-directed management of public space that invited watchful caring of neighbors and strangers. New Yorkers could make 911 calls seeking emergency assistance from the analog payphone system first installed in the 1920s.

Credit: Cryptome Credit: Cryptome

After 9/11, the NYPD deputized New Yorkers as para-policing informants, urging them to act on fear and suspicion: 'if you see something say something'. The vintage payphone system had fallen into disuse. Post-9/11 visualization and reporting regimes revealed risk management-style policing coordinating with command-and-control technologies developed for military battlespace and cyberwar. Preemptive war-gaming targeted Muslim neighborhoods of Bay Ridge, Pakistani communities along Coney Island Avenue, public housing in the South Bronx and Bangladeshi enclaves in Kensington.

A company that produces military mission control systems manufactures LinkNYC kiosks through a spin off entity. Installed along public sidewalks at a granular coverage of every 200 feet or so, the devices introduce an unprecedented urban apparatus: the coordinated automation and privatization of neighborhood-scale sensing and reporting derived from military command-and-control technology. Has LinkNYC been tracking Cryptome's movements through the city?LinkNYC joins stop-and-frisk policing and Lower Manhattan's Ring of Steel security cordon as one of the city's premier sensing and reporting technologies....

Not that. The article would have been ~2000 or so, certainly pre 2005. More 'as is' than 'crystal balling'.

Osaka probably isn't a good representation of the rest of Japan's public transport and I can see why it wouldn't leave an impression. Particularly if you catch the slow JR between KIX and Namba. Osaka-jin are typically more laid-back and could perhaps even be considered 'disorderly' compared to the norm - they like to stand on the right side of escalators, but the entire rest of Japan stands on the left. This leaves an initial bad impression in Kyoto central station, where you have many people arrive from Osaka and you end up with people stood on both sides of the escalators. As soon as you leave this area of the central station though, the rest of Kyoto's transport system is super efficient, even during the busiest times. I find it better than Tokyo's, although it's obviously not quite as busy. I think my impression might be slightly biased because of how much a lifesaver the aircon is in Kyoto stations during the dog days.

I think the biggest difference between Japan's train system and elsewhere is less to do with the facilities than it is to do with the people. In Japan people don't push, they queue up in straight lines and wait orderly. The system works because people don't try to game it. In stations in China, the reverse is true. If you just waited in line you would never get anywhere because there will always be someone who'll push in front of you. There's no way Japan's system would transfer over well into this culture.

"This leaves an initial bad impression in Kyoto central station, where you have many people arrive from Osaka and you end up with people stood on both sides of the escalators."

Thanks! That explains a lot.

It was pretty clear that you usually stand on the left, except in Osaka.

Kyoto, however, confused the hell out of me, because people sometimes stood on the left, sometimes on the right. Very un-Japanese, I dare say.

Now I know why.

>Rail stations, whether in Japan or elsewhere, are also great places to see “nudge theory” at work.

Gentle nudges, like ultrasonic deterrents to keep teenagers away with "a look of confusion or discomfort, and often a cry of urusai! (Loud!)"...?

That's in a separate section of the article. "Point and Call" isn't nudge theory either.

I remember riding on a train in Japan when some schoolgirls sitting across from me were just chatting in an excited way...nothing that seemed out of place, but man did they get it. Things seemed fine to me, especially on a hot summer day in an uncrowded train with the windows down (plenty of atmospheric noise).

All of a sudden a conductor (not sure if you call him that, he was in the back end of the car) popped out of his enclosure and yelled at them like they had just trashed his living space. He did use the word "urusai," but more than that (as is often the case in Japanese) his tone was just _dark_, fast, and loud.

All I could think was that he put on that intervention for us few foreigners who were being pretty quiet, and who really weren't bothered, but I still have no idea.

> All I could think was that he put on that intervention for us few foreigners

Nah. In Japanese culture, it's simply considered rude to be loud in trains.

Still. I've never seen a conductor yell at anyone for being loud, especially in the cities. Maybe it happens in the inaka...

