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Most first-time visitors to Japan are struck by how clean the country is

bbc.com

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Re: Most first-time visitors to Japan are struck by how clean the country is

#81

Post by mistersquid »

dilap wrote: post #66
dmoy wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another fascinating thing is how escalators have two lanes, one for walking and one for standing. Why doesn't everyone so this?! It's so perfect! Turns out, strangely, that it actually reduces throughput compared to just having everyone stand. So not exactly perfect I guess. But yea I agree in the general matter. When my MIL (a master organizer) visited Japan she thought that was great.

> Turns out, strangely, that it actually reduces throughput compared to just having everyone stand Wait, what? How can this be true? Imagine an escalator w/ both lanes filled with people just standing. Now imagine the left lane starts walking: clearly, higher throughput. Now, maybe you're imagining a scenario where people don't want to walk. Now everyone stands on the right, and the left lane is completely empty. OK,…

> Now, maybe you're imagining a scenario where people don't want to walk.

Agreed that this is an imagined scenario because people in a hurry will want to maximize their speed by walking/running up the escalator.

More importantly, people generally (I'm imagining) do not want to stand on the same escalator step as another person, especially if they are strangers to each other.

That means in a 2-lane standing escalator there will be breaks between people standing to the left or the right which, effectively, will turn a 2-lane standing-only escalator into a "1-lane" standing escalator.

Re: Most first-time visitors to Japan are struck by how clean the country is

#82

Post by mrob »

dilap wrote: post #66
dmoy wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another fascinating thing is how escalators have two lanes, one for walking and one for standing. Why doesn't everyone so this?! It's so perfect! Turns out, strangely, that it actually reduces throughput compared to just having everyone stand. So not exactly perfect I guess. But yea I agree in the general matter. When my MIL (a master organizer) visited Japan she thought that was great.

> Turns out, strangely, that it actually reduces throughput compared to just having everyone stand Wait, what? How can this be true? Imagine an escalator w/ both lanes filled with people just standing. Now imagine the left lane starts walking: clearly, higher throughput. Now, maybe you're imagining a scenario where people don't want to walk. Now everyone stands on the right, and the left lane is completely empty. OK,…

Standing people stand closer together than walking people. However, I think they should optimize for minimum annoyance, not maximum throughput. With a walking lane, there's lower latency for people willing to walk.

Re: Most first-time visitors to Japan are struck by how clean the country is

#84

Post by mistersquid »

davidmurdoch wrote: post #73
electriclove wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's generally the custom in the US as well.

Where in the US have you seen this? I've never seen it happen!

It's not strictly observed but in San Francisco BART people generally stand to the right while walkers pass on the left.

EDIT: spelling

Re: Most first-time visitors to Japan are struck by how clean the country is

#85

Post by jdkram »

dilap wrote: post #66
dmoy wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another fascinating thing is how escalators have two lanes, one for walking and one for standing. Why doesn't everyone so this?! It's so perfect! Turns out, strangely, that it actually reduces throughput compared to just having everyone stand. So not exactly perfect I guess. But yea I agree in the general matter. When my MIL (a master organizer) visited Japan she thought that was great.

> Turns out, strangely, that it actually reduces throughput compared to just having everyone stand Wait, what? How can this be true? Imagine an escalator w/ both lanes filled with people just standing. Now imagine the left lane starts walking: clearly, higher throughput. Now, maybe you're imagining a scenario where people don't want to walk. Now everyone stands on the right, and the left lane is completely empty. OK,…

Transport for London experimented with this, and found higher overall throughput during rush hour with two standing lanes:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/it-is-faster-to-s...

> Standing-only escalators had a "throughput" of up to 151 passengers per minute, while an escalator where commuters were still allowed to walk saw around 115.

Your thought experiment's completely right, but in real world circumstances, once an escalator is above a certain height, people rarely use the walking lane:

> But a 2002 study of escalator capacity on the Underground found that on machines such as those at Holborn, with a vertical height of 24 metres, only 40% would even contemplate it [walking up]. By encouraging their preference, TfL effectively halves the capacity of the escalator in question, and creates significantly more crowding below, slowing everyone down.

