it’s my life

We arrived at the station at 17:30 and the panels were showing that trains were scheduled at 16:06 and 16:30. Time travel? No… the Dutch Factor. The Shinkansen, the worldwide famous bullet train was once again delayed, as if it was ruled by the NS, and that could be due to the presence of Dutch travelers.

After some communication attemps we found out that there were some strong winds and the Shinkansen is not supposed to take off, so the trains were grounded.

Fortunately, the Japan Railways, JR (a.k.a. Junior) provides a best-effort service and instead of cancelling trains they came with only 3 hours of delay.

Another topic that I wanted to mention today is how civic Japanese people is. Despite the lack of trash cans, which are more difficult to find that a seat in a metro in rush hour, there is not a single paper on the floor. No graffitis, no broken glasses… everything seems new. That’s quite impressive.

Linking this to the previous post, I found some more signs in the train that I would like to share with my readers:

First one is an introduction about smoking and the effects of aerodynamics:

Next one is really advanced: acoustic filtering performed by body anatomy parts and sound propagation, in the same sign!!

This one introduces navigation concepts and shows you the route to the next senior and minor:

The last one is perfect for school children: using the backpack they explain the difference between 2D and 3D:

I have see all kind of presentations around here. I might say that presentations in big companies are mostly really good. Today we went to NTT DoCoMo and the movies there where amazing. On the other hand, the first presentation, in another company, was extremely boring, with a guy telling us how wonderful his campus is, how many companies are there, in which buildings, and the specific details of the 20 divisions of his company. Not interesting at all.

Anyway, the thing I wanted to write about today is how Japanese make signs. I mean those signs that normally have a meaning of warning, in Japan are decorated with childish figures that make the message more appealing. Some examples:

It seems that it is prohibited to take that path, but this sign says it with a smile and with an explanation. If the explanation makes sense or not is another issue.

This one tells you not to smoke in English. In Japanese probably says something more polite, as: “We are sorry to inform you that due to the need of preservation of this monument, smoking is spatially not allowed. We did our best, but the law is the law, and it is made by politicians. Next time we will vote for another party, but right now we are ashamed and we committed suicide in order to clean our honour and the honour of our families. Have a nice day“.

This one is about cars. It was shown in a Toyota video. As you can see the cars are actually kind of happy, and that’s why they are in Japan and Japanese are quite polite while driving. If the cars were in Madrid they would be underground and not so happy.

Here comes my favourite one:

The meaning of such sign located in the 6th floor of an arcade is still a mystery for us, the only clear thing is that we were not welcome. Indeed, the guy in the sign seems to be specially frustrated.

Thus, a Japanese sign may tell you: “Take care of your balls, this metro door can cut them“, but they will tell you so with a smiling figure.