Never seen a conductor do it, but I've seen other passengers lay into someone for being too rowdy or (especially) talking on the phone. Usually following a comically obvious build-up of red-faced anger over 5-10 minutes or so.

Anecdotally I've heard that social censure is far more common and ruthless in the women's-only cars.

That just sounds like an Asian in parental mode to me. Sounds just like my mom or dad when they've had enough. (Seriously, there was always a part of me thinking, "Why does Mom/Dad sound like they're in a Samurai drama?" I'm not even Japanese!)

Was this outside of a major metro area? The tone and conjugation of the word is surprising.

It's possible they were talking about you in a less than flattering way thinking you don't understand Japanese, and the conductor had enough of it.

Those 'ultrasonic deterrents' should be completely illegal to deploy on/near any publicly accessible property. Having run into them many times over the years here in the US they're horrifically loud, painful, and less of a deterrent and more a punishment for having less-degraded hearing.

Agreed. I'm well beyond being a teenager, but I still hear these things. Some stores put them near their entrances and it's never a pleasant surprise.

Indeed. I'm 34 and can still hear them.

I used to go to the same food court nearly everyday for lunch during work. They had birds wander in, little sparrows, that would peck at the crumbs. Not that many of them if any at all.

They deployed a constant sweeping high pitched noise emitter to combat the birds and it's impossible to be in the area now. I just can't imagine how they're legal or even sensible.

I wonder if perhaps it wasn't a ploy to get the court to slow down and get the tenants to leave so they can redevelop it. It's been a local institution for some time.

Completely agreed. There's this road I sometimes have in my running route where one of the residents there put one of these things in their front yard. It hurts my ears and, I'm afraid, my longer term hearing if it happens often enough. It's really loud.

Who'd think it okay to inflict this sort of thing on people of _any_ age? It's also a blatant attempt at age discrimination.

This is great we need those everywhere.

I hear someone invented a special light which is uncomfortably hot when it interacts with darker skin, but doesn't (usually) affect those who are fair-skinned.[1] Statistics show that locations that deploy these lights have fewer minor crimes.[2]

Do you think we should deploy these lights along with the squealers? If not, then why not -- what is different?

[1] Not actually true (thank goodness). Fictional example was created for illustrative purposes only.

[2] Not actually true (because the lights aren't real). But if they were real, this would almost certainly be true. Among other things, if you drive off a percentage of the population, then it decreases the number of people, and thus the number of crimes.

These were sadly pretty common in the UK for a while, at the height of the ASBO-plague. I believe they're called 'mosquitos'.

> Operating on the theory that exposure to blue light has a calming effect on one’s mood, rail stations installed these LED panels as a suicide-prevention measure

Color me completely skeptical. That sounds like superstition to me. It reports that rates declined after installation, but if they preferentially installed the lights in areas with high rates of suicide, then we should expect to see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean .

It said that the lights led to a 84 percent decline in suicides attempts. That may not be true, but it is definitely way higher than "regression towards the mean" would cause.

One could not say what is "expected" without knowing either the statistics of suicides in Japanese train stations, or the statistics of where installations happened. If per-station variance is high, or if the installed stations were significant outliers (or both), 84% would be perfectly within expectation.

I find it very hard to believe that the color of the light in the train station would sway a person's life-and-death decision. Plenty of things could, but "it's blue here" does not seem like one of them. "Colors have 'magical' effects on emotion" is a very woo-y thing to believe.

While I share your skepticism, there's is pretty solid evidence that strong white/blue light is effective in treating seasonal affective disorder, a type of depression:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_affective_disorder#Ma...

That fact along with any reason to believe that 84% of suicides are caused by SAD might help explain things. But that "fact" isn't remotely true.

Emotions themselves are very woo-y things.

Yes, another article on HN a few days ago said blue light wakes you up while red light makes you sleepy (and I follow the science of that one more):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17117656

> exposure to blue light has a calming effect on one’s mood,

That did sound strange. I know that light therapy is used for treating seasonal depression (a sibling comment already mentioned that). 84% reduction in attempts seem pretty significant. They even quoted the accompanying study which showed that it didn't simply shift the suicides to other station that didn't yet have a light installed.

