There’s something about being on public transport that seems to bring out the worst in us. Whether we’re talking on our phones, bringing smelly food onboard, or taking sly swigs of chūhai when we think no one’s looking, most of us are guilty of some kind of train faux pas.
A company in Japan has come up with an ingenious design solution to a very particular kind of anti-social behaviour – people taking up more than their fair share of space on the train.
Get inspired for the weekend with this fun YouTube video from Down Under! It’s sure to leave a big smile on your face and an itch to get your dancing shoes on.
Most of us grew up being taught to respect our elders. In fact, this is one of the most fundamental values traditionally taught to Chinese children. But the video we’re about to see is a stark reminder that the times they are a-changing, and that even in China there are some real brats who think nothing of verbally abusing their elders.
Watch as this little Chinese girl threatens to kill the older woman after she apparently took a photo of her misbehaving onboard the train.
A man suspected of groping a woman on the JR Yamanote line escaped by jumping onto the tracks at JR Ebisu station in Tokyo on Thursday night. His actions delayed trains along the Yamanote line for about 30 minutes, TBS reported Friday.
A 41-year-old police sergeant from the Osaka Tondabayashi police station has been arrested after it was discovered that while riding in a train, he put his smartphone between a woman’s legs.
Komabatodamae Station was the scene of a bizarre suicide yesterday as two men who seemingly had nothing to do with each other took their own lives by leaping in front of the same train.
At around noon on 11 August, an express train struck and killed the men after they jumped into its path about 20 meters apart.
A stamp rally, a promotional event in which you rush, saunter or dawdle around a local area collecting rubber stamps from checkpoints, is a popular summer activity in Japan. It often takes the form of a themed rubber stamp chained to an inky board that can be found at each station along a railway line, thus encouraging kids (and their accompanying, ticket-buying parents) to visit a bunch of places by train during the summer holidays.
Rubber stamps aren’t just for kids, though. Adults are welcome to collect the stamps in a book to keep for themselves, or if you catch ’em all on the promotional leaflet and hand it in to the organisers, you can sometimes win some cool prizes or goods relating to the show or characters being promoted. And this summer, Attack on Titan attempts to bring the stamp rally kicking and screaming into the 21st century, with a railway rally entitled Attack on Chichibu. The twist: it’s a stamp rally where there aren’t any stamps.
Ever felt the sudden urge to go on a solo journey to some place unknown, or just to wander around aimlessly to take a break from the sights and sounds you’re accustomed to? This cat in Miyagi Prefecture, Japan, seems to have caught the wanderlust bug too, and hopped on to a local train for a ride!
Scientists at Southwest Jiaotong University in China have built a prototype testing platform for a near-vacuum high-speed maglev train that is theoretically capable of reaching speeds up to 2900 km/h or about 1,800 mph. Currently, the fastest commercially operated maglev reaches just 431 km/h and even the world record is just 581 km/hr.
Imagine getting on a train after slogging through the slush-filled streets of Tokyo under a grey cloud-filled sky. With the usual packed row of seats, you’re forced to stand while you manipulate your Twitter feed with only one hand.
Then you begin to notice and odd sensation in the hand you’re using to keep your footing as the train jerks and rattles along. The strap you had unwittingly chosen feels a little different to normal. Looking up, you discover that it is in fact in the shape of a heart, and next to it is another heart-shaped hand strap being held into by another. Then your two eyes meet and you’re both struck by what Michael Corleone referred to as a “lightning bolt.”
This is exactly the kind of scene Japan Rail East hoped will play out in the days leading up to Valentine’s Day when they installed a single pair of heart-shaped hand straps on trains running along the Keiyo Line.
When you’re crammed into a train car during rush hour in Japan and almost everyone has a smartphone in their hands, you sometimes can’t help but look at what someone’s doing on their phone. Moreover, when you have a mix of seated and standing commuters, things get even more interesting, enabling a perfectly positioned passenger to sneak peaks at an unsuspecting person’s private messages. As you’d expect, you come across some really weird stuff when no one thinks you’re looking. Let’s take a look at five anecdotes from passengers who just happened to glance over at their nearby passenger’s phone.
Have you ever looked over while riding the Yamanote Line and saw the coolest guy you’ve ever seen? Sure he was probably wearing fashionable clothes and had great hair, but what was he doing? A poll conducted by Japanese mobile phone provider, NTT Docomo, reveals the top 10 things cool guys do on the train.
It’s all happening on Asia’s trains this week, isn’t it? According to Southeast Asian news sources, a man dressed in “samurai” garb faces up to five years in prison and “flogging” after jumping the ticket gate and then brandishing a full-length samurai sword on board a busy subway train on Monday this week.
In Japan, it is still considered “rude” to do things like talk on the phone or apply makeup on the train. Although the latter is becoming far more common as people come to realise that a girl touching up her war-paint in public is hardly the most scandalous act one can engage in, there are still many, mostly of the older generation, who believe that it should not be done in shared spaces and to be so openly “vain” is simply shameful.
We wonder, then, what the average older Japanese citizen would think if they saw a commuter like the young lady in the following video, who has thrown caution to the wind and slaps on a cleansing face mask during her travels.
Displaying all the skill and grace of a two-year-old holding a cushion over their face and shouting “You can’t see me!”, a man in Beijing was recently captured on video lying beneath the seats of a subway train and stroking the legs of a female passenger as they appeared in front of him.
Prepare for your day to get that little bit creepier.
Have you ever seen a subway train driving on the street? One of our Tokyo-based reporters did and it was the first time he’d ever seen anything like it. It all started on the night of November 26…
Earlier this week, we told you about the Yamanote Line train that will be decked out with the characters from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure All-Star Battle (coming to PS3 on August 29). At the time, we could only provide you with a few artist renditions of what the train might look like. But now, may we proudly present to you 31 photos of the actual JoJo train, inside and out!
On Sunday 25 August, a 58-year-old woman walking along the platform of Kanyama Station in Nagoya slipped and fell onto the tracks. The time was 3:50 p.m. and the six-car express train running from Toyohashi to Gifu was due to arrive at any moment.
Seeing this, another passenger waiting for his train also jumped onto the tracks to save the woman. However, possibly injured from her fall, the she was unable to move. Watching the 3:50 train pull into the station and with no options left the man urgently called out to the woman to “get down!”
On August 29, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure All-Star Battle will become available on PlayStation 3. It’s a fighting game that features all of the major players from the immensely popular manga series JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. How popular, you ask? This beat-‘em-up video game is currently the top-ranked game on Amazon, thanks to the huge numbers of pre-orders, it’s so highly anticipated. One might think that a game such as this doesn’t need any more hype, but those who know JoJo know that this particular franchise will stand for nothing less than extremes!
Starting on August 26, one of the trains on Tokyo’s looping central railway, the Yamanote Line, will be plastered both in and out with characters from JoJo’s new fighting game!