Trains / Being Polite

When I boarded the Yamagoto Shinkansen (bullet train going north from Tokyo) this morning, there was this old lady getting on board just in front of me. Oh and pardon my A.D.D. moment, trains are just COOL - check out the brand-new train model that will start running between downtown Tokyo and Narita airport starting October 1st: I'll be on it that day! But I digress... Anyway, this old lady was trying to lift her suitcase on to the overhead bin above the seats, and I knew this would end in disaster. So I asked her if I could lift it up for her, and after she nearly fell over because this big white dewd was speaking in Japanese to her, she nearly fell over with thanks and praise for helping her. Well it turned out that she was assigned the seat next to me, and so we chatted for the nearly-hour-long ride from Tokyo to Utsunomiya, where I had to change trains.

She was a sweet old lady, but she was brutally honest as most Japanese are. She said, while patting my tummy, "Ya' know... I have a son who is in international business, too, and he's fat, too." She went on to lament how that if you spend your life bouncing all over the place, you get fat, and there's just no going back. She went on to say that before we boarded the train, she noticed me on the platform (CREEPERS!!!), and that I reminded me of her son. She said that she thought it would be a wonderful thing if her son was as nice and polite as I was, and while I'm saying "Oh I'm sure he is...," on the inside I'm thinking, "He's probably as rude as you, ya' ol' windbag!" No no no... it's not actually rude to comment on somebody's rotundness in Japan - in many ways it's still a compliment. But speaking of being rude on trains, the JR East Company has ads all over it's trains and in the stations promoting being polite on trains (as seen on the left in this paragraph). Some of these ads are pretty funny. I should send in a suggestion: a picture of an old lady patting a fat dewd's tummy with a word bubble coming out of her mouth saying "futori."

And finally on trains, I saw something I hadn't seen before today. The newer trains (certainly none in Nikko!) have TV screens where they run ads/commercials. The pink TV screen you see pictured at the right is a horoscope of sorts. And it was running "fortunes" based on your blood type. Displayed here is the fortune for O-type blood carriers. Fretty punny, eh?

Have a great day.