I wonder if there is another reason besides just the immediate "blue light make the depression subside" effect. Maybe something like "someone is aware of my pain and they tried to stop me by installing this silly light".

> Maybe something like "someone is aware of my pain and they tried to stop me by installing this silly light".

That is an explanation that is much more believable to me than "mysterious color-based calming effect".

Recently went to Japan.

For a 'order' freak like me, it was heaven on earth.

Not only in train stations, each and every aspect of their lives revolves around understanding human behavior and coming up with solutions to make activities as less confusing as possible.

Their commitment to discipline is astounding.

If everyone on earth were like the Japanese, our pace of technological, social and other forms of development would be 10x of what they are now.

What I actually liked most is the following:

Eating fermented fish out of a bento box, while gliding through Japan with 300km/h is completely acceptable, yacking away on your cell phone is not.

It makes for a very pleasent (and delicious) atmosphere while using public transport.

I know you’re talking about bullet (or other express) trains where it’s expected to eat, but you’re definitely not supposed to do it on normal trains.

Actually, you can talk on your phone in the bullet trains only, but you have to go to the compartments between carriages.

I was very surprised to recognize one of the train-leaving jingles:

https://youtu.be/470_2wt2t1o?t=41

Took me a second but I realized it was the same music that the old Mr. Do arcade machine (from 1982) plays when you get an extra man:

https://youtu.be/5_BBQWed8Vk?t=434

So is this jingle an homage to the game, or did the game lift the melody from somewhere else?

It’s the theme song from Astro Boy https://youtu.be/KGq6z1mEU9Q

And they play it at Takadanobaba station which located in the area where Osamu Tezuka, the creator of Astro Boy, had his studio. (There is also a huge mural under the railway bridge outside featuring all of his characters)

Funny to hear that here, that's my local train station :)

One missing ingredient is that the people have been trained to be orderly and respect and maintain the social order.

Removing the blue lights, noise, arrows would do little to disrupt the order of this highly disciplined people, see how civility and order is maintained even after a major earthquake

I was really hoping for more examples of crowd management and station design. This article only has a few examples, and none of them really explained why Japanese trains are so efficient.

The likely answer is that the Japanese are an efficient people in general.

It's not surprising that a group of people following the same social norms would have an efficient system for public transport.

Americans would first build a three level carpark and gas station, then a strip mall with a drug store, take-away coffee and donuts. Then they would privatize the publicly funded station, at which time the service quality would tank and the entire facility would fall in to a state of minimum repair. Or something like that.

Are we using reality here or whatever lives in your head?

American public transit is public (government owned and run) and it still sucks.

Additionally Japan, just like any other country, is going to build concessions and parking into/ around anything that draws enough people to merit an investment.

Reality, depending on what you believe. http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/20... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_doughnut_shops#United_... https://www.nap.edu/read/10141/chapter/4#42

In Japan, most of the rail network was privatized in the 1990s and it's still the best in the world. Nothing tanked.

Large department stores, malls, hotels, etc. are generally built into the major stations, and are often owned and operated by the rail companies. Most of them really do have drugstores, coffee shops and bakeries/donut shops. It's very convenient for commuters who need to shop on the way to/from work, and the money helps keep the trains running. If we did more of this in America, our transit companies would be better off.

Yep, I am not table-thumping just drawing an amused sketch of the US stereotype. Regarding real estate as a funding source for transit, HK has a similar model. MTR corporation runs about seven malls I think.

Japanese privatization is an interesting phenomenon, where crony capitalism gives the corporations immense power, but simultaneously a huge responsibility act like societal patriarchs. At least on the outside, a big corporation can't be seen as evil, and if they ever get caught betraying that trust, CEO suicides are not unheard of.

On the bright side, it means the train lines get built and the fares are kept reasonable, despite monopoly power. On the negative side, people tend to trust these companies way more than is healthy, and if you try to do something that you're legally entitled to, but that a company doesn't like, you generally won't get much sympathy when it doesn't work out.

