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!