March 2011 On Friday 11 March 2011

On Friday 11 March 2011, I went on a day-trip to ski at Kagura near Echigo Yuzawa (越後湯沢)station in Niigata prefecture, on the Sea of Japan side of the mountains which bisect Honshu, Japan’s main island.). Returning to Tokyo, I boarded the Shinkansen high-speed train that left Echigo Yuzawa Station at 14:43 (using 24-hour time, i.e. 2:43pm) to return to Tokyo. The Joetsu (上越 新幹線) Shinkansen line links Niigata on the Japan Sea to Tokyo. It was the brain of Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, Japan’s king of pork politics and construction whose district was in the Niigata area. At 1446 we were in the long (22.2 km) tunnel under the mountains between the West and East sides of Honshu, geographically akin to the Eisenhower Tunnel on the US Continental divide or the Mont Blanc one in Europe (but over eight times longer than the one in Colorado and about twice the length of the Mt. Blanc). The train stopped and then after about a minute or less there was big shake. Not enough to make you fall but much bigger than the normal ones which train riders are used to in this country. If they''d been noise, I''d have thought that Kim Jong Il had mistaken the place for Japan''s NORAD (the US-Canadian command whose Cheyenne Mountain Alternate Command Center is buried under a mountain to withstand nuclear blasts,), firing a nuke at us to celebrate his son’s enthronement as Crown Prince. Power was cut, as is normal procedure in these circumstances. The last thing you want is electrified wire around if they break. We switched to back up lighting, similar to the dim lights in passenger aircraft during night flights. Travelers are used to this here, so no one seemed surprised or too concerned. After maybe an hour we moved slowly to the next station, Jomo Kogen (上毛高原) on the eastern side of Honshu (i.e. the Pacific coast). It''s a Shinkansen-only station. There''s no town, but from it you can take buses to various nearby resorts. We stayed there motionless from around 18:00 to 07:00. We had full power, heating, lighting all the time expect for about 60 mins from 04:42 after a major tremor struck in Nigata, shaking the train and the station, forcing us back to back-up dim lighting. The station’s own electricity supply was unaffected. All train doors were closed to minimize heat loss (normally the kept the doors opened but the partitions at the entrance of each passenger section keep the cold out). The train was about 15% full. So we all had lots of space. Japanese train seats swivel. So you can turn the 3-seat or 2-seat rows (seating is 3-2 in coach) 180 degrees, making it possible for your feet to face empty seats rather than the back of the seat in front of you. So comfort was not an issue. Toilets, even by early AM were, of course, clean. There was water and soap to wash your hands (if the train had been full it might have been different but I wouldn’t be surprised if JR had sufficient supplies stored on board or at the station for these emergencies). They kept the lighting on during the entire time, which allowed me to read (Karl Marlantes’ Matterhorn, a griping account of the fate of Bravo Company in Vietnam and then to start the excellent Making of Northeast Asia by Kent Calder and Min Ye.) Many passengers slept, since the lights were not sufficiently strong to prevent a tired person from going to sleep. JR -East (Japan Railroad-East) staff distributed a some snacks and drinks and there were numerous vending machines with drinks, and things like hot corn soup and hot chocolate. (Japan is a paradise for vending machines, as there''s no vandalism. Remember the scene in Dr Strangelove when Peter Sellers orders the colonel to fire his gun at the Coke machine to get coins to call the Pentagon? Not here). The convenience store (mini-mart) was also open, so everybody who wanted was able to get more food, drinks, and magazines. JR staff kept us informed frequently. Obviously, they couldn''t tell us when we''d leave as no one can predict aftershocks but they provided as much information as they could. They were extremely polite and courteous. More importantly, they were really well trained. At around 0500 I could see five of them in the Station Master''s office hard at work, but neither panicked nor disorganized. As you would expect here, their uniforms, neckties, and caps were on as if awaiting an Imperial Inspection. The Tourist Office next to the station stayed open, at least until 02:00, to help anybody who had questions or needed some assistance. You could see that despite the quake, the station, including the toilets, had been cleaned overnight. At around 07:00 the next day (Saturday), we were taken from the Shinkansen by bus to a small train station about five minutes away called Gokan　（後関） on the Joetsu Line (a local line, not a Shinkansen one). JR staff escorted us, putting our luggage in the trunk. When I exited the bus, the JR employee had not only taken it out of the trunk but also pulled out the handle to make it