>Then they would privatize the publicly funded station, at which time the service quality would tank and the entire facility would fall in to a state of minimum repair. Or something like that.

The reverse happened to the rail system I ride. It tanked when government took over. Turns out that a company that can't just ask the taxpayers to bail it out if it goes bankrupt runs a more effective train system than the government who answers to (in practical terms) nobody.

The fact of the matter is that if the organization that runs the service has a culture that gives no fucks about delivering good service to customers then you won't get good service. In the US this attitude is more often found in government than private enterprise because the government has a monopoly backed by law so it doesn't have to care about pesky things like customer satisfaction.

In India they follow much different social norms, it's an interesting contrast.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=1eAP-BoxVkg

I did this at my last India visit a long time ago. It was frightening and exhilarating at the same time :-).

> rail stations in Japan began installing these LED panels as a suicide-prevention measure

Another technique they use is to play recorded birdsong and other "sounds of nature" at some open-air stations, which supposedly makes people feel more peaceful and relaxed. It's quite subtle, random and realistic-sounding and caused me quite a lot of confusion looking for the invisible birds before learning the truth!

The point of the bird sounds is to help visually impaired people find the exit (notice it's always coming from where the escalator starts).

Hm. Are you sure? I don't mean the repetitive "chirp" sound which is typical for guiding the visually impaired, most obviously at traffic signals. I mean actual birdsong recordings, played quite subtly at random intervals (ie, sometimes minutes apart). It would seem quite an impractical way to guide anyone.

Anyway, my information is from a friend whose uncle works at Tokyo Metro, and has seen his fair share of jinshin jiko maguro. She was quite clear about the notion that it was an anti-suicide measure, and I believed her. I did only notice it on the Saikyou line.

Japanese trains are also a great example of high-assurance system development in action. If you have IEEE or ACM, you can read a personal account of each of the stages they went through for the control systems:

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1173109/

There's also some other papers that go into detail on specific techs or rollouts:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/3925287_Adaptive_st...

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/5207329/

https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1262517

Reminds me of how NYC subway trains now have arrows on the floor of the train cars directing people to step further in instead of just standing at the door and blocking everyone behind them (which seems to be an all too common behavior).

I've not convinced at how effective that is.

You and I both :)

An announcement I heard recently at a major station was made in Japanese, English, Chinese and Korean. The station staff suggested that local passengers should feel free to offer assistance to any tourists who appear to need help.

I felt crowd-sourcing passenger support is a good approach. The number of tourists in Tokyo is increasing considerably, but people in Japan often need prior affirmation that their behaviour would be socially acceptable.

I visited Tokyo / Japan after two years living in Madagascar (talk about culture shock) and was so amazed at how orderly a crowd that could have otherwise been chaotic moved throughout these cramped spaces. At first I thought it was just cultural -- but not after reading this. Then again, intentional efforts to shift societal behavior, maybe that is a cultural product?

Regardless, I would love to see what some of these "nudge" gestures look like in the U.S. How can we better design not just spaces but how humans interact with them?

Anecdote time... Tokyo train stations kinda suck.

Coming from a few weeks in Malaysia and Singapore, it was interesting to see just how little and how poorly translated English is there. (They speak Japanese and not English, but lets be honest about it being the lingua franca)

It was VERY DIFFICULT to figure out how their train colors worked, how Orange gets to Blue (it's a connect, but a couple blocks away). That Ginza station (iirc, might be wrong) has at least two names.

Also, that none of the machines take cards! We were 11 yen short - about $0.10 for a ticket to the airport, and while the very nice workers were happy to explain where a few blocks away the ATM was, it would have been great if someone just threw a coin at us to get us to go away, different culture, I suppose had I asked someone would have given it to us, but I feel like in the USA it would have just been offered.

Japan was a lot like NYC, the subway there is also more confusing than places like DC or Taipei.

