Gets Me To The Church On Time

I have to say that if you are a habitually late person, you will not be comfortable in Japan. Punctuality is a way of life here. If you have a meeting with someone at 9am, expect them to be there at 8:57. This effort to be on-time is most impressive with the public transportation. You could time your watch by the trains. I was on one that was supposed to leave at 8:25. As I was checking the clock on my cell phone it turned over to 8:25 and the train pulled away. Down to the second.

I have to believe that this kind of organization is necessary with the amount of people that the train system ferries around. It is an amazing thing to see a train platform packed completely full of people, then see a fully packed train pull up. I think to myself, there's no way that anyone's getting off the train, let alone getting on. But as quiet and calm as can be, the masses pour out, somehow finding a path in the crowd, then the rest jam into the cars. It's like a people-moving factory.

For that matter, the seas of people moving in the station are formidable, especially if you are trying to move against the flow. A particularly difficult situation is if you have to cross the flow of people, say to get to the ticket counter. Here is a survival guide:

1. Start upstream from your eventual goal.
2. Begin walking next to the crowd until you match speed with them.
3. Merge into the stream like you're entering a freeway in your car.
4. Slowly work your way across, muttering sumi-masen as you go. They will forgive you, silly foreigner, as you obviously have no experience walking en masse.
5. Break through the other side of the stream. If you're lucky you haven't ended up too far downstream from your goal. If you get sucked into the current, you may end up in Yokohama.