Trains
Ikusuki’s scooter and my bicycle broke down, better said, we broke them down; so we had to go to work every day by train for a while. We both used the Yamanote line, which every morning is so packed that it makes you feel like you are inside a sardine can. Ikusuki started to take [...]
On March 12th, the day after the terrible earthquake hit Japan, the Shinkansen line in Kyushu whose construction was started in 2008 started to operate. It was one of the Shinkansen lines yet to be inaugurated to “complete” the Japanese bullet train network, which has been under development since 1964 when the first high speed [...]
This Science magazine article explains us a very interesting new discovery by a team of researchers at Hokkaido University. The researchers put some oat flakes as if they were places in the Tokyo metropolitan area where most of the people are accumulated. Then they put a slime mold cell in the middle of the oat [...]
Japanese trains are the most punctual in the world and they are also the most safe. One of the reasons why they are so punctual is that the same systematic protocols are accurately performed each time a train arrives to a station. Train drivers are trained to be able to stop a train within error [...]
The two girls in the left are chatting, the foreigner in the center talks on the phone (Don’t do it! It is considered bad manners), the girl next to him thinks and the girls in the background plays with her Nintendo DS The girl with the yellow purse sends an e-mail with her cellphone, the [...]
One of the first things in Japan that caught my attention were trains and also the amount of train geeks around here. A general passion for trains exists in Japan. Train geeks collect books about trains, they travel just to have the opportunity to “try a new train” or to visit a particular train station, [...]
Yesterday I shared with you my passion for the Yamanote Line. In this post I show you a video where I use a Yamanote train, I get off at Shibuya, I show you how long a Yamanote train is, and I end up next to the Hachiko Dog. I say something in Spanish, just ignore [...]
The Yamanote is one of the most fascinating train lines in the world. After living many years in Tokyo, it never stops to surprise me. During these years I’ve been collecting some interesting facts about the Yamanote and here I share them with you: The Yamanote is a loop urban line in the center of [...]