I found it very easy and each time I’ve asked for assistance I’ve received it. The stations are always manned with several staff so help is always available.

On the Tokyo subway all trains and maps, signage and in cabin screens provide English labelling. What more do you need ?

Edit: I have to add, the fact the trains a almost perfectly ontime, with little wait between services, always designed to meet capacity, are In great condition and spotless, I really don’t see how it “sucks”. In fact what more do you want out of a Subway?

There's a small learning curve but they do a great job on signage and maps.

I kinda feel bad asking for assistance in Japan. Most of the times I needed help they went way beyond my expectations to assist.

> They speak Japanese and not English, but lets be honest about it being the lingua franca

If you go to Seoul they don't even have Romanized names for the train stations. Everything's in Hangul. For a massive system built primarily for Japanese speakers it's really pretty accessible.

> Japan was a lot like NYC, the subway there is also more confusing than places like DC or Taipei.

I mean, DC and Taipei are much smaller systems than NYC and (especially) Tokyo. There's also geographical concerns -- Tokyo is just huge and NYC is very oddly shaped. DC, Taipei, Boston, Chicago, etc are very radial which makes them easy to figure out.

In addition, in a country as big and insular (literally and figuratively) as Japan, catering to foreigners is less of a concern.

Except they absolutely cater to foreigners. Even living in the countryside of Hokkaido, all of the train stations had everything in Japanese and English.

> If you go to Seoul they don't even have Romanized names for the train stations. Everything's in Hangul. For a massive system built primarily for Japanese speakers it's really pretty accessible.

I'm not sure when you were last in Seoul, but this was not the case when I was there recently. Perhaps they worked on it for the Olympics? Most signs (and I think every navigational sign) I saw in the metro stations was quadrilingual - Hangul, English, Chinese, and Japanese. The station names themselves were written in Hangul and English (not sure about Japanese/Chinese characters). I tried to find any news articles or background about this but I couldn't.

I have much more difficulty navigating the metro in Tokyo than I did in Seoul, and I can read a good bit of Japanese and no Korean.

Certainly was not the case when I was in Seoul in 2014 - even PA announcements on the train were in English.

I'm visiting London right now, and compared to here, Tokyo train stations are amazing for signage. There are always super clear, easy to spot signage for where transfers & exits are, what exits they are and what landmarks they lead to, where elevators or escalators are, etc. Electric signs starting at the entrances (before the gates even) for what trains are arriving at what platforms and when.

In London navigational signs are either completely missing or white signs on white tile backdrops so they blend in and are hard to spot (aside from the generic "Way Out" exit signs that don't specify out to where, will I have an escalator/elevator, etc). Electric signs are sparse (maybe one after the gates and one or two only at the ends of the platform)

Tokyo is complicated by the fact that it's actually 10+ different systems run by different, mostly private, companies (JR trains like Yamanote, Tokyo Metro trains, keio, toei, keikyu, keisei, yurikamome, etc etc) so I'm always impressed by how integrated they manage to make it seem.

It sucks that Japan is mostly a cash society, but Apple Pay Suica on iPhone 8 and up helps a lot :)

Singapore does have an amazing subway though, completely world-class.

It sucks that Japan is mostly a cash society...

There are a range of opinions on this topic. I vastly prefer cash no matter what nation I'm in, and am extremely annoyed when it's not a possibility. Japan and its cash just works. Most situations in other nations that do not admit cash pretend that they function acceptably, but we don't have to look hard to see cracks in the facade.

No thanks. I did not find it convienient having US, Malaysian, Singapore, and Japanese coins in my pocket. I like having a single card that has an always current exchange rate with no fees, and in fact pays back 1.5%.

I agree I thought subway in Singapore was amazing last time I visited. What I really liked was the way the carriage always stopped at the same fixed point on platform and they had designated areas for people to stand when embarking. It made the whole process of getting on and off the train much more organised.

Here in Australia trains are no where near that disciplined about where on platform they stop. Carriage doors can be anywhere so basically as soon as train pulls into station everyone on platform surges towards nearest door.