(from https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jan/16/the-tube-at-... , which has a great graphic showing the two systems)

Re: Most first-time visitors to Japan are struck by how clean the country is

#86

Post by h1d »

fiblye wrote: post #5

Undiluted orientalism. I was in Osaka this weekend and litter is everywhere. By far one of the dirtiest major cities I’ve seen in East Asia. In the city I live in in Japan, the rice fields are full of coffee cans, plastic bottles, and bento packaging thrown out from cars. Streets are covered in cigarette butts and somehow I see natto containers in the middle of nowhere. Going hiking, I see tea bottles and plastic bag…

I'm in Tokyo but you sound like it's clean only because others clean up after people litter freely but that is absolutely not the case here...

People don't throw when it's clean, like how the NY subway changed.

I've never seen people pull down mask to cough in the middle of others.

You sound like running a negative campaign.

Re: Most first-time visitors to Japan are struck by how clean the country is

#87

Post by blhack »

tlear wrote: post #74
fiblye wrote: post #5

Undiluted orientalism. I was in Osaka this weekend and litter is everywhere. By far one of the dirtiest major cities I’ve seen in East Asia. In the city I live in in Japan, the rice fields are full of coffee cans, plastic bottles, and bento packaging thrown out from cars. Streets are covered in cigarette butts and somehow I see natto containers in the middle of nowhere. Going hiking, I see tea bottles and plastic bag…

I live in Japan as well. Hiking.. have you actually hiked anywhere in else in the world? Most places you can fill a garbage bag in an hour just walking on a trail. Took my climbing friends from Canada on a long Hike in Kita Alps, they brought a garbage bag as they always do to gather other peoples trash. We managed to find 2 empty water bottles in 3 days having covered close to 50km. See the campsites near huts after…

Where do you camp otherwise where you are seeing all this trash? Even in developed sites I don’t think I’ve ever seen what you are describing here. Definitely nothing even remotely like that once you get a little further from the trail.

There are a couple of places where people have left shotgun shells that I can think of around some of the 4 wheeling areas around Phoenix, but it’s nowhere near any sort of hiking trail.

Re: Most first-time visitors to Japan are struck by how clean the country is

#88

Post by selectodude »

claudeganon wrote: post #75
kimjongtrill wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i see every country has its own florida

Osaka holds a strange place in Japanese culture. It is considered distinctly “un-Japanese,” but still at the same time is famous for producing all kinds of creative types (comedians, musicians, artists). And its accent is generally considered charming, if “inappropriate” for formal discourse. As an American, I’ve always felt more comfortable there because it’s way less uptight and rule-bound than other parts of Japan…

Osaka is so much fun. I felt the same way. I didn’t get the vibe that I was an alien compared to the rest of Japan.

Re: Most first-time visitors to Japan are struck by how clean the country is

#89

Post by h1d »

tasogare wrote: post #33
netsharc wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in Tokyo and Osaka these last weeks, and China before Tokyo. Landing in Tokyo after China was magical. People didn't shout in public or have their phones blaring. They let people disembark trains instead of just barging in as soon as the train doors open, and they queue neatly for those doors. And yes everything was clean and tidy. But the touristy area of Osaka was back to being dreadful. People cutting you of…

> People didn't shout in public or have their phones blaring. Yet Japan is a very noisy country. Store clerks shouting irasshaimase like robots, speaking elevators, politians in campaign and their cars with mega-phone, etc. added to paper thin (sometimes literally) walls make it sometime painful to live here.

I don't like election cars with loud speakers but that's like twice a year? and clerks telling you welcome and you have problem living in Japan?

You need to choose your place not to pick a cheap rent with paper thin walls...

Re: Most first-time visitors to Japan are struck by how clean the country is

#90

Post by yibg »

chvid wrote: post #6

As a Dane travelling abouts I have been stuck how clean the following three countries seemed compared to my home country: Australia, Singapore, and Japan.

Singapore seems to have a reputation for being very clean. But being here now after Tokyo there is no comparison. The amount of litter and general cleanliness of the sidewalks are much worse here compared to Tokyo.
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