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The Psychology of Japanese Train Stations

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Re: The Psychology of Japanese Train Stations

#61

Post by guardiangod »

themodelplumber wrote: post #12
lainga wrote: post #2

>Rail stations, whether in Japan or elsewhere, are also great places to see “nudge theory” at work. Gentle nudges, like ultrasonic deterrents to keep teenagers away with "a look of confusion or discomfort, and often a cry of urusai! (Loud!)"...?

I remember riding on a train in Japan when some schoolgirls sitting across from me were just chatting in an excited way...nothing that seemed out of place, but man did they get it. Things seemed fine to me, especially on a hot summer day in an uncrowded train with the windows down (plenty of atmospheric noise). All of a sudden a conductor (not sure if you call him that, he was in the back end of the car) popped out o…

It's possible they were talking about you in a less than flattering way thinking you don't understand Japanese, and the conductor had enough of it.

Re: The Psychology of Japanese Train Stations

#62

Post by oceanman888 »

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #40

In my first experience with trains in Japan, I had to take a jaunt that included a leg from Nagoya to Matsusaka. The train ride was about 90 minutes, and I was anxious about knowing which station to exit. I anticipated that the signage would all be in Japanese. So I asked the station attendant in Nagoya how I'd know when to get off. He looked at my ticket and said, "The train will stop at 1:11PM. You get off." The tr…

Been living in japan since 2011, you can search when train stops at where exactly now, including emergency info.

And all station attendant have a booklet with all those stuff written, so all he had to do is to take a look at it.

When it comes to government related system in japan they surprisingly works very well with outdated tech

Re: The Psychology of Japanese Train Stations

#63

Post by bigger_cheese »

kalleboo wrote: post #8
SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #5

Anecdote time... Tokyo train stations kinda suck. Coming from a few weeks in Malaysia and Singapore, it was interesting to see just how little and how poorly translated English is there. (They speak Japanese and not English, but lets be honest about it being the lingua franca) It was VERY DIFFICULT to figure out how their train colors worked, how Orange gets to Blue (it's a connect, but a couple blocks away). That Gi…

I'm visiting London right now, and compared to here, Tokyo train stations are amazing for signage. There are always super clear, easy to spot signage for where transfers & exits are, what exits they are and what landmarks they lead to, where elevators or escalators are, etc. Electric signs starting at the entrances (before the gates even) for what trains are arriving at what platforms and when. In London navigational…

I agree I thought subway in Singapore was amazing last time I visited. What I really liked was the way the carriage always stopped at the same fixed point on platform and they had designated areas for people to stand when embarking. It made the whole process of getting on and off the train much more organised.

Here in Australia trains are no where near that disciplined about where on platform they stop. Carriage doors can be anywhere so basically as soon as train pulls into station everyone on platform surges towards nearest door.

I was in London in January I found the underground there very confusing. I was doing the typical tourist sight seeing thing and was trying to get from Tower of London to the British Museum I knew the stations were on different lines I knew I had to get to the Piccadilly line but there was a lack of detail as to where to change trains. There were voice announcements on trains themselves "Change here for xxx line" but signage was pretty poor.

Re: The Psychology of Japanese Train Stations

#64

Post by jessiebeck3 »

I visited Tokyo / Japan after two years living in Madagascar (talk about culture shock) and was so amazed at how orderly a crowd that could have otherwise been chaotic moved throughout these cramped spaces. At first I thought it was just cultural -- but not after reading this. Then again, intentional efforts to shift societal behavior, maybe that is a cultural product?

Regardless, I would love to see what some of these "nudge" gestures look like in the U.S. How can we better design not just spaces but how humans interact with them?

Re: The Psychology of Japanese Train Stations

#65

Post by jpatokal »

tbabb wrote: post #20
pwaivers wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It said that the lights led to a 84 percent decline in suicides attempts. That may not be true, but it is definitely way higher than "regression towards the mean" would cause.

One could not say what is "expected" without knowing either the statistics of suicides in Japanese train stations, or the statistics of where installations happened. If per-station variance is high, or if the installed stations were significant outliers (or both), 84% would be perfectly within expectation. I find it very hard to believe that the color of the light in the train station would sway a person's life-and-d…

While I share your skepticism, there's is pretty solid evidence that strong white/blue light is effective in treating seasonal affective disorder, a type of depression:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_affective_disorder#Ma...