I was in London in January I found the underground there very confusing. I was doing the typical tourist sight seeing thing and was trying to get from Tower of London to the British Museum I knew the stations were on different lines I knew I had to get to the Piccadilly line but there was a lack of detail as to where to change trains. There were voice announcements on trains themselves "Change here for xxx line" but signage was pretty poor.

Singapore was great for subway. As to the stops at a particular spot, lots of the Asian trains do that, USA and others not so much, we noticed it too.

The multitude of train companies is further complicated that some companies have through service on each other tracks. Do you will be waiting on a Toei Asakusa Line plateform when a train from the KeiKyuu company shows up. The map inside the train does not have the station you just departed from on it much lest your destination. Good luck!

I enjoy figuring out how their system works so it does not bother me. But I tell people who go there for the first time to stick with JR and maybe Tokyo Metro, as the lines a tourist would typically use have simple schedules and all the stops are color-coded and numbered.

Usually HyperDia covers these cases with different companies using the same tracks. It never has misdirected me so far.

http://www.hyperdia.com/en

I think the navigation system, which is company independent, is fantastic.

For those that have never been to Japan and using Tokyo Metro as an example:

Every metro line has a name and a color. For example: The Asakusa line (A) has a reddish color. The A designation is only used by the Asakusa line and each station has a number.

Higashi-Ginza is A11. It's also H09, because it's also a station for the (gray) Hybia line.

The system is extended to other operators. All Yamanote line stations are JYn, where n signifies the station number.

That (and a Pasmo or Suica smart card, which lets you switch systems seemlessly) makes navigation, even in the Tokyo transit system, which is arguably the most complex in the world, very easy and intuitive.

The same system is applied in every other Japanese city I've visted, alas the system is usually much simpler.

I really had no trouble navigating Tokyo stations and I don't speak a word of Japanese besides すみません (excuse me/sorry to bother), so I'm quite surprised to see this comment!

Google maps and other transit apps are really good in Tokyo, paying with suica/pasmo makes things quite smooth--just keep it topped up habitually when you go to a convenience store--and I didn't really have the trouble you seem to have had with color/line navigation... I was definitely a bit flustered by the busy-ness but never really had a problem getting on the correct platform.

Not only do I not speak any Japanese, but I'm colour blind, and don't have any kind of subway or metro at home - and I had no issue navigating around Tokyo or Kyoto stations. And in Tokyo, on multiple occasions there was even an excessively helpful English-speaking Japanese stewardess that insisted on helping us from A to B.

Same here (well, I can manage a few basic phrases in Japanese, but that's about it). Navigating Japan's rail system was very easy. Well, unless you enter turnstiles at the station and then try to exit right from the same station, that seems to confuse SUICA a lot and you have to go through the manual lane...

Last time I was in Japan (a couple of months ago) I learned that at some stations they actually sell a station-access-only ticket (~JPY200 for a few hours IIRC) for people who want to go in to meet someone or to use the shops.

Ah, nice. Might be something new, unless I missed in 2 years ago when I was there last time.

Oh, if you use a Suica card the system still gets confused. So they haven't really fixed your problem. Also, the notion of paying for access purely to a rail platform was super foreign to me...

I guess that's how they can keep the place reasonably clear and moving along.

I have never been to Japan myself but those of my friends who were all had nothing but praise for the train system.

WRT the lack of English: In most parts of of South America you won't find anyone who speaks English. Same for North Africa. One can be annoyed or just see the humourous aspects and put the car into the "car parking park" (seen in Morocco) before having a "vegetarian in bread" (seen in Berlin). ;)

A friend and I found ourselves stranded in rural Japan when the train system shut down for days due to high winds. Seems to me lots of foreigners tend to visit big cities and tourist centers only then walk away wowed, frankly the infrastructure is more heterogeneous than this set realise.

Just another anecdote alongside the others. Maybe I got lucky but I found the amount of written and spoken English in Japan, especially in the metropolitan areas, to be perfectly adequate.

