Japanese trains are so on time that .. well, a gaijiin expatriate joke says it all:"You've been in Japan too long when .. you run for the Yamanote line pushing people left and right, jump on the train holding the doors open to let your bag follow you on .. because you know there will not be another train .. for at least a minute."

If only it were like that in the States.  Japanese trains are a marvel of efficiency.  I always loved riding them .. to anywhere .. or nowhere.  Having no car, it was my first taste of independence as a teenager.  Going from Harajuku Station to Yokohama was a great adventure, flying through urban landscapes that seemed to blur as the stations got further apart.  My nose would be pressed against the window for the entire trip, watching the passing parade of people going about their everyday lives.

I would pay close attention to each crossing gate, with the backed-up cars and bicycles patiently waiting for the train to pass.  You could see a broad cross-section of Japanese society behind those gates: businessmen reading papers under little lamps in luxury sedans; taxis ready to rush the gate when it opened; old men on bicycles and dressed in tight leggings with split-toed whatever-they-called- those-things that fit into straw and wood shoes called geta; old mama-sans carrying grandbabies in pouches on their backs .. and I would wonder why Americans didn't do that .. and they did .. many years later; packs of schoolboys in their stifling black wool uniforms, carrying briefcases, laughing and poking each other; gaggles of schoolgirls in Catholic-school-type plaid skirts and white shirts, with knapsacks, laughing behind their hands at the silly boys; women, not yet liberated in the work force, on their way to low-paying jobs in shops or as maids.

All of these people had stories to tell .. and I made up stories about each of  them in my head as we passed .. they weren't a faceless crowd to me .. they were fascinating character studies that compelled me to guess who they were and where they were going, if only for the two seconds that I saw them from my train window.  As the train passed through farmlands, it would occasionally be a leap backwards in time, as oxen pulled a plow for an old lady, as her husband plied the whip to a recalcitrant beast.  Just as suddenly, up ahead, would be a modern tractor churning up clouds of dirt on a modern farm.  I had entire soap operas fictionalized about each person's life before they were just a dot on the landscape. The train would whip around a large hill, and there would suddenly be beautiful timberland, cut through by a rushing stream pummelling white rocks alongside the train tracks.  It would be many years before this land would be chopped up and subdivided, and I was just thankful to be riding that train at that time in that place.  I dreamed of mighty samurai warriors, walking through that green canopy and on their way to settle an old score.  I could almost hear their laughter as they rounded the bend, unaware of the ambush that awaited them.

I absorbed every minute of every trip I made on those trains because I somehow knew that it might never be the same again .. and it wasn't .. ever.  I tried memorizing those stories I made up, but I never did .. nor did I write them down, as I would later in life, after I discovered how elusive memory can be.  So, all those novellas I created on all those train trips became like fog on a San Francisco morning .. burnt away by the encroaching march of other memories to take their place.  Maybe you only have so many stories that your brain can retain, like so much stuff in your garage and, after a while, some of it has to be tossed aside to make room for the new.  At least, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.  No short term memory loss .. and no Alzheimer's, as far as I .. now, what were we talking about??

Oh, Japanese trains .. yeah!  The only problem I ever had with them .. and I'm not the only one .. is that they stop running at 1:00 AM.  Now, THAT was a big irritation for a night owl like myself and my pals.  The same for all the Japanese businessmen ("salarymen" is the term now) who would head straight for the bars after work, get absolutely polluted, since they had a time limit to get back for the last train, then run like hell to catch the last train home.  Night after night, same thing.  We'd sit at the Harajuku train station around 1:00 AM on Saturday nights and watch the frantic chase begin.  There were always guys who were too late, who came stumbling into the station at 1:05 AM, blind running drunk and no clue how to get back to home an hour west of Tokyo.  Some would sleep on the train platform, and eventually get chased off.  They might sleep in a doorway if they were too drunk to care, or get a cheap hotel room, if they had any sense at all.  But, it was not like New York, where you could wake up with some very serious crime visited upon your person, if you woke up at all.  Not in Tokyo.  People left drunks alone.  Maybe because there were so many of them, and everyone else knew what it was like to get sloshed to the gills. 

The trains were .. and are .. the Japanese primary means of getting from here to there. There are more cars today, but try to find a parking space.  It's easier to take the train.  It's only 100 yen now, about a dollar, to go from Harajuku to Tokyo station, Shuibuya or Shinjuku.  It was 10 yen in 1959, or 2.5 cents.  Or was it 20 yen?? To get to Tachikawa now, it's about 250 yen, or two bucks.  Still cheap for a 45 minute ride. 

Rush hour is a wonder to behold on train platforms.  Workers on their way home would pack into those cars tighter than I have ever seen people together in my life.  I have worked on Rolling Stones concerts, with no floor seating, where the frantic crowd came close to crushing the life out of those at the very front .. but not quite.  Japanese trains, with similar pushing crowds, are a marvel of self-control.  Everyone nudges just a little tighter when five more people get on, who should have waited for the next train.  No bitching, no shoving once inside.  Outside the car, however, is a different story.  The race to get into a train car is like molten lava from an exploding volcano .. never, never get in its way, or you will be consumed.  The train stations hire burly college students, as big as American pro football players, to actually push people onto the train during rush hour.  These guys would put their back into the last few people getting on, heaving backwards until the mass inside gave way to the incoming .. maybe there are some physics lessons here about objects occupying the same space, but I never ventured forth to test it out.  As soon as the last person was pushed inside, the guy with the white gloves at the rear of the train blew his whistle, and off they went.  Only to be followed with another scene exactly the same in two minutes.  At 5:30 PM, I knew enough to stay away from the trains.