Re: The Psychology of Japanese Train Stations

#66

Post by sparkie »

contingencies wrote: post #23

I've been through mass transit systems in at least fifteen countries by this point. Japan (Osaka) didn't leave a huge impression, as plenty of countries in Asia have similar systems. Yesterday I caught the first inter-city mass transit in China from Guangzhou to Foshan, part of the aggressive infrastructural beginnings of the Pearl River Delta (PRD) megacity. The two cities' systems were evidently conceived and funde…

Osaka probably isn't a good representation of the rest of Japan's public transport and I can see why it wouldn't leave an impression. Particularly if you catch the slow JR between KIX and Namba. Osaka-jin are typically more laid-back and could perhaps even be considered 'disorderly' compared to the norm - they like to stand on the right side of escalators, but the entire rest of Japan stands on the left. This leaves an initial bad impression in Kyoto central station, where you have many people arrive from Osaka and you end up with people stood on both sides of the escalators. As soon as you leave this area of the central station though, the rest of Kyoto's transport system is super efficient, even during the busiest times. I find it better than Tokyo's, although it's obviously not quite as busy. I think my impression might be slightly biased because of how much a lifesaver the aircon is in Kyoto stations during the dog days.

I think the biggest difference between Japan's train system and elsewhere is less to do with the facilities than it is to do with the people. In Japan people don't push, they queue up in straight lines and wait orderly. The system works because people don't try to game it. In stations in China, the reverse is true. If you just waited in line you would never get anywhere because there will always be someone who'll push in front of you. There's no way Japan's system would transfer over well into this culture.

Re: The Psychology of Japanese Train Stations

#67

Post by dorfsmay »

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #40

In my first experience with trains in Japan, I had to take a jaunt that included a leg from Nagoya to Matsusaka. The train ride was about 90 minutes, and I was anxious about knowing which station to exit. I anticipated that the signage would all be in Japanese. So I asked the station attendant in Nagoya how I'd know when to get off. He looked at my ticket and said, "The train will stop at 1:11PM. You get off." The tr…

I don't understand, isn't that how trains work everywhere? Otherwise how are the people in the next city supposed to know when they need to be there to board that train?

Re: The Psychology of Japanese Train Stations

#68

Post by mikekchar »

timr wrote: post #42
mikekchar wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have some sympathy with this comment (although like other commenters I don't quite agree). I think some of this disconnect is cultural (or what you're used to). The most important thing to understand about Japanese trains is that there a many train companies. If you don't realise that, then you can easily get confused about the need to go to a completely different building across the road to get a transfer. Many st…

"Hell, the gas man would pass me on the street randomly, hand me my bill and expect that I would pay him on the spot. Different culture :-)" That's weird. I mean, Japan is still cash-centric, but at least you can take your pile of cash to the combini to pay the utility bill. :-D Was it one of those kerosene guys in the little muscial trucks?

No. Normal gas company. But my gas company at the time was a super small one (just the local area), so I think they didn't have a sophisticated billing system. I'm with the regional gas company now and it's normal billing system.

Re: The Psychology of Japanese Train Stations

#69

Post by lfam »

dorfsmay wrote: post #67
11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #40

In my first experience with trains in Japan, I had to take a jaunt that included a leg from Nagoya to Matsusaka. The train ride was about 90 minutes, and I was anxious about knowing which station to exit. I anticipated that the signage would all be in Japanese. So I asked the station attendant in Nagoya how I'd know when to get off. He looked at my ticket and said, "The train will stop at 1:11PM. You get off." The tr…

I don't understand, isn't that how trains work everywhere? Otherwise how are the people in the next city supposed to know when they need to be there to board that train?

In many places, the trains are always late, but never early. So you get to the station at the appointed time and just wait. You couldn't tell someone to get off the train at "1:11" in the US.

Re: The Psychology of Japanese Train Stations

#70

Post by dsfyu404ed »

contingencies wrote: post #24
fein wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The likely answer is that the Japanese are an efficient people in general. It's not surprising that a group of people following the same social norms would have an efficient system for public transport.

Americans would first build a three level carpark and gas station, then a strip mall with a drug store, take-away coffee and donuts. Then they would privatize the publicly funded station, at which time the service quality would tank and the entire facility would fall in to a state of minimum repair. Or something like that.

>Then they would privatize the publicly funded station, at which time the service quality would tank and the entire facility would fall in to a state of minimum repair. Or something like that.

The reverse happened to the rail system I ride. It tanked when government took over. Turns out that a company that can't just ask the taxpayers to bail it out if it goes bankrupt runs a more effective train system than the government who answers to (in practical terms) nobody.

The fact of the matter is that if the organization that runs the service has a culture that gives no fucks about delivering good service to customers then you won't get good service. In the US this attitude is more often found in government than private enterprise because the government has a monopoly backed by law so it doesn't have to care about pesky things like customer satisfaction.

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