As for actually getting around, it's just a matter of having the right tools. I'm mostly sharing this for the benefit of anyone thinking of going to Japan.

- The landscape of transit cards is confusing, and while many of them are still accepted in various places, the existence of such a wide variety is mostly a legacy thing as far as I could tell. I had a Suica card and it worked virtually everywhere I went in Japan, though I didn't venture off the beaten path.

- The Japan Rail Pass, while not having any functional use, did make things cheaper.

- A rented wifi hotspot is an absolute no-brainer. If you travel to Japan, just get one. You can pick it up at the post office in the airport and drop it back at the same place in a prepaid envelope when you depart.

- The Hyperdia smartphone app is fantasic. You can pretty much get yourself between any two points in Japan with it, and once you've used it a couple times and understand some of the icons it's easy to tell when you need a separate pass or need to walk between platforms or nearby stations.

The variety in transit cards is mostly due to the variety of operators who use different systems. Japan Rail has Suica, Tokyo Subway lines use Passmo. Some regional operators have their own ones. As you say you can mostly use them interchangeably, probably because it is less trouble for everybody that way.

> - The landscape of transit cards is confusing, and while many of them are still accepted in various places, the existence of such a wide variety is mostly a legacy thing as far as I could tell. I had a Suica card and it worked virtually everywhere I went in Japan, though I didn't venture off the beaten path.

I think this is correct. I first went to Japan in 2008, and the cards you had actually mattered. I went again last year, and I used a Suica all over the country without problems -- it was a Suica I bought in 2008, and it still worked and had money on it after sitting in a drawer for 9 years.

It seems like all of these cards equivalent now, at least for tourists -- for people who live there, I think there are some differences in the kinds of monthly passes you can get for each card.

You can use Suica almost everywhere. The reverse is not true. For example, I live in the Tokai region and have a Toica. I can't use it outside of Tokai. I think eventually these things will even out, though. I was surprised that a Passmo card I got in Tokyo and accidentally used in Tokai worked.

But the golden rule in Japan -- make sure to carry enough cash in case you get into trouble :-)

Suica, Toica, etc. should work in each other’s areas now. There is a list here: http://jreast.okbiz.okwave.jp/sp/default/faq/question/show/1...

You got close there. Suica (and the Icoca I have, don't know about others) are valid for 10 years after last use. This seems like a ridiculously huge amount of time to me.

> The Japan Rail Pass, while not having any functional use, did make things cheaper

Just a quick comment for anyone planning to come to Japan. If you are going to stay in Tokyo, then the Japan Rail Pass is probably not worth it (it only gives you a free pass on JR rail). But if you are going anywhere else, you absolutely should get this. Especially on the Shinkansen, you get free reserved seat tickets. Also, the system is set up for this. You go into line to get your tickets and you will magically find that the person who is dealing with you can speak English (because they can see your pass when you are in line and insert an English speaking person discretely into the correct cubicle).

Also, if you ever get into trouble, waving the JR rail pass is like a get out of jail free card. They bend over backwards for pass holders. If you get on the wrong train, they'll just change the tickets. If you miss the last Shinkansen, they will discretely push you onto a full reservation only express train.

Finally, if you want to go anywhere of any distance, the cost reduction will definitely by huge. Trains (especially the Shinkansen) in Japan are expensive. Just going out to Osaka from Tokyo and back will basically pay for a 1 week pass. If you want to go out west or up north then you'll be saving upwards of $1K.

I live in Japan, but about 5 years ago I went to the UK for a couple of years. I needed to go back to Canada for my visa and ended up bouncing around between Canada and Japan, leaving me as a tourist in Japan for 1 month. I absolutely could not believe how great the JR Rail pass was. I went all the way up to Sapporo, which is probably the last time I will ever be able to afford something like that.

Absolutely that!

Another example: Travelling from Tokyo to Sapporo return (the part from Hakodate to Sapporo is not covered by Shinkansen, but should be from 2030, but I digress) is more expensive than a three week train pass.

If you're not strapped for cash get a pass for the green car (first class). The price difference is minimal (ca. 60K Yen vs. 80K Yen for three weeks) and it makes travelling even more amazing.

I'd say my savings where > 2K $ last time in Japan with the rail pass.

I didn't even know there was a green car pass. That's insane! Even if you are travelling in Obon or Golden Week that will absolutely guarantee that you can travel anywhere you want to go whenever you want. I've only travelled in green car once. I'm a bit of a train nerd, but I'm also cheap so I'm always jealous! Some day I will absolutely travel on the Nozomi Shinkansen, no matter what it costs :-)

"Even if you are travelling in Obon or Golden Week that will absolutely guarantee that you can travel anywhere you want to go whenever you want."

On the Sunday at the end of golden week all Shinkansen from Hokkaido to Tokyo, with the exception of the first two trains, were completely sold out. That was two weeks in advance.

So being forced to take an early train I had to spend a night in Hokadate, which was actually quite nice in its own right. And on JR pass level I think the price difference between normal and green class is so low that it's definitly worth it.

In Switzerland first class is second class + 100 - 150%.

But generally it's true that a green car pass will get you a reservation even when all else is sold out.

"Some day I will absolutely travel on the Nozomi Shinkansen, no matter what it costs :-)"

Actually the cost is the same like for all other Shinkansens :-) The only thing is you can't use them with the rail pass.

That said my maximum wait for an eligable train upon spontaneously deciding I need a train ride was 30 minutes. But is was usually more in the 10 minute range.

Oh, and in order to totally shame some high level JR bureaucrat I have photographic evidence about not one, but two Shinkansens with a delay of 5 minutes.

Seppuku is probably the only option here.

:-)

Ha ha! Unfortunately the Nozomi doesn't stop in Shizuoka, so there is a minimum fee for me to ride it :-) I actually thought it was more expensive, so I'm happy to hear it isn't.

And, yeah, this year has been hopeless for the Shinkansen record. I'll be interested to see how they report it...

I have some sympathy with this comment (although like other commenters I don't quite agree). I think some of this disconnect is cultural (or what you're used to). The most important thing to understand about Japanese trains is that there a many train companies. If you don't realise that, then you can easily get confused about the need to go to a completely different building across the road to get a transfer. Many stylised maps don't make it clear and I've been confused before. I'm guessing that the blue in your example is the Keisei line.

As for cards, Japan is still very much a cash based culture. Although you can use credit cards in most places now, if you had come 10 or 15 years ago you might have been astounded that you practically could not survive without carrying cash. Even now, if you go out to where I live (in the countryside), I don't think there is a single store that accepts credit cards. It used to be that the ATMs were only open during banking hours (what's the point in an ATM if it's only open when there is a teller available? ;-) ). I got into the habit of that time of carrying about $1000 all the time. Hell, the gas man would pass me on the street randomly, hand me my bill and expect that I would pay him on the spot. Different culture :-)

Anyway, I hope your trip was enjoyable otherwise. One more quick tip: If you come again and end up in a station without romaji train maps, you can corner one of the station attendants and they will find a way to help you somehow (also probably won't speak English, but I've seen them being very inventive).

"Hell, the gas man would pass me on the street randomly, hand me my bill and expect that I would pay him on the spot. Different culture :-)"

That's weird. I mean, Japan is still cash-centric, but at least you can take your pile of cash to the combini to pay the utility bill. :-D

Was it one of those kerosene guys in the little muscial trucks?

No. Normal gas company. But my gas company at the time was a super small one (just the local area), so I think they didn't have a sophisticated billing system. I'm with the regional gas company now and it's normal billing system.

You can't really compare to Singapore.

English is our primary language.

It had nothing to do with the language, the subway system was laid out logically in SG. Not like NYC or Tokyo. I appreciated the English language though, made the trip very easy. I don’t like the surveillance aspects (WAY too many cameras) but it’s a really beautiful place.

The signage is quite good, and if you know the names of one or two lines it is quite simple. Also, get a sim, and just type your destinations into google, maps will do it for you.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com