Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Psychology of Japanese Train Stations

citylab.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 158 posts

Re: The Psychology of Japanese Train Stations

#91

Post by SECProto »

ng12 wrote: post #7
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…

> They speak Japanese and not English, but lets be honest about it being the lingua franca If you go to Seoul they don't even have Romanized names for the train stations. Everything's in Hangul. For a massive system built primarily for Japanese speakers it's really pretty accessible. > Japan was a lot like NYC, the subway there is also more confusing than places like DC or Taipei. I mean, DC and Taipei are much small…

> If you go to Seoul they don't even have Romanized names for the train stations. Everything's in Hangul. For a massive system built primarily for Japanese speakers it's really pretty accessible.

I'm not sure when you were last in Seoul, but this was not the case when I was there recently. Perhaps they worked on it for the Olympics? Most signs (and I think every navigational sign) I saw in the metro stations was quadrilingual - Hangul, English, Chinese, and Japanese. The station names themselves were written in Hangul and English (not sure about Japanese/Chinese characters). I tried to find any news articles or background about this but I couldn't.

I have much more difficulty navigating the metro in Tokyo than I did in Seoul, and I can read a good bit of Japanese and no Korean.

Re: The Psychology of Japanese Train Stations

#92

Post by ehnto »

t413 wrote: post #50
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!)"...?

Those 'ultrasonic deterrents' should be completely illegal to deploy on/near any publicly accessible property. Having run into them many times over the years here in the US they're horrifically loud, painful, and less of a deterrent and more a punishment for having less-degraded hearing.

I used to go to the same food court nearly everyday for lunch during work. They had birds wander in, little sparrows, that would peck at the crumbs. Not that many of them if any at all.

They deployed a constant sweeping high pitched noise emitter to combat the birds and it's impossible to be in the area now. I just can't imagine how they're legal or even sensible.

I wonder if perhaps it wasn't a ploy to get the court to slow down and get the tenants to leave so they can redevelop it. It's been a local institution for some time.

Re: The Psychology of Japanese Train Stations

#93

Post by kumarvvr »

Recently went to Japan.

For a 'order' freak like me, it was heaven on earth.

Not only in train stations, each and every aspect of their lives revolves around understanding human behavior and coming up with solutions to make activities as less confusing as possible.

Their commitment to discipline is astounding.

If everyone on earth were like the Japanese, our pace of technological, social and other forms of development would be 10x of what they are now.

Re: The Psychology of Japanese Train Stations

#94

Post by kumarvvr »

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?

For the most part in developing countries. But remember that in Japan, most train stations are minutes apart. So getting off at 1:11 is absolutely stunning.

Also, they have a national radio broadcast that broadcasts time. I think most of their clocks are built to read info from the radio channel and sync to it. So you are usually advised to see the myriad of clocks displayed everywhere.

Re: The Psychology of Japanese Train Stations

#95

Post by tbabb »

rdtsc wrote: post #83
tbabb wrote: post #11

> 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…

> exposure to blue light has a calming effect on one’s mood, That did sound strange. I know that light therapy is used for treating seasonal depression (a sibling comment already mentioned that). 84% reduction in attempts seem pretty significant. They even quoted the accompanying study which showed that it didn't simply shift the suicides to other station that didn't yet have a light installed. I wonder if there is a…

> Maybe something like "someone is aware of my pain and they tried to stop me by installing this silly light".

That is an explanation that is much more believable to me than "mysterious color-based calming effect".

Re: The Psychology of Japanese Train Stations

#96

Post by Tharkun »

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!)"...?

These were sadly pretty common in the UK for a while, at the height of the ASBO-plague. I believe they're called 'mosquitos'.

Re: The Psychology of Japanese Train Stations

#97

Post by j7ake »

One missing ingredient is that the people have been trained to be orderly and respect and maintain the social order.

Removing the blue lights, noise, arrows would do little to disrupt the order of this highly disciplined people, see how civility and order is maintained even after a major earthquake

Re: The Psychology of Japanese Train Stations

#98

Post by jupiter90000 »

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…

That's pretty awesome. I hear often how perfectly on time the trains are there, which is usually true. However, I've experienced some train delays in Japan, mostly in Tokyo. One was so bad I ended up doing something else for a couple hours to wait until it got resolved.

Here's an article that reviews info from a report on rush hour delays in Tokyo for those interested.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/01/16/national/japans...

Re: The Psychology of Japanese Train Stations

#99

Post by kara_jade »

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…

Here’s a short video about the Tokyo Metro which shows in a nutshell why Japanese trains are pretty much always on time:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=_rtxm30NULU

Re: The Psychology of Japanese Train Stations

#100

Post by ajdlinux »

SECProto wrote: post #91
ng12 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They speak Japanese and not English, but lets be honest about it being the lingua franca If you go to Seoul they don't even have Romanized names for the train stations. Everything's in Hangul. For a massive system built primarily for Japanese speakers it's really pretty accessible. > Japan was a lot like NYC, the subway there is also more confusing than places like DC or Taipei. I mean, DC and Taipei are much small…

> If you go to Seoul they don't even have Romanized names for the train stations. Everything's in Hangul. For a massive system built primarily for Japanese speakers it's really pretty accessible. I'm not sure when you were last in Seoul, but this was not the case when I was there recently. Perhaps they worked on it for the Olympics? Most signs (and I think every navigational sign) I saw in the metro stations was quad…

Certainly was not the case when I was in Seoul in 2014 - even PA announcements on the train were in English.
Post reply on HN