I think maybe it was on the Japanese trains that I learned that technique I call the "thousand-mile stare."  You've seen it.  The Japanese do not interact with each other on the trains.  They stare off into space a thousand miles away.  It means: "Don't come near me, I'm not into your friendly banter this evening, I just want to get home and have a beer."  There is very little talking on the trains, unless some school kids get on together.  People are reading their newspapers or manga comics or listening to their radio with earphones.  You would never, never hear a boom box.  That would be a major threat to the wa .. the balance .. of the crowd; but, if one were to appear, perhaps no one would say a word.  Japanese never criticize a stranger in public; Americans think it is their duty to do so.  Then, again, Americans do more things in public to be criticized for.  So, the train is a place for inner reflection, not meeting new friends; try it, and you'll be looked at as a pervert.  Which brings me to another matter.

During rush hour, Japanese women are constantly being groped on trains.  And here is the weird part: they don't do anything about it!  They can't move away, since they are jammed into three square feet until their station comes up.  They stand there and endure it, rather than screaming their head off and slamming the guy with their umbrella.  The media reported some cases a few years back of women pressing charges against these guys, but it was in the news because it was so uncommon.  It was news because coming forward almost never happened.  Rather than be embarrassed in public, the women endure the inner humiliation of letting some bozo get his jollies at rush hour.  Ladies, please!! Just four little letters: M*A*C*E!!!!  Spray the rotten little fershlugginers in the face and watch them writhe in pain.  That will stop this epidemic.  But, you know something??  That's about the only bad thing I've heard about Japanese trains.  No gangs terrorizing folks. No Graffiti .. no graffiti!! .. on the outside of the trains.  Been to New York lately??  Compare the train cleanliness and safety of the two.

The maps to all the rail lines are color coded, so if it is in Japanese, you have a 50-50 chance of getting on the right train.  Just remember which color your stop is, and you'll be just fine.  At the large stations, there are station maps in English (yeah, yeah, I know .. it's actually not English, it's Romanji), but you'd better carry one with you.  The farther the trains get from Tokyo, the less English you will see.  The only clue is the regular cadence of the conductor .. "Ebisu, Ebisu desu."  Stay awake, and you can't mess up.  Ha! (one more time) Ha!! Nowadays, everyone pretends not to understand English, so you get no help at all from people on the train (see 1,000-mile stare, above).  There once was a time .. long, long ago .. remember this?? .. "Could I please to practice English conversation with you?"  and you would look up and see a fresh-faced kid in a black school uniform, with his dog-eared English handbook in his hand.  These kids had no shame.  I would look at the older Japanese when this happened, and they would be in total cardiac arrest.  Just to rattle their cages, as much as anything, I would usually say yes, and correct the kid's grammar until my stop came up.  This kid is probably the same man who acted like he didn't understand me when I asked directions on my last trip.  Oh, well!  The adventure is the getting there, most of the time, which is why I love trains.  No other transportation has that sense of .. escape.

I got on those trains every chance I got, north, south, west (no place to go east except Tokyo Bay).  They were efficient, clean trains that were almost noiseless as they criss- crossed the city.  The trains were boxy .. not very streamlined .. at least, not the short hop trains.  There was no need for them to be streamlined.  Then, the Japanese began to investigate how to increase the speed of their trains.  What they discovered revolutionized trains. The car body is tilted inward to maintain dynamic balance and passenger comfort while negotiating curves by a computer-controlled system.  They leaned the train as it was going around a curve, thus allowing the train to keep a high speed, instead of having to slow down considerably for mountain curves.  Then, on the straightaways, it would move like the wind!  The Bullet Train (Shinkansen) was born.  The nose was shaped like an airplane, to reduce friction. Regular scheduled service on several lines is now over 186 miles per hour (not kilometers) in plush comfort and real safety.  They've done over 222 mph regularly while testing new trains, and hit 275 mph two years ago.  While American road beds are crumbling under the trains, the Japanese keep upgrading theirs.  There are now Bullet Trains everywhere, for the long hauls up and down the island.  Just too damn bad they weren't there when I was .. I might never have left .. I coulda been another of those "You've been in Japan too long when .." ex-pats.  But that was not to be.  I had other places in the world to go and to enjoy.

Trains, trains, trains.  I guess you have to have a compact little island, with a dense population and few parking spaces before you can have a proper system of efficient trains.  America's trains were doomed when Ike built the Interstate highways and our love affair with behemoth cars blinded us with science .. and those big tail fins.  Amtrak is a pitiful trade for the  Golden Age of the American railroad.  The sleepers from New York to Los Angeles, with white-gloved service all the way, made traveling an adventure.  I never got to ride those great trains, and I haven't ridden a train in the U.S. since I was a kid.  I got too spoiled riding them in Japan. 

But .. still .. when I lay in bed late at night .. just before dozing off .. I sometimes hear a long, low, lonely wail of a train whistle far in the distance .. and I wonder where it's going.

And I make up stories about the people on that train.
 
 

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