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

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

#171

Post by htfu »

electriclove wrote: post #58
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.

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

Europe too. It'd surprise me if it isn't more common than not, globally.

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

#172

Post by spinach »

I lived for a year and a half in Hyogo-ken, Japan during uni, mostly with a host family so I didn't criss-cross the country or anything but one of the grossest washrooms I have ever been in was in Kobe near the train station. It was like built into the wall and was just absolutely disgusting with no sink or anything. And I lived in China for a half a year and saw some pretty nasty toilets, but nothing as gross as that. Also, pretty much all combini washrooms are nasty too... But yeah, on the whole Japan appears cleaner - they learn to clean in school since they take turns being on duty for it and have to clean their own stuff, not just in high-school either. I joined the tea ceremony club at my uni which took place in this little traditional style house behind the school and once a week I was on duty in the morning to scrub the tatami. I think other countries should take that lesson and build in cleaning duties.

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

#173

Post by dwd »

chvid wrote: post #52
LIV2 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which part of Denmark? I am an Aussie living in Sweden but travel to Copenhagen every now and again and haven't noticed any mess

Copenhagen. I would say the big difference is that in Australia (or least Brisbane where I was) laws against littering are actually enforced. And public drinking is a lot more regulated.

Anyone growing up in Australia in the 80s would remember the "Do the Right Thing" TV ads. I think they were quite effective in making littering socially unacceptable, along with the threat of a fine.

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

#175

Post by austhrow743 »

davidmurdoch wrote: post #49

American (US) in Tokyo for the first time here. About an hour ago (10:30 pm here) I saw two men with a bucket and washcloth scrubbing the floor right next to Shibuya Crossing ("the busiest crosswalk on the world"). Moments before that a man was sweeping a walkway between passer-bys). The clothing store withers swept each changing room in between guests. Though a block away was the smoking area, littered with thousand…

Escalators having two lanes is a thing in tons of places. Generally the larger the city, the closer to the cbd you are, and the more rush hour it is, the more likely it is to be a thing that everyone does.

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

#176

Post by freyir »

wst_ wrote: post #158
Reason077 wrote: post #4

Sadly, this is the opposite of the UK cultural attitude. Kids here learn that cleaning up is someone else’s responsibility. Littering becomes a habit from an early age. Even compared to Americans, we are terrible litterers. You can see this in people’s behaviours in fast food restaurants: in the US (as in many other countries), customers will bin their food wrappers and return their tray when they leave. Even groups…

I remember the shock of moving from Tokyo to London. Despite of London not being the dirties of the cities I saw in my life, the gap is huge. Litter is everywhere even when the trash bin can be found close by. People do not respect public places, walking with your shoes on benches is normal, no one removes their shoes anywhere (example: I even saw people walk with shoes on in the soft play area where small kids are c…

Sounds like San Francisco. Just swap dog poop with human poop, and a glass of beer with a needle of heroin.

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

#177

Post by wst_ »

myrandomcomment wrote: post #169
tasogare wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The Japanese DO NOT talk in elevators.

They don't in trains, too. Sweet blissfullness of silence in the train is not something you appreciate until you really live there for some time and come back home for a holidays.

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

#178

Post by wst_ »

spinach wrote: post #172

I lived for a year and a half in Hyogo-ken, Japan during uni, mostly with a host family so I didn't criss-cross the country or anything but one of the grossest washrooms I have ever been in was in Kobe near the train station. It was like built into the wall and was just absolutely disgusting with no sink or anything. And I lived in China for a half a year and saw some pretty nasty toilets, but nothing as gross as tha…

And it's not only kids. Grown-ups are supposed to do it at work, too. When casually I suggested in my office, London, that we should swipe our desks weekly people laughed at the idea, others were surprised and upset. It's not their job, isn't it?

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

#179

Post by coldtea »

Tempest1981 wrote: post #151
coldtea wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, this is supposedly Osaka's "dirty" place: https://www.google.com/maps/@34.6687543,135.5013888,2a,75y,3...

Ah hah, 3 cigarettes at the man's feet: https://goo.gl/maps/nXUmRVou6wV86RJMA

To their defense, they're on a grill -- just didn't manage to fall through!

(Now let's compare with the sorry state a lot of European cities are in)

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

#180

Post by dilap »

dmoy wrote: post #79
dilap wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

My first reaction to learning this was also about the same, haha. The issue with the "everyone starts walking" is the same reason why stationary cars are closer together than moving cars. If people walked with military trained precision you could get the same density and vastly higher throughput by walking. But for civilian strangers, it turns out two lanes of standing gives high enough density to trump the increased…

Ah, I didn't consider density, that's a good point!

Taking a look at the study you mention (linked in other comments), it seems like the escalators they studied were well to the "too few people want to walk" side of the curve to be efficient.

I wonder how close the break-even point is to the simple metric, "do you have to wait to enter on the right?"

Or thinking of the queue length for standers, clearly when the length is 0 allowing walking is more efficient (you've taken nothing away from the standers, and the walkers are more efficient). But there is some point where the stand-queue length, let's call it N, is big enough that the corresonding wait-time means overall throughput is lowered by allowing walking.

I think it would be quite reasonable to require standing in those situations.

So the rule could be something like, "stand on the right, walk on the left, unless there is a queue of more than N people waiting to stand on the right, in which case you may stand on the left." Easy right? ;-)

(I wonder if N would vary w/ escalator length? Intuitively, almost certainly. So we'd have to post signs next to each escalator w/ its individual stand-queue limit. :-)

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