easier for me to roll it. As I left the Shinkansen car, I noticed that no one left empty bottles, empty food containers, tissues, etc. We left Gokan around 07:50 to another station, Takazaki (高崎), taking about 1h30 to reach it at what may have been reduced speed. From there we were put on a local train to Tokyo’s Ueno Station. It didn''t make it to the capital, so we switched to another one which made it to Ueno by around 16:00 and then I took the subway home. At several points the train from Takazaki to Ueno was stopped, sometimes for more than an hour, due to traffic congestions. But considering the size and complexity of the greater Tokyo area commuter rail system in a metropolis with about as many residents as Canada it was actually an impressive performance. Remarks: The JR employees (and those of the private railroads) clearly knew what procedures to follow. Both planning and execution reflected a high degree of professionalism and training. It may be a cliché, but you could sense that they also were honor-bound to provide the best service they could. They had sold us a ticket to take us to Tokyo and, despite the tremor, it was their duty, as JR men and women, to fulfill it. When they came up with some snacks and drinks, I turned down the juice since I already had lots of H2O but I finally took it as I could sense that the conductor’s feelings were hurt by me not accepting his offering. All staff, male and female, always wore their uniforms properly, didn’t show how tired they were, and weren’t wasting time chatting among themselves or on their phones. Passengers: They made the JR personnel''s job easier. They didn’t pester them with silly questions such as when wed’ be on our way (which obviously JR could not answer as aftershocks are unpredictable). They were all outwardly calm. If they were worried about relatives and friends, they must easier have texted or emailed them or gone outside of the train to phone. The cars were almost noiseless, except for a few people watching their portable TVs in low-volume mode. Not only is smoking banned in trains but it is also forbidden on the station platform except in a few designated areas. Despite Japan’s high rate of smoking, I didn’t see anybody violate the rules. On the local trains, some were smoking on the platforms (where it may well have been legal) but many were using their portable ashtrays, though I did see one chap throw a cigarette butt on the platform. Passengers: It''s also a cliché but true that Japanese find it harder than most foreigners to deal with individuals they don''t know. That''s why when I introduce someone in Japan, I don’t just say “here is my friend so and so” but rather “here is Mr. X, he’s a professor at this school, he graduated from this university, and has published this and that book, etc.” You could see this in several ways: - Everybody obviously knew through listening to voice mails, reading emails and texts or looking at the web on their phones and or watching portable TVs (some Japanese mobile phones can tune in to TV signals) what had taken place. If, say, I had been stuck between Baltimore and DC in an Amtrak train due to a snowstorm that had killed hundreds of Bostonians and blasted parts of the Massachusetts shoreline to shreds, it would have been the major topic of conversation, with groups forming around the TVs, talking about, etc. The same would have happened in Europe under comparable circumstances. But walking down the 10 cars, I think I may have only see one or two clusters of two or three people talking, and they may just have been friends or relatives who were travelling together. One of the passengers in my car was watching his TV, but no one got around it to look at it. - I think if this had happened in the West, you might have seen passengers who''d just met each other in the train in the previous hours discuss other options, like renting a car, going to a nearby hotel to spend the night, calling someone''s friend who might live in the area, etc. Not here. Of course, it may just be that they all knew that staying put was the logical course, that they trusted JR more than Americans would Amtrak, and that it made no sense to consider alternative courses of action. - In most other societies you might have seen some local food caterer rushing to the train to sell over-priced foods to a captive market, a local hotel clerk going around offering rooms at his inn, or a guy with a minivan offering to drive passengers to Tokyo for a hefty fee, but I didn’t see any of this. One of the reasons may be a combination of a lack of the sort of family entrepreneurship associated with places like Italy and an absence of the immigrant communities who provide the bulk of small entrepreneurs in the West. Another explanation may simply have been that the official system (JR in this case) works well, leaving little room for outsiders to provide additional services. Basically, if you have to spend 16 hours in a stationary train and an additional day getting home, do it in Japan.