11–20 of 158 posts
Color me completely skeptical. That sounds like superstition to me. It reports that rates declined after installation, but if they preferentially installed the lights in areas with high rates of suicide, then we should expect to see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean .
>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!)"...?
All of a sudden a conductor (not sure if you call him that, he was in the back end of the car) popped out of his enclosure and yelled at them like they had just trashed his living space. He did use the word "urusai," but more than that (as is often the case in Japanese) his tone was just _dark_, fast, and loud.
All I could think was that he put on that intervention for us few foreigners who were being pretty quiet, and who really weren't bothered, but I still have no idea.
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…
Google maps and other transit apps are really good in Tokyo, paying with suica/pasmo makes things quite smooth--just keep it topped up habitually when you go to a convenience store--and I didn't really have the trouble you seem to have had with color/line navigation... I was definitely a bit flustered by the busy-ness but never really had a problem getting on the correct platform.
> Operating on the theory that exposure to blue light has a calming effect on one’s mood, rail stations installed these LED panels as a suicide-prevention measure Color me completely skeptical. That sounds like superstition to me. It reports that rates declined after installation, but if they preferentially installed the lights in areas with high rates of suicide, then we should expect to see https://en.wikipedia.org…
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 really had no trouble navigating Tokyo stations and I don't speak a word of Japanese besides すみません (excuse me/sorry to bother), so I'm quite surprised to see this comment! Google maps and other transit apps are really good in Tokyo, paying with suica/pasmo makes things quite smooth--just keep it topped up habitually when you go to a convenience store--and I didn't really have the trouble you seem to have had with c…
I was really hoping for more examples of crowd management and station design. This article only has a few examples, and none of them really explained why Japanese trains are so efficient.
It's not surprising that a group of people following the same social norms would have an efficient system for public transport.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/pointing-and-calling-j...
I've heard of people doing similar things with small children for safety reasons, things such as point both ways before crossing, and the old "fingers on noses before the door closes" for car doors.
https://youtu.be/470_2wt2t1o?t=41
Took me a second but I realized it was the same music that the old Mr. Do arcade machine (from 1982) plays when you get an extra man:
https://youtu.be/5_BBQWed8Vk?t=434
So is this jingle an homage to the game, or did the game lift the melody from somewhere else?
> Operating on the theory that exposure to blue light has a calming effect on one’s mood, rail stations installed these LED panels as a suicide-prevention measure Color me completely skeptical. That sounds like superstition to me. It reports that rates declined after installation, but if they preferentially installed the lights in areas with high rates of suicide, then we should expect to see https://en.wikipedia.org…
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.
I find it very hard to believe that the color of the light in the train station would sway a person's life-and-death decision. Plenty of things could, but "it's blue here" does not seem like one of them. "Colors have 'magical' effects on emotion" is a very woo-y thing to believe.