Western trademark law really isn't compatible with the Japanese culture of noren-wake. The Japanese solution seems more beautiful and cooperative, while the western style seems intent on conflict and formenting division. Something like Tokyo Fugetsudo and Kobe Fugetsudo, where the new branch operates with the master's blessings, recipes, supply routes, teachings simply cannot exist under western rules. You must defend your trademark or lose it after all. What is sad is the Japanese are starting to adopt the western way instead of the other way around. You can look at JR and see ONE system where people work together in harmony. Even though it's really a half dozen different companies working to do their best job together. The American way would be to fight amongst each other until the greediest least moral company has defeated the others and become a monopoly to everyone's detriment.
How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart
101–110 of 158 posts
Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is exactly the reason why in germany we have now a broad ticket for short distance trains. Government realized they fail to meet EU regulations in reducing CO2, so they rushed to implement a cheap german wide ticket. Initially just 10€, now 60€ a month. Still a bargain, you can go anywhere as mich forth and back as you want (just not the dedicated long distance trains, so going through all of germany takes a bit…
You can tell this is a true success in Germany because 95% of local passengers now use it. It also caused a significant increase in ridership, putting the already overloaded rail system under a lot more pressure while taking away income from the rail companies (after making it cheaper).
Inconvenient truth: It is a bad use of taxpayers' money to highly subsidise train tickets when (1) people can afford to pay more (2) huge structural investments are needed in the country, (3) economic growth has stalled for years.
Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart
#103For those of you planning to go to Japan, please make sure you actually calculate how much JR train trips would cost you. They upped the price a few years ago and, since then, it's basically impossible for the JR Pass to be more affordable than single tickets. For one of my recent trips, I was actually more better served with a local pass (Kansai Wide Pass) than the JR Pass. Too bad because it used to be a really goo…
> Too bad because it used to be a really good deal... Considering the environmental woes & collapses coming down the pike, I'd like to see a trans-border effort to drive down the price of mass transit _everywhere_. Put it on the G7 agenda, the OECD agenda, the UN General Assembly agenda, ...
Where is there an affordability issue? (Especially in OECD and G7 countries)
Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart
#104Every platform at Shinjuku plays a different song when a train pulls in. There are sixteen platforms. The system started in 1989 with twelve. Made something to listen to all the songs - https://sheets.works/data-viz/bells-of-tokyo
Eki-melos are the things that I really liked about taking trains in Japan.
The chirping bird sounds to help blind users find their way to and from the platforms is also a pretty interesting design decision.
Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
"which they destroyed with there ideology and hate in there own country" Arguably the ideology and hate are prerequisites for a country to have a monoculture. With ideology and hate comes xenophobia and racism == monoculture.
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>If you love different cultures you want them to continue to exit independent of each other to preserve them. The only outcome of a melting pot is literally a monoculture by design.
This only makes sense if you think as "culture" as an immutable snapshot in time, which is... sure, I guess, a point of view to hold, though not a particularly interesting one.
Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can tell this is a true success in Germany because 95% of local passengers now use it. It also caused a significant increase in ridership, putting the already overloaded rail system under a lot more pressure while taking away income from the rail companies (after making it cheaper).
Well yes, the idea is to have more people use the trains, so yes also more trains are needed(and more investment and replacement of the Bahn management) in general, but as far as I know there is no income taken away, as it is subsidized and compensated on the federal level.
> no income taken away, as it is subsidized and compensated on the federal level
Only 50% of the relative loss of transit agencies is subsidised by the federal government, the other 50% gets subsidised by the respective state. And since the compensation is calculated in relation to the prices of monthly subscription tickets on routes in the respective transit area, transit agencies are left with even less.
Additionally, a lawsuit determined that the train network price cap for public transport is illegal, further increasing costs for the states.
This already has caused service reductions in multiple states, e.g. just now in Berlin additional overground Metro services during commuter peaks got halfed. With the results of the lawsuit and now interest from the federal goverment to put more funding into public transport, a lot more services will get axed in the next 3 years.
Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can tell this is a true success in Germany because 95% of local passengers now use it. It also caused a significant increase in ridership, putting the already overloaded rail system under a lot more pressure while taking away income from the rail companies (after making it cheaper).
Inconvenient truth: It is a bad use of taxpayers' money to highly subsidise train tickets when (1) people can afford to pay more (2) huge structural investments are needed in the country, (3) economic growth has stalled for years.
Wait till you hear about how we fund roads and how much it costs to drive on most of them, lol.
Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Inconvenient truth: It is a bad use of taxpayers' money to highly subsidise train tickets when (1) people can afford to pay more (2) huge structural investments are needed in the country, (3) economic growth has stalled for years.
Wait till you hear about how we fund roads and how much it costs to drive on most of them, lol.
That's a fallacious argument because roads are the universal, basic transportation infrastructure. You cannot have no roads. Your point has some relevance regarding motorways, which are not free in every countries and may be considered part of the universal road network, too. So mentioning the cost of roads is trying to deflect via "whataboutism" without addressing the point.
Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
well because they see kanji and "english" differently
So a Japanese designer probably didn't consider it?
They can’t see it even. The part of their brain which interprets Japanese is much bigger and faster.
On the other side, visitors who can’t read Japanese can’t do anything but try to interpret those letters in the language they know
Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Too bad because it used to be a really good deal... Considering the environmental woes & collapses coming down the pike, I'd like to see a trans-border effort to drive down the price of mass transit _everywhere_. Put it on the G7 agenda, the OECD agenda, the UN General Assembly agenda, ...
This is exactly the reason why in germany we have now a broad ticket for short distance trains. Government realized they fail to meet EU regulations in reducing CO2, so they rushed to implement a cheap german wide ticket. Initially just 10€, now 60€ a month. Still a bargain, you can go anywhere as mich forth and back as you want (just not the dedicated long distance trains, so going through all of germany takes a bit…
> Government realized they fail to meet EU regulations in reducing CO2, so they rushed to implement a cheap german wide ticket.
Or... Russia's attack of Ukraine caused a spike of energy prices.
Now which one of us has the correct history, and which is wrong, and why? Is it revisionism?