Personal essays
When your surroundings change
Trains
There’s an old joke I remember from college about a physicist, a chemist, and an economist being asked to open a can of tomato sauce.
The physicist comes up with a physics based approach, the chemist comes up with some technique based on chemistry, and the economist’s answer begins with the phrase, “Assume a can-opener.”
I promise I’m not going to keep writing about Japan, but today I want to finish this series with a few observations about things that are different there that jump out at you.
Maggie and I took a train from Haneda airport to a couple of blocks from the hotel we were staying in in Ginza.
The ride was quick, the trains came often, and the cost was under five dollars for each of us.
We get caught in a chicken and egg spiral where I live. Not enough people take the light rail and buses so there aren’t enough of them. There aren’t enough light rail and buses so not enough people take them.
In Cleveland, you can take the light rail to the city. I can easily change trains and take one to a couple of blocks from my home.
When I fly, I usually do take the “Rapid” to and from the airport.
But it isn’t easy.
You can’t just tap in as you enter the train and tap out when you get to your destination.
You have to buy your ticket - but wait it’s not that simple. You buy it when you get on the train if you’re heading West and when you get off the train if you’re heading East.
It’s still not that simple.
You have to buy your ticket when you get off the train heading West at Tower City where you change trains but you need a second ticket to take the other train heading West to the airport. But you can’t just buy two tickets because one is for the Green/Blue line and a different one is for the Red Line.
Fortunately, if you buy two tickets you might as well buy an all day ticket which is the same price. So I buy that. But you can’t tap a credit card, you have to insert it.
Oh and you have to go through a ton of options to select the right ticket and if the machine doesn’t read your credit card right at that point - which often happens - you have to start all over again.
I love when I travel to other places where I can just tap on as I enter the train and tap off when I leave.
Luggage
On the train to and from the airport in Japan we had our luggage with us. Other than that, we traveled light with only enough clothes for a day or two in a backpack.
Almost no one on the trains had any more than that - even when traveling long distances.
Maggie and I stayed at four different hotels in a week and I stayed at another three the following week and a half. I never had to worry about my luggage and didn’t have to navigate around other travelers with luggage. It was really nice.
In Japan, it is inexpensive and easy to send your luggage from one hotel to another.
Maggie and I left out hotel in Ginza (in Tokyo) for an overnight trip to Hakone followed by a night in Ito. We brought along enough clothes for two days and sent out bags on to the hotel in Asakusa (in Tokyo) that we’d be staying in in two nights.
When we arrived at the hotel our bags were already there. We knew that because we’d been tracking them with Air Tags.
I was emboldened that when Maggie left on Sunday to go home and I went on to Kyoto, my bag was already on the way. When I left Kyoto four days later for Osaka, I packed two days worth of clothes and sent my bag to Tachikawa (in Tokyo) where I would be on Saturday.
In each case the pickup, transfer, and delivery was smooth and the cost was minimal.
Travel was so much nicer this way.
Oh - speaking of travel. There are a ton of cars on the streets in Tokyo but it never felt as bad as in other places because no one seems to honk their horn.
Every once in a while we’d hear a horn but it was few and far in between.
Ins and Outs
In the US it seems that there are garbage cans everywhere and very few (free and clean) public restrooms.
In Japan it is just the opposite. There were restrooms everywhere. They are clean and well maintained.
It’s one of those things you almost don’t notice but it makes all the difference.
In the US I sometimes drink too little water because I don’t know when I’ll be able to find a bathroom, in Japan I didn’t worry about how much I was drinking and so was better hydrated.
Oh - and there are drink machines everywhere. It seems as if every other block in Tokyo has drink vending machines with water, green tea, soft drinks, and coffee. You can buy a cold coffee latte for a dollar whenever you want.
Of course, you have to carry the empty with you until you find a garbage can.
There aren’t many public garbage cans in Japan. The root cause seems to be terrorist bombings in the 90s where bombs were hidden in garbage cans.
It feels as if it might be a problem but it isn’t. You’re warned ahead of time so we brought a small plastic bag with us to carry our trash until we found a trash can.
Honestly, it made the city feel cleaner and there wasn’t the garbage smell you experience in other cities. Also, I didn’t think about rats or other garbage eating animals.
Something I would have thought would have been a big deal just wasn’t.
Generally you can throw out the garbage from a place at the same place you bought it.
We went with friends for takoyaki. When we were done, I took our plates back to the stall where we’d bought them. You were allowed to throw out their garbage there but not garbage from anywhere else.
Classic US brands 7-11 and Lawsons thrive in Japan and are filled with items you may want to eat right away. Maggie and I bought breakfast at a 7-11 on our first morning in Japan and ate it in the store in their eating area so that we could use their trash cans when we were done. It also had a clean, public restroom.
Oh, you can also get a cup of frozen fruit at the 7-11. You pay for it, take it to a machine where you scan the bar code, put the cup (without the lid) in the machine and it whips it up into a smoothie.
Drink it in the store - throw out the cup.
It didn’t take long to adapt to the Japanese ways. We soon were waiting in line and proceeding in an orderly way. We didn’t worry about trains much ahead of time because there would always be plenty. We stopped to hydrate whenever we needed to and stopped to, shall we say, de-hydrate whenever we needed to as well.
When you can assume that some things will just be there when you need them and some things just won’t, it changes the way you live.
It’s interesting to visit a place where the things that are available and the things that aren’t are different from what you are used to.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 317. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe