Time-lapse video: How Japan handles long shopping lines
m.washingtonpost.com
m.washingtonpost.com
It's easy to look at a video like this and attribute it to stereotypes of the behavior of crowds in different countries. I think the overlooked thing is that lines in Japan are very often actively managed. If a new line opens up, very often there is a person standing by the ropes guiding people to the new opening in a fair way. If the ropes are too long (causing you to go back and forth unnaturally) there is a peson there who removes them and creates a short-cut. Similarly, they will add ropes or move the line into a better position or manage a 'cut' in the line when it passes in front of a doorway or path (like in the video).
This puts you at ease since you know there is an authority figure watching out for fairness. Its no longer a "me first" attitude. It also trains people on how to behave when in a line. When that authority figure is not there, people still adopt the conventions of when they are.
In summary, this kind of behavior is taught and socialized into people because it's valued. In America (where I'm from) it is considered inefficent to have a person standing by a line telling people what to do. People are expected to self-manage. This also means when you're waiting on a line in Japan, you're not really thinking about the line very much. You're free to talk, read or daydream without worrying about your place in line.
As far as managing lines of a few thousand people, I've seen many examples of everything functioning totally fine in the USA.
My point is more about who is in charge of enforcing the social norms. In the US, it is up to the people in line to enforce the norms with other people in line. In Japan, there is usually an 'authority figure' nearby. This person may have no legal authority (other than a store uniform) but people defer to them.
Huge lines can work well in any country. If they do, they are usually well attended by staff. An exception to this would be theme parks where extremely rigid pathways and geography of the line as well as distractions prevent any kind of disputes between line-waiters. Some US stores like Whole Foods use a single line and have staff/technology to help enforce fairness.
In Japan, even small lines of 3-5 people at banks or stores are well-attended by staff who have an eye for fairness. This small-line behavior then tends to leak into situations where there is no attendant staff.
Line-waiting behavior is one of the most fascinating things to look at when travelling. It teaches you a lot about your own culture. Other places where the culture caught me off guard were Russia, Italy, China and India.
But it's not really a queue, more a buffer that prevents the entrances to the exhibition halls to be overwhelmed at opening time (with possibly lethal consequences). There are some much more queue-like arrangements inside - I remember rope barriers guiding people in a spiral pattern towards an escalator representing a bottleneck.
And the once you're in the actual exhibition halls, there are streams of people moving into various directions, but so crammed that you have to navigate by finding the stream that eventually reaches the place you want to go to.
Ah yes, here's some photos: http://imgur.com/a/E6Aw6
There is also an Enlgish version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ermNqkUUiJw
The caption of the English version gives some useful details on how the video was created:
The footage, which was compiled from photographs taken at
intervals of 5 seconds, was filmed on the last day of
Comiket from around1:30 AM to 2:30 PM from the balcony of
the nearby Washington Hotel.What would be interesting would be to compare how long these people stood in line to how long they would stand in western systems. Given that western people are famously impatient (and that shopping centers know this), I am guessing that ours are better optimized.
But, yeah, its a strange feeling looking down on all those humans -- almost as if you were looking at a bunch of really well trained sheep.
When things are properly organized here lines work fine.
This is an interesting subject for me. I am mildly agorophobic and happen to live in the most densely populated part of the US.
For the weeks after the recent East Coast hurricane, the NY Waterways (NYC ferry) has done a great job of managing brutally long commute lines. NJ Transit does not. As a result I am paying double what I would for the bus or subway.
Trader Joe's (in NYC) does a great job of managing lines that snake though the entire store. On Saturday morning shopping runs the end of the line is literally right inside the door. Yet I have never seen a fight on line...
Last year I went to a football game (Dallas @ NYJets on 9/11). I do not go to games often. The whole queueing up was horrible experience. Crowded on 'cattle car' trains to get to the station which then pour out into a crossing for a highway like ring road around the stadium.
Security with guns and dogs all around and no clear directions about where to go. It put me in a terrible frame of mind. I felt like something rotten could happen at any moment... And this was only a crowed of 75 - 80 thousand people.
Nothing actually happened, I had a minor freakout and got over it. But I deeply hated the experience.
That night I felt like an animal (and payed over $200- per ticket for the privledge ).
So no tomjen3 I do not think those people look like sheep. They look human.
Brits (westerners for crying out loud) are famously patient, I think they invented queuing but someone who knows better could correct me. The USA is also quite good, we seem to respect lines well enough.
Asians are also hard to stereotype, Japanese are also famously patient and orderly, it would be very hard to put them in the same bucket as say Chinese, the queuing cultures are just completely different. Try a Chinese train station just before Chinese New Year. I believe they just fill a (huge) square of people and somehow they manage to filter in somehow, I have no idea how they do that!
Colloquial English usage didn't arise until the middle of the 19th century.
It's an apples and oranges thing: this is of Comiket, so everyone involved has different motivations from shoppers desperate to grab the doorbusters. You'd have to compare to another convention or event.
Their FAQ mentions that if you come on the first train, you'll have to wait for 5 hours, but if you come at the opening time of 10:00, you only have to wait approximately one hour. The fact that people are willing to spend those extra 4 hours to get in early seems to indicate that it provides an advantage to be one of the first.
Incidentally, they expressly prohibit waiting in line overnight. I bet plenty of people would do so if they could.
They still do. Every year its a big issue and the organization committee makes a press release. The night before the most recent Comiket there were reports of several thousand overnighters. The 徹夜組 (overnight group) cause so much trouble and garbage that it endangers Comiket's hosting arraignment, or so is claimed.
and i dont stand in lines i order it on the internet ;)
Don't like the chauvinism in the title. It is one location in Japan, not "how Japan does it".