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Japan Keeps This Defunct Train Station Running for Just One Passenger
81–90 of 204 posts
Re: Japan Keeps This Defunct Train Station Running for Just One Passenger
#82There's a general term for these things: ghost stations ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_station ).
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Re: Japan Keeps This Defunct Train Station Running for Just One Passenger
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah, the gray reality strikes again :). I understand what you're saying and I agree. I am definitely not going to define the entire country by this single act. And you're right - I think that keeping the station open for this girl was only possible because it was a rural area and not a large city. Villages generally tend to be more laid-back, there is a lot more of space to introduce little inefficiencies without caus…
Upon reflection, I want to apologize for the overly pessimistic and harsh tone I chose to use. Japan is almost always presented to the West from a unbalanced, exaggerated perspective (which has irked me in the past), and upon reading your post, gleaming with optimism, I instinctively reacted by adopting an exaggeratedly grave perspective to attempt to balance it out -- which in retrospect was simply uncalled for. Tha…
Good on both of you. What a pleasant, enlightened, and refreshing exchange to read in today's internet of easy outrage. I really mean that :)
Re: Japan Keeps This Defunct Train Station Running for Just One Passenger
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
I completely (and unfortunately) agree. This population pattern manifests in so many countries. The United States would be in this situation if not for our immigration inflow. South Korea actually has an even lower birthrate than Japan. China has a smaller population base in its youth vs its middle aged segment as a result of their one child policy [1]. I wonder... will all developed nations engage in a war for produ…
Count Europe out of it for now. If I'm to believe the things I see and read all the time, most of the EU population is rapidly turning against immigration. It's a huge issue on the continent now, and it causes tensions between people and local governments - the latter are being painted as giving out free aid to immigrants while not being able to care for their own people. Population pyramid is a distant concern, when…
The perception of scarcity of wealth (for lack of a better term) and things being zero sum between nationals and immigrants is truly regrettable. And SV is not immune to it, considering engineers' general opposition to increasing H1B quotas.
Re: Japan Keeps This Defunct Train Station Running for Just One Passenger
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have trouble seeing it this way. The money spent running the train could save or improve many other lives instead. It's heartwarming and all, but consider the other people who are being left to die or suffer malnutrition or some other malady that could have been fixed with the resources used to get this girl to and from school. It could be argued that the hope and inspiration and good feels justify it as a utilitar…
Hopefully with your great compassion for others you will be donating most of your income to stop this malnutrition and suffering in the third world that would otherwise be stopping this girl from getting to school.
And similarly, hopefully anyone applauding this train situation would gladly pay to keep it running themselves, instead of reveling in the incredible human capacity for being generous with other people's money.
Re: Japan Keeps This Defunct Train Station Running for Just One Passenger
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have trouble seeing it this way. The money spent running the train could save or improve many other lives instead. It's heartwarming and all, but consider the other people who are being left to die or suffer malnutrition or some other malady that could have been fixed with the resources used to get this girl to and from school. It could be argued that the hope and inspiration and good feels justify it as a utilitar…
Yes, there are many ways this marginal money expenditure could be put to a better use. Most of those scenarios, however, would never happen, because human organizations are nowhere near that efficient. The most likely outcome of closing the station would be the money getting distributed between organizational overhead and bumping up someone's salary a little bit. Or maybe another company project would get finished li…
Looking through the comment section, it seems you get fuzzies out it, but not the majority of people.
Re: Japan Keeps This Defunct Train Station Running for Just One Passenger
#87Lovely story. Hats off to Japan Railways. I'm also happy that The Atlantic/Citylab decided to publish this story. And thanks 'hudibras for submitting it here! They say that it's the money that makes the world turn, and love only keeps it together. It would be easy for the Railways to ignore that girl. There's no economical reason to keep that station open. It's a waste of time and resources. And yet, someone decided…
The thing is, they (the headline) say "Japan", but this only happened because it's way out in the countryside where people have a "village mentality" of helping each other out (but the trade off is that everyone sticks their nose in your business). Japan railways itself split into several separate companies upon privatization. This would never happen in Tokyo. As much as we think of the country as being monolithic (i…
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Re: Japan Keeps This Defunct Train Station Running for Just One Passenger
#88That's such a warm story and especially this is from the largest Chinese TV press CCTV.
Being as a Chinese, years ago the news of Japan were always about politics, island disputes, refusing to apologize for WWII etc. It is good to have something positive and nice about the neighbor.
Wish the world would become less biased to any country.
Re: Japan Keeps This Defunct Train Station Running for Just One Passenger
#89Only girl in the village? They are going to close the line when she graduates. Therefore we can surmise there aren't any other younger girls. So much for having a social life. There are parts of Japan where children just aren't around anymore. Towns are becoming extended retirement homes. That's the truly depressing side of this story. At least this is happening today, when the few remaining kids in such situations c…
> That's the truly depressing side of this story.
There have always been children living in isolated rural communities. Always. Japan is in no way special in this regard, nor is it special in having a low birth rate nor in it having a declining population. South Korea, for example, has a lower total fertility rate than Japan. But people love to focus on Japan and project their own values and beliefs on it, values which are not necessarily shared by the Japanese people, many of whom feel that their nation's population grew too large.
Re: Japan Keeps This Defunct Train Station Running for Just One Passenger
#90Only girl in the village? They are going to close the line when she graduates. Therefore we can surmise there aren't any other younger girls. So much for having a social life. There are parts of Japan where children just aren't around anymore. Towns are becoming extended retirement homes. That's the truly depressing side of this story. At least this is happening today, when the few remaining kids in such situations c…
Generally speaking, the population of Japan is going down and the population of the Greater Tokyo area is going up. Once youth hits college or working age, they disproportionately head for the capitol. But then there's a small counter current where younger (say, 30's) are moving back to their original prefectures as they realize that they might be able to afford a better QoL making less money but also paying much les…
You see this to a lesser degree in other parts of the world to.
Around where i live, the only young people are boys/men that went straight into some low end industrial or service job after school.
most of the women moved on to higher educations that required moving to a city or other, and stayed there after graduating.